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The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871, to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis," according to its website. Affiliated organizations include the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm, and the NRA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, which provides "a means to raise millions of dollars to fund gun safety and educational projects of benefit to the general public." [1]

Contents 1 NRA News 2 PR Strategy: Starting Fires 3 NRA and tobacco 4 Contact information 5 Related SourceWatch articles 6 External links

NRA News

In December 2003, Associated Press reported that the NRA was investigating buying a radio or television channel to allow it to bypass electioneering restrictions on advocacy groups. "We're looking at bringing a court case that we're as legitimate a media outlet as Disney or Viacom or Time-Warner," the NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, told AP. "Why should they have an exclusive right to relay information to the public, and why should not NRA be considered as legitimate a news source as they are? That's never been explored legally," he said.

Under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, advocacy groups with corporate or union funding can't run television or radio ads identifying candidates in the month before a primary or two months before a general election. However, news organizations are exempt from these restrictions. The NRA is already a major publisher, producing seven monthly publications for subscribers and newsstand sales. [2]

In June 2004, the NRA revealed that it would commence broadcasting NRANews, a three hour daily program. It has foreshadowed that it intends to continue broadcasting right through to the 2004 election date. The moves will test the interpretation of the 2002 campaign finance law. [3]

PR Strategy: Starting Fires

"The NRA approached PR, particularly media relations, from a substantially different perspective than most organizations, explains Bill Powers, EVP of The Mercury Group and former public affairs director for the NRA," reported PR Week in a September 2005 profile of the organization. Powers told PR Week, "They've become so successful at managing controversy to the benefit of the organization. ... When I worked there, I used to say my job isn't to put out fires; it's to help start them."

One example of the NRA's courting controversy is their launching a national boycott against ConocoPhillips in July 2005, because the oil company is "trying to overturn an Oklahoma law that allows employees to keep guns in their cars when parked in company-owned lots." Another is their moving the location of their 2007 national conference from Columbus, Ohio to St. Louis, Missouri, after Columbus passed an assault weapons ban.

NRA public affairs director Andrew Arulanandam told PR Week that his group "was tasked with monitoring media outlets that were spreading 'misinformation'" about a bill before the U.S. Senate in the summer of 2005, that would "grant some immunity to gun makers and sellers" from lawsuits. "Basically, everyone was stating that this is a de facto blanket immunity bill," said Arulanandam. "We had to be aggressive, and if any reporters said that, we would call the reporters and give them the facts, and e-mail them the pertinent section in the legislation that basically refutes that."

NRA and tobacco

The NRA was admired by Philip Morris management and cited as a template for carrying out effective pro-industry activities in which a corporation itself could not legitimately engage. The NRA is mentioned numerous times in the tobacco industry's documents as a successful lobbying group worthy of emulation. Operation Downunder Conference Notes (Philip Morris 1987) mention the NRA's "Make it Hurt" strategy (creating political risk for legislators where none otherwise exists). In a 1985 speech, Bill Murray of Philip Morris admires how the NRA has been able to motivate its members to action, something the tobacco industry had been unable to do. The NRA served as a template for the National Smokers Association (an early Philip Morris's smokers' rights group which preceded the National Smokers Alliance). A January 1988 PM Five Year Plan states,

In 1988, we intend to create local smokers' rights associations throughout the U.S. The basis for these associations will be a network of 50,000 "block captains" who will monitor local smoking issues, write or visit political decision-makers, write letters to local newspapers and generally serve as a grass roots voice for smokers' rights. We intend to link these "captains" to local, state and ultimately a national rights organization. Once the national organization is established and funded, we will spin the Smokers Newsletters into it and create a self-sustaining membership organization similar to the National Rifle Association.at Page 123

The tobacco industry also found common ground with the NRA as an organization that supported a controversial, yet legal product. A Tobacco Institute strategy document states industry strategy to

Identify large, influential groups concerned with freedom of expression and other Constitutional "rights" (e. g. the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, groups opposed to polygraph tests and the Fifth Amendment,minority groups and the 14th Amendment, etc.) and encourage their support for consistent and fair application of Constitutional protection for legal products and practices.[4]

Contact information

National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030

• Main website
• NRA Institute for Legislative Action
• NRA State Associations

Related SourceWatch articles

• civil liberties
• gun control
• lobbying

External links

• Sharon Theimer, "Gun Lobby Looking to Buy Media Outlet", Associated Press, December 7, 2003.
• Eric Mink, Target audience, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 10, 2003.
• Douglas Quenqua, "NRA vows to reveal Dems posing as gun supporters," PR Week, March 1, 2004.
• Mark Hand, "NRA courts controversy in push to amplify message," PR Week, September 19, 2005, p. 12 (not available online).
• Thalif Deen, "U.S. Gun Lobby Blasts U.N. Arms Meet", InterPress Service, June 21, 2006.

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.