National Rifle Association

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• SOURCE: The Trace
  8/5/2022
  

  The NRA's Amicus Brief Machine

  Lax disclosure rules about who funds the groups filing amicus briefs means that the NRA has been able to use its wealth to flood the courts with briefs that exaggerate the strength of its radical pro-gun positions, says historian Patrick J. Charles. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  12/17/2021
  

  America as a Tactical Gun Culture

  by Chad Kautzer

  "Vigilantism is fueled by an individualist notion of sovereignty more dangerous than any military-grade weaponry. It rejects the freedom of others as equal to one’s own and views any attempt to support such equality as tyranny."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/16/2021
  

  How Much is the NRA to Blame for the Gun Culture?

  Two new books help to shed light on how the NRA, partisan politicians, and the gun industry "took a political base of hunters and nurtured a new, expanded audience of gun guys," and how they made Americans live in their world. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/9/2021
  

  Secret NRA Tapes in Wake of Columbine Show Decision to Attack Critics for "Politicizing" Mass Shootings

  The NRA faced a crossroads after the Columbine shootings in 1999. They chose a scorched-earth posture that has guided their response to every mass shooting incident since, documented in recordings of high-level strategy meetings.

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• SOURCE: CNN
  8/28/2021
  

  How Racism Permeates the Politics of Guns

  Historians Carol Anderson and Yohuru Williams are featured in a new documentary examining the ways that American gun rights discourse has been filtered through racism. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  5/7/2021
  

  How the Modern NRA Was Born at the Border

  by Sierra Pettengill and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  Sierra Pettengill's new short documentary "The Rifleman" connects racist violence at the US-Mexico border and the politics of influential NRA leader Harlon Carter, who for decades concealed the fact that he was convicted at age 17 of murder for shooting a Mexican youth in Laredo. She discusses that story with historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

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• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  3/23/2021
  

  Letters From an American: March 23, 2021

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Beginning in the 1970s, the National Rifle Assocaition evolved into a political lobbying organization increasingly enmeshed with the conservative movement. Two recent mass shootings are a tribute to the organization's success. Congratulations. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/11/2021
  

  The Gun-Rights Movement Fed America’s Insurrectionist Fever Dreams

  by Firmin DeBrabander

  "The gun-rights movement cleared the path for insurrection. It blew a hole in the rule of law—and Donald Trump’s would-be soldiers clamored through it. And then scaled the walls of Congress." 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/3/2020
  

  In Act of Heresy, N.R.A.’s Former No. 2 Calls for Gun Control

  “The N.R.A. fueled a toxic debate,” Mr. Powell writes, “by appealing to the paranoia and darkest side of our members, in a way that has torn at the very fabric of America.”

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/9/19
  

  The Black Gun Owner Next Door

  by Tiya Miles

  I’m an African-American historian and, on most issues, decidedly liberal. Could I rethink my anti-gun stance?