The once all-powerful National Rifle Association is mired in legal and financial woes but its 5 million members still exert hefty grassroots influence with most Republicans as a fresh gun control debate in Congress heats up, say gun experts and NRA veterans.
The NRA’s grassroots clout – via the Internet, letters, phone and other tools – coupled with the influence wielded by millions of other gun owners, keep many Republican allies fighting almost reflexively against gun curbs, notwithstanding recent NRA problems including electoral setbacks, staff cuts, drops in member dues revenue and legal threats, according to analysts.
Which means that even after two mass shootings in March in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado spurred the House to pass bills to ban assault weapons and require mandatory background checks on gun purchases, the outlook in the evenly divided Senate to pass these bills seems very slim – unless filibuster rules are changed, say analysts.
Still, NRA and Republican sources say if a weaker background check bill than the House passed one is introduced it may have enough Republican support in the Senate to pass as a compromise measure.
To be sure, the NRA’s political strength by some key measures is markedly less than in recent years.
After giving Donald Trump a huge boost in 2016 with over $30m in ad spending to help him win the White House, the NRA had a much smaller presence in 2020 to Trump’s and the Republican party’s dismay. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA’s spending in 2020 fell to $29.4m from $54.4m in 2016.
What’s more in 2018, gun control advocates were credited with helping the Democrats take back control of the House in 2018 as their spending for the first time edged the NRA’s spending. And in 2019, the NRA’s revenue from its members dues declined from 2018 when it was $170m to $113m.
Nonetheless, the NRA’s grassroots muscle remains formidable and is working to block the House passed measures.
“The NRA is in a weakened condition, and their very future is at stake,” said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland and author of several books on guns, in an interview. “But the gun rights movement is deeply embedded in the GOP. Even though the NRA as an organization is seriously weakened, grassroots supporters are still out there, and are willing to act on the issue.”
“For the GOP, support for gun rights from its gun base is pretty much on autopilot,” Spitzer added.
Moreover, Spitzer noted that the Senate prospects for the two bills that passed the House seem dim. “The divisions between the two parties are sharper than in the past. Democrats are clearly behind strong gun laws, and Republicans are mostly opposed.”
“The filibuster is the real stumbling block,” he added. “ We’ve seen this movie before.”
Similarly, a former senior NRA official touted the group’s grassroots strength.
“The grassroots of gun owners are still a political force with or without the NRA. Even though the NRA has had significant problems and continues too, they will raise more money” to fend off new gun curbs, if past experience holds.
But the ex-official cautioned that “if they changed the filibuster rule, all bets are off”.
Further, the NRA veteran noted that he thought a weaker background checks bill like one sponsored in previous sessions by Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, had a decent chance of getting enough Republican votes to pass the Senate if Democrats accepted it as a fallback option.
Republican operative and lobbyist Charlie Black agreed that the less onerous bill like that previously backed by Manchin and Toomey has a good shot of getting through the Senate if Democratic leaders embraced it.
But Black noted that the odds of the House’s mandatory checks bill passing the Senate are slim. “You’re not going to get the House bill through the Senate,” Black said in an interview.
President Joe Biden has called on the Senate to pass the House measures which he called “common sense”, but at his first press conference last week gave mixed signals about how hard he will push for them.
Just 10 days before the Boulder shooter killed 10 people, the NRA weighed in on Twitter and applauded a Colorado court ruling blocking a Boulder assault weapons ban enacted in 2018 which it had sought to overturn.
However, the NRA and its leadership remain mired in legal and political battles to defeat the New York attorney general’s lawsuit that accused the nonprofit NRA, which has been chartered in the state for 150 years, of mismanagement and corruption.
The lawsuit that attorney general Letitia James filed charges last summer that the NRA’s veteran chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a few other top NRA leaders looted the group costing it about $64m in just the three prior years.
LaPierre was accused of self dealing by letting the NRA pay for millions of dollars of junkets with his wife and other family members to Europe, the Bahamas and other scenic spots.
LaPierre and NRA lawyer William Brewer III have denounced the lawsuit as fueled by “political animus”, noting that James is a Democrat. And Brewer has said the NRA has taken steps to correct its financial problems including replacing some senior staffers. The NRA’s long-time top lobbyist Chris Cox, who had become a critic of LaPierre, was forced out in 2019.
But the NRA’s 76 member board was mostly in the dark this January, when NRA leaders announced it was filing for bankruptcy in Texas where it hoped to incorporate, steps that two NRA veterans say were aimed at thwarting James’s probe.
James has filed a motion seeking to halt the NRA’s bankruptcy move, and a bankruptcy judge in Texas is slated to hold a hearing on 5 April on the matter.
On Sunday the NRA held an emergency board meeting in Dallas specifically to get the board to “retroactively” ratify the bankruptcy action before the 5 April hearing , say two NRA sources.
Despite all the NRA’s legal and political maneuvering, Black sounds bullish that the House bills won’t get through the Senate.
“The NRA’s grassroots is still active and powerful and influential with members of Congress,” he said.