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How NRA’s true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby

By Joel Achenbach, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz,January 12, 2013

(Page 6 of 6)

The NRA waited a week before it responded in depth to the Newtown massacre. LaPierre’s news conference, covered live on cable television, reintroduced America to the core values of the association. After calling for armed guards for every school, and uttering the line, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre predicted that he’d be beaten up in the news media: “I can imagine the headlines, the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow. ‘More guns,’ you’ll claim, ‘are the NRA’s answer to everything.’ Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools.”

“CRAZIEST MAN ON EARTH” blared the front-page headline of the next morning’s New York Daily News.

“GUN NUT!” proclaimed the New York Post.

Among the most sensitive issues for the NRA is the idea of a national database of gun registration. It is orthodoxy among gun rights advocates that registration is a prelude to confiscation. The diehards invoke Hitler and other dictators who confiscated guns prior to slaughtering innocents. The NRA also argues that such registration is unconstitutional.

Two years ago, as part of The Post’s investigative series “The Hidden Life of Guns,” NRA lobbyist Chris Cox explained the organization’s position:

“The federal government has no business maintaining a database or a registration of Americans who are exercising a constitutional right. Just like they have no right and no authority to maintain a database of all Methodists, all Baptists, all people of different religious or ethnic backgrounds.”

Last week, Vice President Biden said the administration might use “executive orders” to curtail gun violence, a remark that incited the Drudge Report to run a screaming headline with photographs of Hitler and Stalin splashed on the page.

Biden met with NRA representatives Thursday at the White House. The NRA listened to the administration’s ideas and then provided an immediate response.

“We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment,” the NRA said afterward in a statement e-mailed to its members. “We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen.”

In short: No.

Alice Crites, Julie Tate, Magda Jean-Louis and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.