The hostile takeover of the NRA
In 1977, an “extremist coup” set the organization’s agenda and personality for the subsequent 40 years.
Perhaps no other lobbying organization has seen such a striking political turnaround as the National Rifle Association. First granted a charter in 1871, the National Rifle Association was founded by a group of Union officers appalled by the the fact that many soldiers barely knew how to use their weapons. The group’s stated goal was to train better marksmen.
In the 1920s and 30s, the association—and its counterpart, the National Revolver Association—helped lobby for policies that are surprisingly pro- gun control: requiring permits, adding time to gun-crime sentences, waiting periods, and outlawing non-citizen ownership. In fact, in 1938, the president of the NRA testified before Congress in support of these laws: “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” The Gun Control Act of 1968—brought about in response to the decade’s brutal assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, enforced and strengthened the earlier gun laws.
It wasn’t until the early 1970s that a call to the Second Amendment—an individual’s right to bear arms—became part of the NRA’s narrative, and a schism in the group began to emerge. In 1975, Harlon B. Carter was brought on as part of a lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. A Texan and a former U.S. Border Patrol officer, Carter believed deeply in expanding gun owners’ rights. The N.R.A. actually fired Carter in 1976, but in May 1977 he and a small group of likeminded employees who had also been let go hijacked the annual meeting and reconfigured the agenda.
Carter became the NRA’s Executive Director, changing the culture and direction of the organization drastically and cementing its dedication to “protecting the Second Amendment.” This telling article shows the deep divide within the Association, describing Carter and his group, which came to be known as “the Federation,” as “the most extreme of the extremists” who left no room for argument, discussion or disagreement: “Let a timorous official show the slightest weakness, and his name will go down on the Federation’s secret ‘hit list.’”
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