The decline and fall of the NRA

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The NRA was extraordinarily successful as an advocacy organization in part because it was singularly focused and, as a consequence, genuinely bipartisan. Harry Reid, who got more left-wing by the minute as the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, was solid on the Second Amendment, and the NRA treated him as a valued ally. But as American politics grew more tribal after the turn of the century and new forms of communication arose, politics became less a matter of choosing from a basket of policies and more a matter of community and identity. It is very difficult to imagine a contemporary Democrat rising to a senior leadership position while remaining a nonconformist on the Second Amendment or abortion. Over time, the Second Amendment was transformed from a largely but not exclusively Republican issue into a line in the sand.

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The NRA responded to that emerging reality by doing its damnedest to make things worse. It embraced its role as Republican kingmaker and was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s despite the newly minted Republican’s long history of endorsing firearms regulations the NRA opposes. At the same time, it attempted to transform itself into a right-wing media company. The aforementioned Ackerman McQueen was instrumental in creating the now-defunct NRATV, and the NRA later filed a fraud complaint against the agency as part of an ongoing lawsuit. Some NRA members and many leaders were embarrassed by NRATV’s “dystopian” programming, which they found both “distasteful and racist” according to the complaint. Though “racist” may be a step too far, it certainly was at its worst a shameful clown show of unintentional self-parody.

But mendacity, stupidity, and bad taste are not illegal.

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