The symbiotic but deadly relationship between the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby was on full display this February. Only days after a gunman used an AR-15-style assault weapon to murder seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the NRA went on the offensive, pushing back against calls for stricter gun laws and warning that gun rights were under threat.
But curiously, two weeks after the massacre, Time published a bombshell report citing senior GOP officials who told the magazine that “behind the scenes, the NRA has given Republican lawmakers the green light to float new gun restrictions without the threat of political retribution.” These private entreaties from the NRA to lawmakers are totally at odds with the group’s public efforts in Congress, where it argues that even the most modest regulation of firearms on the federal level would lead to confiscation.
“In the gun industry, fear is good for the bottom line.”
“The explanation is simple,” Time wrote. “In the gun industry, fear is good for the bottom line.”
This backroom maneuvering, the article noted, was occurring as gun manufacturers were “in the midst of the worst business crisis in decades, with double-digit sales drops driving some to the brink of bankruptcy.” FBI background checks, a metric for measuring gun sales, fell 8.4 percent in 2017, after a record-breaking year before. In March, Remington Outdoor Company, one of the largest and best-known gun makers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This decline in gun sales and the fortunes of gun manufacturers is sometimes called the Trump slump. Under the current President, the NRA can no longer count on using fear of regulation or confiscation to drive gun sales as it was able to do during the Obama Administration.
An NRA spokesperson denied to Time that the organization signaled to Republican lawmakers that it was OK to talk about gun regulation, saying the group’s focus is on defending gun rights, not hiking gun sales. But is that really the case?
On one level, the school shooting in Florida and the response it generated clearly seem like bad news for the NRA and its allies.
Taking a cue from public sentiment, the big-box retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods announced in late February that it was halting the sale of military-style weapons at its stores; it later said it would destroy its remaining inventory rather than return it to manufacturers. Walmart changed its policy to sell guns only to people age twenty-one or over. According to YouGov BrandIndex, both companies improved their standing with the public following these policy changes.
Yet the NRA and gunmakers have little reason to worry about concrete Congressional action on the gun issue post-Parkland. Consider that nothing has happened following other horrific massacres in recent years, including failing to expand background checks on some gun sales after Sandy Hook. In contrast, they have every reason to worry about financial threats to the industry and every reason to use fear in an attempt to kickstart gun sales.
Sounding alarms about gun control is also good for the NRA’s bottom line. In March, the first full month after the Florida killing spree, the group raised $2.4 million for its Political Victory Fund, which doles out contributions to candidates. That was more than three times what this political action committee raised in February and the highest one-month total on record.
Both the NRA and Trump himself have continued to claim the country stands perched on the verge of total gun rights annihilation. In a campaign-style appearance at the NRA’s annual convention in May, Trump asserted that Democrats want to “outlaw guns” and that the way to avoid that is to “get Republicans elected.”
Companies that manufacture firearms—including makers of AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, the mass shooter’s preferred weapon—have donated millions of dollars to the NRA. In return, the NRA lobbies legislators to prevent guns from being regulated, challenges weapon restrictions in court when laws are enacted, and leads a messaging operation that raises the omnipresent specter of forthcoming firearm restrictions and bans.
This relationship is good for both gunmakers and the NRA. But it is bad for everyone else, as the lax firearm laws the gun lobby and industry support drive epidemic everyday gun violence punctuated by headline-making high-casualty rampage incidents.
As this cynical marketing relationship plays out, so does a ubiquitously American type of public carnage, as one mass murderer after another uses military-style assault weapons to mow people down at schools, churches, concerts, and other places where people gather.
The total amount of money the gun industry gives to the NRA is unknown, because the NRA is not required to disclose many of the donations it receives. However, the Violence Policy Center was able to estimate that gun industry donations, including substantial donations from assault weapons makers, reached minimum levels of between $19.3 million and $60.2 million between 2005 and 2013.
Much of the donation information on which this estimate was based comes from the NRA’s publication of corporate membership in its “Ring of Freedom”—a multitiered system that ranks gun companies based on their level of giving. The top two levels of giving are named after NRA luminaries. Subsequent levels are named after Founding Fathers, including some of those involved in crafting the Second Amendment.
Assault weapons makers are heavily represented at the highest levels of NRA giving.
The top giving level—reserved for donations to the NRA totaling between $5,000,000 and $9,999,999—is called the Harlon Carter Level. Carter, who held a number of executive positions in the NRA, led the 1977 “Cincinnati Revolt” at the NRA’s annual meeting, which prompted a change in leadership and organizational priorities that helped establish the NRA’s hardline opposition to almost any form of gun regulation.
