Bruce Rogers has an interesting article over at Forbes. He takes a look at the current debate on gun control and who's wielding the most influence. There are some interesting takeaways here.
The first is that this is (perceived as) a battle between the White House and the NRA. This isn't a spat between two political parties, or between branches of government; it's between the President of the United States and Wayne LaPierre. Most politicians on our side have either been silent, or they've been ignored by the media.
Think about that for a second. The NRA doesn't use membership dues to fund their legislative battles. Despite the 4.5 million members and $220 million dollar budget, the only money they have to fight in Washington is what they get through donations to the ILA. That's about $2.5 million a year. All things said, that doesn't really make them the behemoth the media loves to claim.
And yet they're perceived to hold the same level of sway the automobile or pharmaceutical industries do in the lobbying arena.
So, how did we get here? Focus. There are many groups fighting for 2nd Amendment rights, but the NRA is seen as being a unilateral voice. On the other hand, the gun control lobby seems to be a loose and disorganized coalition without a central mouthpiece. They've got the Brady Campaign, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Piers Morgan, Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, and the President and Vice President, but who's really leading things on their side?
I'm hardly LaPierre's biggest cheerleader, but he's doing something very right here. While the gun control lobby rushed to capitalize on Sandy Hook, the NRA stayed silent for a week before coming out with a forceful (if not surreal) rebuttal at what appeared to be the optimum time. As such, the momentum appears to be dwindling on their side, while it's picking up on ours.
Disagree on some of this and with the article.
With the article, the Forbes " Insights and Appinions" software must be badly buggy crapware, because Wayne LaPierre is not an influential voice to the people that matter -- the silent majority "on the fence" about gun control who could potentially be swayed to our side...or away from it.
No one on the fence about gun control listens to him -- he is the living personification of the bitter, furiously spittle-spraying, old, white man that the antis try to paint all gun owners as being. Heck, a significant number on our side don't listen to him -- I cringe every time he speaks, mainly because he's terrible at it and I disagree with him on everything apart from guns.
The undecided middle is listening to the voices of reason - voices like Dave Kopel of the CATO Institute, who intelligently articulate a meaningful 2A right, not run around claiming that we should be able to open carry machine guns into Federal Courtrooms.
Let's get one thing out of the way - Newtown going with armed guards. That has nothing to do with WLP. Clinton proposed it long before WLP was running the NRA, and many of the moderate voices (like Dave Kopel) also proposed it (and clearly, calmly explained why it would work, as opposed to crying about opposition to the idea), so giving credit to WLP doesn't seem to follow.
A big reason our side is winning now is because the emotion from the Newtown shooting is dying down, and people are reverting to their "normal" ways of thinking, not because WLP has won them over with his rants. America is generally in favor of private gun ownership -- that's just the way it is.
When something terrible happens, everyone says, "Well, more limitations are probably a good idea" because they're feeling emotional.
Then, the sensible voices come out, and say, "Well, remember, the last AWB didn't help, shouldn't we focus on things that might actually work instead of crap we know to be a failure?" And it takes some time, but common sense like that prevails over time with the vast undecided middle, and off we go.
OK, that's the article. The post I also disagree with on some points. The NRA isn't spending a ton this year partially because they shot their wad on the election. Something like 12 million for Romney? Also, they're not spending
now because there's no point to it. If you look back to '94, the NRA spent a ton on the following midterms -- they poured money by the truckload into a serious number of elections to attack those politicians who voted for the AWB (and it worked very well). I'd say if this AWB were to have passed (no way it will pass as originally proposed), they'd have done the same thing, so the financial numbers have no real significance at this point.
That's why they're (rightly) perceived to have 'pull', 'muscle', 'sway' or whatever you want to call it. They proved it in '94. Every Congresscritter who was around then remembers it well, and the seniors are definitely educating the juniors., Heck, even Biden is backing away from the AWB lately. You can bet Harry Reid remembers -- no way does he want to give up control of the Senate -- again.
I agree focus is winning for us, but to say the NRA is the reason for or the cause of that focus is unsupported. The NRA blames things like movies & video games and no pro-gun person or 'fence-sitter' with a brain takes that seriously, because there's just no real science backing that up (at this point). So if anything, they're fracturing the focus with their silly beliefs about "why".
I think we're focused because the correct answers have come to the fore, and it's a reasonable and obvious action to rally around what's demonstrably correct -- last AWB was a failure by it's own study, there's no science suggesting mag capacity is an issue (and tons of anecdotal evidence opposing mag restrictions), registration has been a useless pile of crap in every historical implementation and lacks even so much as a theoretical benefit, and oh, by the way, there's this thing called the 2A, and with Heller + McDonald it's balls finally dropped.
These facts aren't the exclusive domain of the NRA; every sensible pro-gun voice has been trumpeting them from the treetops since this thing started.
As for the waiting 7 days thing, there's no reason to believe that was of any help, and far wiser men than me, (like Alan Gura, for example) think that was a terrible decision, giving all the initiative and air time during the crucial early days after the incident to the opposition. I agree the media ignores most voices from our side, which is one of the many reasons why the NRA is so important. Their choice to be silent then left us with no voice, and therefore no chance to influence the legions of fence-sitters, many of whose empty heads where then filled only with the voices of the antis.
However, as even Alan Gura said, after waiting far too long to respond, the NRA's response was off-target and came across as out-of-touch. This was a larger fail then we will ever know, since at that moment, the opportunity to reach a gigantic, national/global audience with a message of reason and intelligence went wasted, and the NRA cemented itself as the organization of clueless, bitter, old, white men. Subsequent attacks on the NRA (Rolling Stone, et al) are entirely rooted in that failed press conference, which should go down in firearms history as the biggest wasted opportunity of all time.
