Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [91]
Nonetheless, by 1978 the NRA claimed 1.2 million members. By 1983, its membership had increased to more than 2.6 million and was growing at three thousand a week.
But the NRA had moved so far to the right, had become so ardent in its opposition to any and all firearms regulation, that it soon began to lose some of its closest friends outside the organization. Most important, it alienated the law-enforcement community. In the late 1980s it opposed legislation aimed at outlawing armor-piercing ammunition and at banning such assault weapons as the MAC-10 and the Cobray. When police agencies dared criticize the NRA, their officials came under withering return fire. One of those attacked was Joseph McNamara, the widely respected chief of police in San Jose, California. (As of 1993 he was a fellow at the Hoover Institution studying ways to halt illegal drug distribution and was working on his next police novel.) In a 1987 advertisement for Handgun Control Inc., McNamara charged that the NRA leadership “has repeatedly ignored the objections of professional law enforcement,” thus making police work “more difficult—and more dangerous.” The NRA, in its own advertisements, accused McNamara of favoring legalization of drugs, a course he had never endorsed. At one point, someone sent him a bull’s-eye target bearing his image. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “That target was shot full of holes.”
Until the NRA began its attacks, most law-enforcement agencies considered the NRA their ally, McNamara said. Their allegiance, he said, reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the NRA’s attitudes and mission. “The NRA had gotten by for a lot of years on an image that wasn’t really accurate, that they were supportive of law enforcement.” The attacks on police chiefs, he said, “educated law enforcement as to their true colors.”
Then the unthinkable occurred: the NRA began losing membership. From 1989 to 1991, its membership shrank from almost 3 million to about 2.5 million. Newspapers across the country began running stories that the NRA had lost its punch. The embattled association launched a campaign to restore the popular conception of its influence, drawing on frontier imagery to help. The annual meeting that was to mark its comeback was deliberately staged in San Antonio, home of The Alamo. The historic site, according to Osha Davidson, author of Under Fire, “was the touchstone of all those American values the gun group liked to claim as its own: an uncompromising attitude, unabashed love for this country, and a readiness to fight her enemies—no matter what the odds.”
The NRA stepped up spending to bolster its influence, calling itself “The New NRA.” Its political action committee—the NRA Political Victory Fund—spent $1.7 million on the presidential and congressional campaigns of 1992, more than twice as much as the $772,756 it spent in 1988. Between the 1990 and 1992 election cycles, the Victory Fund increased its spending more than any other registered PAC. The NRA also stepped up its lobbying expenditures. In 1992 it spent $28.9 million, 43 percent more than in 1988.
The centerpiece of its image-burnishing campaign, however, was a membership drive of unprecedented expense. The best way to refute reports of the NRA’s demise was to boost membership to record levels. The NRA set out to do so, and to spare no expense. In 1992 alone, PM Consulting, the direct-mail company chosen to manage the drive, spent $25 million—$10 million more than budgeted. The NRA lured members with all manner of appeals and devices, including no-fee credit cards, gun-safety videos for kids, even a “Sportsman’s Dream Gun Sweepstakes,” in which the grand-prize winner stood to receive ten different hunting rifles and ten all-expenses-paid hunting trips. For the first time, the NRA enlisted the help of