The NRA Wasn’t Always A Front For Gun Makers

On Thursday, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association and unofficial leader of America’s largest cult, took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Washington, D.C. 

In another universe – or maybe even just in another nation – one might imagine that the leader of the country’s largest gun organization giving an address less than one week after yet another school shooting had left 17 people dead would appear circumspect, contrite, even ashamed. 

Instead, LaPierre was defiant. 

Railing against the media and the “growing socialist state,” LaPierre vowed that the NRA would not retreat from its defense of gun rights. And as a student-led movement for gun control continued to build in Florida and across the nation, LaPierre depicted the NRA as the best protector of vulnerable children. “Evil walks among us,” LaPierre said, “and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.”

This is the fantasy that the NRA has peddled for decades and that has created our current nightmare. But the NRA’s delusion exposes not only its moral rot, but also its continual turn from its own history. Begun as an organization devoted to education and safety, it’s only in the last 50 years that the NRA has instead dedicated itself to preserving the very circumstances that most endanger Americans’ lives today, especially the nation’s schoolchildren. 

In 1871, the NRA was founded by William Church, a lawyer, and George Wingate, a former newspaper reporter. Wingate explained his new organization’s purpose as working to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis.” ...