Prior to becoming professionally involved with the NRA, Carter spearheaded the U.S. Border Patrol’s 1954 racist immigrant expulsion program, Operation Wetback. As a youth, Carter was convicted of murder for shooting a Latino teenager he said was loitering on his property, although the conviction was overturned on appeal.
The only company to hit the Harlon Carter Level is MidwayUSA, an online firearms accessory and ammunition retailer that gives customers the option to “round up” their purchases at checkout into donations for the NRA.
Donors giving between $1,000,000 and $4,999,999 are placed in the Joe Foss Level, named after the former World War II fighter pilot, South Dakota governor, and American Football League commissioner who served as NRA president in the late 1980s.
Next comes the George Washington Level for donations totaling between $500,000 and $999,999, followed by levels named for Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and James Madison.
Assault weapons makers are heavily represented at the highest levels of NRA giving. Smith & Wesson, which manufactured the M&P15 .223 assault weapon used in the Parkland, Florida, shooting, is a Joe Foss Level NRA corporate partner, meaning that the company has donated more than $1 million. The M&P15 was also used in the 2012 movie theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, which left twelve people dead and fifty-eight others wounded—as well as the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in which fourteen people were killed and seventeen others wounded.
Smith & Wesson is also a major manufacturer of handguns often used in everyday gun violence. In 2014, 624 Smith & Wesson firearms were seized in Chicago—more than any other brand, according to a report in the online news site The Trace.
Following Parkland, the NRA scrubbed a web page that gave some information about Smith & Wesson donations, a page that quoted company Chief Executive Officer James Debney, touting “strong sales of the M&P product line.” (The page is still available via a web archive.)
Other assault weapons makers who have armed mass killers in recent years are among major NRA donors. The November 2017 massacre at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was carried out with a Ruger AR-556 assault weapon. Sturm, Ruger & Co. is a Joe Foss Level NRA donor. The 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, was carried out with a Sig Sauer MCX assault weapon. The maker of that weapon is a James Madison Level donor, indicating gifts totaling between $25,000 and $49,999.
Remington Outdoor Company, the parent company of Bushmaster, which made the assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, has also given the NRA more than $1 million. (The company is listed in the Violence Policy Center’s report as Freedom Group, the name it was using at the time.)
In addition to making cash donations to the NRA, gun manufacturers directly market their products to customers by sponsoring programming on NRATV, the group’s sprawling digital network.
The NRA launched its media operation in 2004 as NRA News. Until October 2016, NRA News largely consisted of a program called Cam & Co, a weekday three-hour talk radio-style program that covered both gun issues and other conservative interest stories, and a series of short prerecorded videos branded as NRA News commentaries.
Just before the 2016 presidential election, NRA News was rebranded and expanded as NRATV, with additional live shows supplemented by prepackaged content to create a 24/7 stream of pro-gun messaging available at NRATV.com.
The slick, high-production-value programming at NRATV is divided into four channels: NRA Women, NRA Country (music), NRA Hunting, and NRA News—a conservative media and pro-Trump propaganda operation in the vein of the far-right website Breitbart and conspiracy theory website Infowars. The operations of NRATV are supported by the NRA’s advertising agency partner, Ackerman McQueen. NRATV’s “brand partners”—prominently displayed on the NRATV website and programs—include assault weapon makers Ruger (exclusively sponsoring NRA News), Smith & Wesson (exclusively sponsoring NRA Women), Mossberg, and Sig Sauer.
Beyond its online news service, the NRA publishes a number of print magazines filled with advertising from gunmakers who are NRA corporate donors. The NRA even published a quarterly high-end lifestyle magazine called NRA Sharp that suggested pairings between expensive products and guns made by donors. For example, an early edition suggested pairing an AR-15-style assault weapon manufactured by NRA donor Daniel Defense with custom Nikes, or a Smith & Wesson M&P handgun with an iPhone. (The magazine now appears to be online only, folded into the NRA’s news magazine America’s 1st Freedom.)
It’s all part of the NRA’s massive messaging operation that encourages gun buying, most often by employing a slippery slope argument where any proposal to strengthen firearm laws is a step toward absolute gun bans and confiscation.
In September 2011, toward the end of President Obama’s first term, the NRA’s executive vice president and chief executive officer, Wayne LaPierre, gave a speech at a conservative gathering in Florida where he warned of a “massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.”
The utter lack of action at the federal level during the President’s first term, LaPierre told the crowd, was “a scheme to stay away from the gun issue, lull gun owners to sleep, and play us for fools in 2012.” Reaching new conspiratorial heights, the NRA leader proclaimed, “We see the President’s strategy crystal clear: Get reelected, and with no other reelections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms freedom. Erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and exorcise it from the U.S. Constitution.”
