(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Without a bogeyman in the White House to inveigh against, how does the gun lobby keep busy? That’s an urgent question for the National Rifle Association.
The NRA and its allies in the gun industry thrive on battling enemies, real and imagined. The Obama years saw rising firearm sales responding to NRA-stoked fears that the former president would clamp down on gun purchases. That Obama didn’t sign a single significant gun control measure mattered not one bit; his eight years in office were good times for the NRA and gun makers.
Now, though, with Donald Trump in the White House, the NRA has to train its sights elsewhere. The first sitting president since Ronald Reagan to address the group’s annual convention, Trump told the NRA faithful in April: “You are my friends, believe me.”
Looking elsewhere for enemies, the NRA has added a vaguely menacing gloss to Trump’s base-pleasing attacks on what he calls “fake news” organizations. “We’re coming for you,” NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch threatened the New York Times in an online video posted earlier this month. “Consider this a shot across your proverbial bow.” The NRA “is going to laser-focus on your so-called honest pursuit of truth,” she said, calling the Times an “old gray hag” and an “untrustworthy, dishonest rag.”
In a separate video, Loesch, a syndicated right-wing pundit who doubles as an NRA front person, called on the group’s loyalists to mount what sounds like a civil war against Trump opponents: “The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.” In the wake of the Charlottesville mayhem, such language has a particularly unsavory echo.
The pugnacious rhetoric, however, hasn’t moved merchandise at the pace to which the industry had become accustomed. FBI background checks, a rough proxy for firearm sales, have been sliding under Trump. In July, checks were down 21 percent compared to the same month a year ago. The shares of publicly traded gun makers have fallen, too. Sturm, Ruger & Co.’s stock is down more than 20 percent since the election; shares in American Outdoor Brands Corp., which owns Smith & Wesson, have dropped more than 30 percent.
It would be a mistake, though, to assume that the NRA is overly discouraged by the end of the “Obama surge,” as it was affectionately known in gun circles. “We’ve gone from a position of playing defense against Obama’s extreme gun-control agenda to a position of playing offense,” says Jennifer Baker, another NRA spokeswoman. ( Disclaimer: Baker has unfriendly things to say about the “extreme agenda” of Michael Bloomberg, the founder and owner of Bloomberg L.P. and driving force behind Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading gun-control group.)
“We’re very pleased with President Trump’s appointments so far,” Baker says, pointing to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, all of whom the NRA considers respectful of the Second Amendment.
As it does year in and year out, the NRA is staying active on a variety of legislative fronts. The group, which has a dues-paying membership of more than 5 million, is lobbying for the Second Amendment Guarantee Act, a bill that would override state bans on military-style semiautomatic rifles, more commonly referred to as “assault weapons.” Introduced earlier this month by Representative Chris Collins, a New York Republican, the bill would preempt laws in at least six states—California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York—as well as the District of Columbia, all of which have prohibited possession of the large-capacity, typically black-colored rifles. Popular and widely owned in other states, assault weapons were banned at the national level in 1994, but the prohibition expired a decade later.
Given the general chaos enveloping Congress in the wake of Republicans’ failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, it’s far from clear whether lawmakers will have the bandwidth to address pro-gun legislation this year. But the NRA is pushing several other bills, nevertheless. The innocuously named Hearing Protection Act, for example, would make it far easier for gun owners to obtain silencers. Depression-era restrictions on the devices—which attach to the business end of a gun barrel—were meant to deter stealthy crime. The NRA contends, however, that law-abiding gun owners seek silencers simply to prevent auditory loss.
Also high on the group’s legislative agenda is the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. This bill would allow residents of states with lax rules for obtaining a concealed-carry permit to take firearms into states with tougher restrictions. Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, has branded the bill “evil and dangerous” because it would “force every state to allow just about anyone to carry a loaded, hidden gun in public.” All states already allow for the concealed carrying of firearms, although they differ on standards for acquiring permission to do so. The NRA’s Baker says the reciprocity bill would “protect law-abiding gun owners from the patchwork of state laws that can turn them into criminals when they innocently travel.”
At the state level, the NRA has championed laws enacted in Texas and Nevada that prevent what it calls “discrimination” against gun owners who wish to adopt children or become foster parents. Most states impose restrictions on parents in these circumstances, such as requiring that firearms be kept locked away from minors. A pending lawsuit challenging Michigan’s prohibition of foster parents carrying concealed weapons, has reignited the NRA’s interest in the topic. On the website of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the group informs its followers that “anti-gun bureaucrats” in Michigan are subjecting gun-toting foster parents “to a stark choice: their Second Amendment rights or their kids.”
For the NRA, in other words, the fight never ends.
To contact the columnist of this story: Paul Barrett in New York at pbarrett17@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dimitra Kessenides at dkessenides1@bloomberg.net.
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