Since the beginning of 2018, there have been 30 mass shootings in the United States. In 2017, there were 307 mass shootings, according to Gun Violence Archive. To put that number into perspective, there were nearly as many mass shootings in 2017 as there were days.
Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization that tracks incidents of gun violence, defines a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people die (the shooter is not included in that calculation).
The growing epidemic of mass shootings has become a recent catalyst for the debate around gun violence and gun control policy. However, to understand why gun violence occurs, we first have to uncover how guns get into the hands of everyday civilians — and to do that, we have to understand the NRA.
Making Their Mark: The Formation of the NRA and Marksmanship
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871 by Union veterans Colonel William C. Church and General George Wingate. The sole purpose for the formation of the organization was to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis.” To do this, the NRA cites that an important facet of their creation was the development of a practice ground for gun enthusiasts to practice safely.
According to the NRA, “With financial help from New York State, a site on Long Island, the Creed Farm, was purchased for the purpose of building a rifle range. Named Creedmoor, the range opened a year later, and it was there that the first annual matches were held.” Political debate stirred after this purchase, and to quiet those in opposition, the NRA moved to Sea Girt, New Jersey. These matches grew in popularity and to keep up with demand, the NRA began construction on a new facility on the shores of Lake Erie and drew crowds of spectators and rifle enthusiasts from near and far. The NRA used these matches and the growing popularity of marksmanship as a selling point to praise the efforts and sanctity of the Second Amendment.
However, concerns about the safety and lack of transparency from the NRA regarding gun ownership regulations, soon began. In response to these attacks, the NRA formed the Institute for Legislative Action in 1975, with the sole purpose of educating all Americans with data and facts that they hoped would back up their reasoning for encouraging gun ownership. These efforts would eventually become lobbying.
The Gun Lobby and Their Bullet Proof Vest
The gun lobby at its core is comprised of two parties — those in favor of stricter regulations and those in favor of less. If you’re having trouble determining what party the NRA calls home, please reference the paragraph above.
The NRA lobbies for less restrictions and does so with a single-track mind. Their tactics are brazen and bold. At an NRA annual meeting in 2002, executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre said, “We must declare that there are no shades of gray in American freedom. It’s black and white, all or nothing.”
The NRA has since used this message to rally and motivate supporters of the organization, and use the fear of disarmament if necessary.
The most recent estimate from the Pew Research Center states that U.S. civilians own 270 to 310 million firearms, with 35 percent to 42 percent of households in the country having at least one gun.
The NRA rooted themselves on the principle that the Second Amendment should be protected at all costs, and in order to do so, they stand on the platform that gun ownership is the only way to uphold this right.
So what restrictions are currently in place?
To answer that question, you have to go state by state. Generally speaking the restrictions that are put in place by states are less restrictive than federal regulations which include taxing firearms, regulating interstate commerce purchase of guns and mandating the legal age of purchasing a gun at 21 years old. And most importantly and most debated in recent memory: the issue of background checks.
The federal regulations currently in place require a prospective gun owner to complete a Firearms Transaction Record. Once they complete this, the National Crime Information Center, the Interstate Identification Index and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System index are accessed and, in as little as a few minutes, a prospective buyer can purchase a gun.
So who cannot purchase a gun under federal regulations?
- Someone who has been convicted of, or is under indictment for, a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year
- A fugitive from justice
- An unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance
- Someone underage
- Someone who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution
- Someone unlawfully in the United States or has been admitted to the U.S. under a nonimmigrant visa
- Someone who has been dishonorably discharged from the military
- Someone who has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship
- Someone who is subject to a court order restraining him or her from harassing, stalking or threatening an intimate partner, his or her child or a child of a partner, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child
- Someone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor offense of domestic violence
While the federal government is able to regulate gun ownership, the real power lies in the states, and the politicians who represent them. Which would explain why the NRA has donated funds to congressional politicians. $4.23 million since 1998 to be exact.
So, who is donating to the NRA?