Near the end of Obama’s second term, with no gun grab (or even substantial regulation of firearms on the federal level) having occurred, the NRA turned toward the future, with LaPierre declaring in an unhinged October 2016 video, “There is no red line President Hillary Clinton will not cross when it comes to attacking your rights and forcibly taking your guns. She dreams of twisting a knife into the heart of the one freedom that separates us from the rest of the world.”
Trump’s improbable victory, backed by record NRA campaign spending, created a major problem for the group and its gun industry patrons. With Clinton defeated and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, how could the NRA use fear of confiscation to drive gun sales?
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
After a gunman used an array of assault weapons to slaughter concertgoers in Las Vegas, Nevada, in October 2017, there was no realistic possibility that Congress would pass legislation to require universal background checks or reinstitute the lapsed federal assault weapons ban. There was, however, a chance that it might limit access to bump stocks, a firearm accessory that allowed the Las Vegas gunman to accelerate his rate of fire.
This gave NRATV the opening it needed. Five days after the shooting, Grant Stinchfield, host of the outlet’s news of the day show, issued a dire warning: “They start with bump stocks and it ends with an all-out assault on the Second Amendment.” As he saw it, “a heinous crime has now been hijacked by anti-gunners to push an un-American agenda.” For shame.
To date, Congress has not banned bump stocks.
The NRA runs interference for assault weapons manufacturers after horrific incidents cause widespread outrage.
Among gun makers, those who produce assault weapons—which were first heavily marketed to the civilian population during a 1980s handgun sales slump—are the ones most in need of the NRA’s attentions. Unlike handgun ownership—which is protected by a 2008 Supreme Court ruling—most federal courts have upheld statewide assault weapon bans.
The NRA has obliged assault weapons manufacturers by running interference for them after horrific incidents cause widespread outrage. One example is the NRA’s defense of Bushmaster, the maker of the assault weapon used at Sandy Hook.
In October 2014, an NRA News commentator argued that assigning blame to Bushmaster for the school shooting was “like blaming Kleenex for the flu.” Setting aside the confounding logic behind that comparison, no disclosure was made that Bushmaster’s parent company, Remington Outdoor Company, was a substantial NRA donor or that its chief executive officer at the time, George Kollitides, served on the group’s board of directors nominating committee.
Two months later, some of the Sandy Hook families filed a lawsuit against Bushmaster, arguing that by making military-style weapons available to civilians, the company had exposed itself to legal liability. Days later, NRA News hosted an attorney who had done legal work for the organization to call the lawsuit frivolous and the plaintiffs “extremely irresponsible.”
Again, the financial relationship between the NRA and Bushmaster was not disclosed. Although a 2005 NRA-backed law makes it extremely difficult to sue gunmakers for death and injury caused by their products, the Bushmaster lawsuit remains active.
An emerging service offered by the NRA to its gun lobby donors is its willingness to intervene in financial disputes.
In April 2018, Bank of America notified gunmakers that “it’s not our intent to underwrite or finance military-style firearms.” The announcement followed a policy change at Citigroup, to restrict business with makers of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
In response, the NRA fired up its online attack dog, NRATV, bringing on guests to attack Citigroup and call for boycotts. “Citigroup has targeted firearms dealers because it’s a priority of the left,” the network warned ominously. “Get political control over the banking industry and you have a powerful weapon. What will be the next step?”
NRATV promoted its attacks on Bank of America with headlines like “Bank of America Is Discriminating Against the Tax Payers Who Bailed Them Out” and “Bank of America Happy to Take Your Tax Money, and Your Guns.”
Sometimes, the NRA’s zeal to defend military-style weapons produces bizarre messaging. After Sandy Hook, a former NRA president and current NRA board member and lobbyist, Marion Hammer, argued against an assault weapons ban on NRA News by comparing regulation to racial discrimination.
“Banning people and things because of the way they look went out a long time ago,” Hammer said. “But here they are again: the color of a gun, the way it looks. It’s just bad politics.”
Following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch appeared on Fox News to argue that proposals to regulate AR-15s were “about disarming women” and were a “war on women.” And the day after U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was shot and others were wounded during a June 2017 shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, an NRATV commentator promoted AR-15 ownership as good defense against the government.
“I personally think it is a mistake for people to say [the AR-15] is used for hunting, or it’s used for target shooting,” then-NRATV commentator Bill Whittle said. “I have my AR-15 to kill people.” He went on to clarify, “My weapons are here to defend me against my government.”
Such arguments may strike some observers as extreme. But for a certain segment of the population, they resonate as reasons to buy more weapons. For the NRA and its gun lobby backers, that is a successful outcome.
Timothy Johnson is a research fellow at Media Matters for America. He focuses on guns, public safety, and rightwing extremism.