How the NRA Shaped Prevailing Public Opinion

The District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision was a culmination of efforts that were started in the mid-seventies. It could be said it was one of the climactic points of a social conservative point of view that began to gel in the ‘30s with a backlash to the liberalism of the new deal.  

The splintered movements of Fiscal Conservatism, Social Conservatism and Neo-Conservatism along with the Libertarians coalesced into the modern Republican Party during the fifties and sixties. The shift of the white ethnics from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party during the ‘60s would lead to Richard Nixon's victory in 1968. This victory is often considered a realigning election.  

President Ronald Reagan solidified the conservative coalition with tax cuts, greatly increased defense spending, deregulation, a policy of rolling back communism rather than just containing it, a greatly strengthened military and wedge issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights. These appeals to “family values” and conservative “Judeo-Christian morality” included coded language and later overt language directed at the white ethnics. Think of the Welfare Queen and Willie Horton political ads.  

In the late '60s, there was widespread concern about rising crime rates and the deadly riots that flared in the nation's major cities. Citizens were concerned about their safety and some turned to gun purchases for their personal protection. Many NRA members wanted their organization to get out in front.  

In 1971, agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms killed an NRA member who was hiding a large number of illegal weapons. This, too, stirred a restive reaction within the NRA rank and file. To address it, the NRA's top managers created the group's first lobbying organization, the Institute for Legislative Action, in 1975. A Texas lawyer named Harlon Carter, an immigration hawk who had headed of the Border Patrol in the '50s, headed the ILA. 

"You don't stop crime by attacking guns," he said. "You stop crime by stopping criminals." 

In the end, Carter ascended to NRA's de facto leadership as its executive vice president. The new marching orders were to oppose all forms of gun control across the board and lobby aggressively for gun owner's rights in Congress and the legislatures. A group that in the past was an advocate for gun safety and regulation moved to the forefront in the efforts to mold public opinion on the issue of firearms as an individual right.  

The NRA clearly understood that overall public sentiment needed to change in order for them to prevail at the Supreme Court. Overall public opinion was fairly agnostic to the gun issue as more and more people moved into urban and suburban areas. They also needed a conservative majority on the court. The effort took 33 years to achieve culminating in the 2008 Heller decision.  

As part of the strategy, the NRA was able to accomplish two very important things. They helped create a small but extremely vocal and passionate group of gun rights advocates and they were able to make the issue of gun rights a core conservative principle. It became an item on the Republican checklist right up there with abortion, taxes, military spending and “family values”. As a member of the “team”, people who were not passionate about the issue still advocated for it.   

One must remember that only 3% of the population of the US own 50% of the guns. This small and very vocal group of people owns an arsenal.  

Reversing the NRA’s gains will not happen overnight, but public opinion has been changing at an accelerated pace starting with the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, only 4 years after the Heller decision, and has accelerated even more after the Parkland and El Paso shootings. The GOP especially the MAGA crowd are simply ignoring overall public opinion on the subject. They are using it as a tool to continue to motivate their base. They are even going so far as to pose their childern in famly photos with guns and using inflammatory rhetoric about overturning the US government.

The NRA is currently in disarray; they are beset with scandals, misappropriation of funds, Russian money, extravagant lifestyles of the leadership, and other issues. Their power is not what it was. Can they recover as an organization? Maybe, but public opinion has clearly shifted and gun ownership continues to decline. The NRA cannot change those two dynamics. No one is going to lose a national general election on the gun issue any longer.  

The Republican Party is holding back action on guns based on muscle memory at this point. This shift has not taken 33 years, but a mere seven. While gun regulation may not happen overnight, in my opinion, it is not that far away.  

The precedent set by the Heller decision may not be overturned, but as we discussed in the previous blog it does not prohibit gun regulation.