In short, gun owners and gun companies that want to keep pro-gun politicians in office are primarily donating. As Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center told Business Insider, “Today’s NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry. While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the ‘freedom’ of individual gun owners, it’s actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory.”
The large donations the NRA is able to hand out to politicians who will support their beliefs and their stance on gun laws comes strictly from American’s who believe in protecting their guns at any cost. The group’s strategy of suggesting politicians who support stricter gun regulations will also take away their guns, has certainly aided in an increase in funds to the organization.
How Politics Got A Hand on the Trigger
The political landscape has long been a cat and a mouse game. One party gains control and spends their entire term trying to repeal whatever the other party put in place before them.
The Republicans have been known as the pro-gun party, while the Democrats are known to side with stricter regulations that inevitably reduce the number of guns. So, how has the NRA and their stance on relaxed gun regulations managed to escape the house majority-Democratic griphold? Money and status.
In short, politicians accept donations from the NRA and in return enforce and support the NRA’s beliefs and stance on relaxed gun regulations. The New York Times reports that senator John McCain of Arizona has accepted $7,740,521 from the NRA since he began his political career. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina has accepted, $6,986,620 and house member French Hill of Arkansas has accepted, $1,089,477 from the NRA to support his campaign efforts. The top 10 senators that received donations from the NRA are Republicans and of the top 100 House members that received donations, 95 are Republicans.
In the 2015-2016 election cycle alone, GOP candidates took $17,385,437 from the NRA. https://t.co/mhyQZ9vtli
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 14, 2018
Organizations are allowed to make donations to political candidates as long as they abide by federal regulations — so the aforementioned donations are all entirely legal. However, Lee Drutman, author of The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics became More Corporate, said “The way you rise up in Republican politics is by supporting gun rights issues, and you do that because there a lot of Republican voters in the coalition who care very deeply about gun rights.”
But, obviously, this conversation isn’t anything new: Politicians have long been debating and legislating over this issue — though there isn’t a whole lot of new data to work with.
In 1996, a provision called the Dickey Amendment was inserted as a rider to the annual spending bill. The provision mandated, “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
The amendment was named after Republican member of the US House of Representatives, Jay Dickey and was introduced after a 1993 study by Arthur Kellermann, who found that guns in the home were associated to a higher risk of homicide in the same household. The NRA lobbied against this study and three years later the Dickey Amendment was enacted that left many researchers afraid to include gun-related issues in their research for fear that they’d lose their federal funding. Although Dickey later said he regretted how the amendment discouraged so much gun research, it’s still in effect today (and has been passed as a rider amendment each year since.)
Looking Down the Barrel & To The Future
In 2017, 555 people died as the result of a mass shooting The NRA and those in support of the NRA have had a very simple response— they are sending their thoughts and prayers (which has become a controversial platitude itself in gun control discourse). Their argument, just like their stance, is simple —restricting guns is restricting Americans from their Second Amendment right, which they’re committed to fighting.
The debate of gun control and how much control should be leveraged is as heated as ever. But it is evident that NRA members and those in favor of less gun control are fighting every single day for their cause, while many of those in favor of stricter regulations are only taking charge when a mass shooting occurs. And while those mass shootings are seemingly occurring at a quicker rate than ever before, if you’re on the side of common sense gun control (which studies show include most Americans), your voice is being dimmed by the consistent work of your opponents.
Igor Volsky, the vice president at the Center for American Progress and the deputy director for the Center for American Progress Action Fund offers simple yet effective advice: “Act. Call your senators and call your congressmen and women and let them know where you stand on this issue.”
The NRA was created to encourage and educate American’s about the sport of marksmanship. It has since gone on to donate millions of dollars to politicians who will support pro-gun policies and the less restrictive laws that accompany those beliefs. This has directly given more American’s access to guns than ever before — which leads us to a complicated, heated debate over gun rights as 2017 holds the record for the deadliest year for mass shootings in modern U.S. history.
If you’d like to get more involved in this issue, you can always call your senators or call your representatives to make sure your voice is heard.