When Democrats acted last month to give the District of Columbia long-denied voting rights in Congress, the US’ most powerful gun lobby saw a target too good to pass up.
The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) lobbyists made it clear to lawmakers that they believed the bill should include a measure to overturn the capital’s gun control laws. Left mostly unsaid, but well understood by all 535 members of the House and Senate, was that failure to do so would unleash a barrage of political pain on resisters.
The result showed the strong sway the NRA has even over a Congress dominated by liberal Democrats who mostly disagree with the organization’s positions. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to add the gun-rights proposal. House Democratic leaders, fearing a tough vote on the issue, swiftly scrapped plans to consider the DC voting legislation.
The bill hasn’t resurfaced because Democrats cannot figure out how to keep it from splitting their ranks. Moderates and conservatives don’t want to buck the NRA. Liberals are reluctant to be blackmailed into loosening gun laws.
The 138-year-old group derives its influence from a large and motivated base of members, particularly in rural areas and the South.
Its much younger political arm, set up in 1975, wields a carefully honed system for grading lawmakers and candidates based on how often they side with the NRA’s legislative priorities.
Their lobbyists tell lawmakers that they will be “scoring” specific bills — the equivalent of saying, “We’re watching you, and if you vote the wrong way, there will be consequences.”
That scoring system helps determine which candidates the group supports in campaigns. That decision can be an important factor in elections.
The group’s political action committee spent US$15.6 million on campaign donations during the past two years, disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission showed. The lion’s share of the money went to challenging gun control advocates, especially US President Barack Obama. The rest went to support strongly pro-gun candidates.
The NRA generally avoids contributing to lawmakers who don’t vote with it. Many other organizations cultivate relationships with Congress by spreading their campaign cash around even to leaders and committee heads who don’t always back their causes.
“The power of the NRA is in the millions of members all over the country who believe strongly in their freedom and their willingness to fight for it,” said Chris Cox, the group’s chief lobbyist.
Many, if not most NRA members, give the group’s ratings an enormous amount of weight on Election Day.
“The political reality ... is that gun control’s a loser,” Cox said. If lawmakers “vote wrong on guns, history has shown they lose.”
In the case of the voting rights bill, for example, the NRA quietly put out the word that it would score a procedural measure to set ground rules for the debate — and determine whether the anti-gun control proposal could or could not be offered. That meant a vote to advance the bill without reversing the district’s gun laws could cost a lawmaker the NRA’s political support. It was enough to halt the measure in its tracks. The following week, House Democratic leaders saw a wilderness conservation measure defeated after they tried to push it through under expedited procedures to avoid a contentious vote on gun rights.
The measure passed Congress on Wednesday, only after House and Senate leaders agreed to a provision to placate the NRA through language by Representative Jason Altmire, clarifying that the bill wouldn’t impose new restrictions on hunting, fishing or trapping on federal land.
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