To understand the ascendancy of gun culture in America, the files of Dingell, D-Mich., a powerful lawmaker who died in 2019, are a good place to start. Secret files show lawmakers' role in fortifying gun lobby:
Rep. John Dingell wrote to a constituent explaining his dual role as a member of Congress and an N.R.A. director.
And he was not alone. Dingell was one of at least nine senators and representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, with the same dual role over the last half-century — lawmaker-directors who helped the NRA accumulate and exercise unrivaled power. The fact that some members of Congress served on the NRA board is not new. But much of what they did for the gun group, and how, was not publicly known.
“These actions by him are often carefully obscured,” Mustin wrote, so they may “not be recognized or understood by the uninitiated observer.” Barr, who has remained on the NRA board since leaving government in 2003, said in an interview that he did not recall the memos he wrote to LaPierre, which were among the congressman’s papers at the University of West Georgia. But during his nearly six years in office while also an NRA director, he said, the group “never approached me to do anything that I didn’t want to do or that I would not have done anyway.
“I deeply regret,” Dingell wrote, “that the conflict between my responsibilities as a Member of Congress and my duties as a board member of the National Rifle Association is irreconcilable.”Dingell was comfortable with firearms at an early age: When not blasting ducks with a shotgun, he was plinking rats with an air gun in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, where he served as a page.
During the 1960s, public outrage over political assassinations and street violence led to calls for stronger laws, culminating in the Gun Control Act, the most significant firearms bill since the 1930s. The law would restrict interstate sales, require serial numbers on firearms and make addiction or mental illness potential disqualifiers for ownership.
The group, he said, must “begin moving toward a legislative program” to codify an individual’s right to bear arms “for sporting and defense purposes.” It was a major departure from the Supreme Court’s sparse record on Second Amendment issues up to that point. The move would neutralize arguments for tighter gun restrictions in Congress and all 50 states, he said.
When the NRA board met in March 1974, Gutermuth reported that “Congressman Dingell and some of our other good friends on The Hill keep telling us that we soon will have another rugged firearms battle on our hands.” Yet he expressed dismay that NRA staff had not come up with a “concrete proposal” to fend it off.In memos to the board, he complained of the NRA’s “leisurely response to the legislative threat” and proposed a new lobbying operation.
“He believed very strongly that he could affect gun control legislation as a senior member of Congress and use the resources of the NRA as leverage,” Sanders said. The NRA also went ahead with Dingell’s plans “to develop a legal climate that would preclude, or at least inhibit, serious consideration of many anti-gun proposals.” A strategy document from April 1983 laid out the long-term goal: “When a gun control case finally reaches the Supreme Court, we want Justices’ secretaries to find an existing background of law review articles and lower court cases espousing individual rights.
Lawmakers joining the board during that time — Ashbrook, Craig and Stevens — were all Republicans. Craig, a conservative gun enthusiast raised in a ranching family, would become “probably the most important” point person for the NRA in Congress after Dingell, said David Keene, a longtime board member and former NRA president.He added, however, that a legislator need not have been a board member to be supportive of the group’s ambitions.The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
“He had to have police protection for several months,” she said in an interview. “We had people scream and yell at us. It was the first time I had seen that real hate.” A staunchly conservative lawyer with a libertarian bent, Barr was among the House Republicans to lead the impeachment of Clinton. He served on the Judiciary Committee, which has major sway over gun legislation, and proved an eager addition to the NRA leadership.
“It is becoming increasingly tougher to make our case that 24 hours is indeed enough time to do the check,” a member of Dingell’s staff wrote to an NRA lobbyist. Nevertheless, Dingell succeeded in amending the bill. Barr had introduced a bill that would protect gun companies from such lawsuits, but lamented that “I have received absolutely zero interest, much less support, from the firearms industry.”Craig took up the issue in the Senate, drafting legislation that mirrored Barr’s House bill. After Barr lost reelection in 2002, a new version of his liability law was sponsored by others, with NRA guidance.
“The rights that are front and center for the NRA, the Second Amendment, are very much under attack and need to be defended,” Barr said. “And I defended them both as a member of Congress in that capacity and in my private capacity as a member of the NRA board.”With each new mass shooting in the 2000s, pressure built on Congress to act, and the politics of gun rights became more polarized.
Notes from a task force meeting in January 2013 show that when it was Dingell’s turn to speak, he joked that he was the “skunk at the picnic” who had set up the NRA’s lobbying operation — the “reason it’s so good.” He went on to underscore the rights of hunters and defend the NRA, saying it was “not the devil.”
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