Uses National Rifle Association materials, meetings, leader speeches, and interviews with NRA members to examine how the organization perceives threats to gun rights as an attack in a broad culture war that will ultimately lead to gun confiscation and socialism.
For the first time, the definitive account of America’s most powerful, most secretive, and most controversial nonprofit, and how far it has strayed from its origins. The National Rifle Association is unique in American life. Few other civic organizations are as old or as large. None is as controversial. It is largely due to the NRA that the U.S. gun policy differs so extremely — some would say so tragically — from that of every other developed nation. But, as Frank Smyth shows, the NRA has evolved from an organization concerned above all with marksmanship — and which supported most government efforts around gun control for a hundred years — to one that resists all attempts to restrict guns in any way. At the same time, the organization has also buried its own remarkable history. Here is that story, from the NRA’s surprising roots in post-Civil War New York City to the defining event that changed its culture forever — the so called “Cincinnati Revolt” of 1977 — to the present day, where President Donald Trump is the most ardent champion in the White House the NRA has ever had. For anyone who has looked at access to guns in our society and asked “Why?”, this is an unmatched account of how we got here, and who got us here.
How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday Americans The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations—even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths. Firepower provides an unprecedented look at how this controversial organization built its political power and deploys it on behalf of its pro-gun agenda. Taking readers from the 1930s to the age of Donald Trump, Matthew Lacombe traces how the NRA's immense influence on national politics arises from its ability to shape the political outlooks and actions of its followers. He draws on nearly a century of archival records and surveys to show how the organization has fashioned a distinct worldview around gun ownership and used it to mobilize its supporters. Lacombe reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a large, unified, and active base has enabled it to build a resilient alliance with the Republican Party, and examines why the NRA and its members formed an important constituency that helped fuel Trump's unlikely political rise. Firepower sheds vital new light on how the NRA has grown powerful by mobilizing average Americans, and how it uses its GOP alliance to advance its objectives and shape the national agenda.
This collection of essays explores the way history itself has become a contested element within the national legal debate about firearms. The debate over the Second Amendment has unveiled new and useful information about the history of guns and their possession and meaning in the United States of America. History itself has become contested ground in the debate about firearms and in the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Specifically this collection of essays gives special attention to the important and often overlooked dimension of the applications of history in the law. These essays illustrate the complexity of the firearms debate, the relation between law and behavior, and the role that historical knowledge plays in contemporary debates over law and policy. Wide-ranging and stimulating The Right to Bear Arms is bound to captivate both historians and casual readers alike.
Gun ownership has long been a hot-button topic in the United States, and the National Rifle Association has the reputation of being an organization of primarily politically conservative members. American Shooter provides a unique look at gun ownership, handgun bans, shooting sports, and the controversy over how to interpret the Second Amendment from the point of view of a liberal gun owner and enthusiast. Gerry Souter examines the history of firearms in the United States, from the settlers who carried matchlock muskets ashore at Jamestown to the citizens who purchase guns in record numbers today. Recent Supreme Court decisions that uphold the right to bear arms have galvanized citizens on both sides of the debate, making the gun issue hotter than ever. To provide a personal view, Souter weaves in tales of his own experiences with guns, including sport shooting as a young man, hunting and bonding with his father, and facing the smoking end of a muzzle as an international photojournalist. American Shooter is both a history and a personal journey that traces the path of American gun ownership culture from the Revolution to today. It recounts how the country has lived with guns from the flintlock hung over the fireplace to the concealed-carry, laser-sighted Glock semiautomatic pistol tucked away in the hidden pocket of a mom’s purse.
American Military Shoulder Arms, Volume I: Colonial and Revolutionary War Arms focuses on the arms used from the early exploratory period throughout the colonial period and the American Revolution. Arranged chronologically, it contains definitive descriptions of the pre-flintlock and flintlock shoulder arms used in North America and detailed accounts of the development and progression of military regulation shoulder arms of the major colonial powers from the early eighteenth century through the Revolutionary War. Lavishly illustrated with more than four hundred vivid photographs of muskets, rifles, carbines, and other arms, this book offers an intelligent analysis of the shoulder arms procured and used by the colonists, colonial and state governments, and the Continental Congress.
Henry Edwards Davis (1879–1966) began his hunting adventures as a boy riding in the saddle with his father on foxhunts and deer drives in the company of Confederate cavalry veterans. Born on Hickory Grove Plantation in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, Davis developed his taste for the hunt at an early age. In later years he became a renowned sportsman and expert on sporting firearms. Published here for this first time after a four-decade-long hiatus, his collection of southern hunting tales describes his many experiences in pursuit of turkeys, deer, ducks, and partridges through the fields, forests, and swamps of South Carolina’s Pee Dee region. His memoir offers a lucid firsthand account of a time before paved roads and river-spanning bridges had penetrated the rural stretches of Williamsburg and Florence counties, when hunting was still one of a southerner’s chief social activities. With a sportsman’s interest and a historian’s curiosity, Davis intersperses his hunting narratives with tales of the region’s rich history, from before the American Revolution to his times in the first half of the twentieth century. Davis, a connoisseur of fine sporting firearms, also chronicles his personal experiences with a long line of rifles and shotguns, beginning with his first “Old Betsy,” a fourteen-gauge, cap-lock muzzleloader, and later with some of the finest modern American and British shotguns. He describes as well a host of small-bore rifles, many of which he assembled himself, bedding the barrels and actions in hand-carved stocks. Edited by retired lowcountry game warden Ben McC. Moïse and featuring a foreword by outdoor writer Jim Casada, Davis’s memoir is a valuable account of hunting lore and historic firearms, as well as a record of evolving cultural attitudes and economic conditions in post-Reconstruction South Carolina and of the practices that gave rise to modern natural conservation efforts.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is an important actor in the American gun debate. While popular explanations for the group’s influence often focus on the NRA’s lobbying and campaign donations, it receives lesser attention for the mass mobilization efforts that make these political endeavours possible. On Target explores why the NRA is so influential and how we can understand the group’s impact on firearms policy in the United States. The book looks at how the NRA both draws upon and shapes historical meta-narratives regarding the role of firearms in America’s national identity and how this is part of a larger effort to expand the community of gun owners. Noah S. Schwartz demonstrates how the NRA portrays a vision of the past through events such as its annual meeting; communications such as American Rifleman magazine and NRA TV; and points of contact including the National Firearms Museum. Based on fieldwork in Indiana and Virginia, including participant observation at NRA events and firearm safety classes, thematic analysis of audio-visual material, and interviews with NRA executives and members, On Target sheds light on the ways in which the NRA tells stories to build and mobilize a politically motivated network of gun owners.
