National Rifle Association Research Articles

Reimagining Rights & Responsibilities in the United States: Gun Rights and Public Safety

In March 2018, hundreds of thousands of young people walked out of school and marched on their local statehouses and on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to advocate for stricter controls on gun sales and ownership. The March for Our Lives was initially organized by students at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a school shooting had killed 17 students. Collectively, the marches were the largest-ever protest against gun violence, and one of the largest protests of any kind in American history. The growing consensus over the need for some “common-sense” gun laws to regulate the sale and ownership of firearms stands in sharp contrast to the incendiary rhetoric of the National Rifle Association, which has sounded the alarm in recent years that Democrats are coming to “take away” guns or institute a national registry of firearm ownership. Indeed, the reasonableness on both sides of the debate implies that there is a middle-ground that can be achieved to limit gun violence in the United States, while still allowing for responsible ownership of firearms for hunting, sport shooting, and personal protection.

Editorial Comment: Shooting

Editorial CommentShooting E.J. Westlake I decided I wanted to be part of the editorial team of Theatre Journal after the 2016 election. I felt a sense of urgency as I continued to read reports of “alternative facts,” and I was alarmed at a deepening climate crisis along with a crumbling infrastructure that led to the poisoning of the city of Flint. The Pulse Nightclub shooting had happened that year, followed by the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017. Stoneman Douglas High School followed just as I began thinking about my first special issue. That year, I heard Meredith Conti’s paper at ATHE on the young student activists who survived the Stoneman Douglas shooting. That essay, partly reproduced in the “Post-fact Performance” special issue, described the conspiracy theory suggesting that the victims are “crisis actors.” These theories suggest that none of these devastating events are real, but that they are staged for the purpose of controlling public opinion about a range of issues, including guns. The reasoning goes that the government (or rather, a shadow government) stages these to make people believe there is a problem with gun violence as a pretext for disarming the populace. I began to think about gun culture in the United States, particularly as we have the distinction of having a gun for every human being. And although the United States is not the only country where mass shootings occur, the rate here far exceeds that of any other nation. There is a reason gun ownership is so staggeringly high in the country. One is an active and powerful gun lobby. Indeed, the National Rifle Association continually reacts to mass shootings in schools with a call for armed guards in schools or handgun training for teachers. The NRA’s influence in US politics means that legislators are hard-pressed to pass any meaningful gun reform. And while the NRA quickly defended the “law-abiding citizens” of the Waco and Ruby Ridge raids against “jack-booted government thugs,” historian Carol Anderson notes that it was conspicuously silent about the murders of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Anderson’s book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, builds upon the work of Carl T. Bogus’s 1998 article in the UC Davis Law Review, tracing US gun culture and the enshrinement of the Second Amendment to slavery. Anderson cites archival research that suggests that although only half of US households owned guns during colonial times, the number rises to over 80 percent among plantation owners. Fearful that Northern states would undermine the planters’ mechanism to put down slave rebellions, Southern representatives pressured James Madison to include language in the Bill of Rights that guaranteed state control over armed militias. Additionally, states passed laws ensuring that Black people, free or slave, would never own guns themselves. Said Anderson in an NPR interview: “One of the things that I argue throughout this book is that it is just being Black that is the threat. And so when you mix that being Black as the threat with bearing arms, it’s an exponential fear.” Indeed, the US has a gun problem—but, more significantly, it has a white supremacy problem. The essays in this special issue all address shooting within a wide range of contexts, from Elise Morrison’s examination of virtual shooting to a study of the weapons training of San Diego police in Patrick Anderson’s essay. Examinations of white supremacy [End Page xi] underlie each. We begin with La Donna Forsgren’s “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: ‘Suicide,’ Black Gun Ownership, and Restoring Black Masculinity on Black Arts Movement Stages.” Forsgren discusses several plays written as part of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, with special attention to plays written by women: Sonia Sanchez, Lola E. Jones, and Carol Freeman. Beginning with an analysis of Amiri Baraka’s one-act Arm Yourself, Or Harm Yourself (1967), she notes that “many Black activists—including members of the Black Panther Party—encouraged Black male gun ownership as an essential step toward reclaiming their ‘lost’ manhood or kingdom. Baraka’s formulations tap into Black Panther Party imagery and rhetorical strategies, conceptualizing...

These honored dead: sacrifice narratives in the NRA’s American Rifleman Magazine

This paper presents a case study of how a fringe idea moves into the cultural mainstream. In its cultural and political project to defend the Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association (NRA) embraced New War culture, a counter-cultural response to the trauma of the war in Vietnam, which extended warrior honor to armed men defending their families from an increasingly hostile world and a suspect government that might try to disarm them. Using textual analysis of the American Rifleman, we explore how the NRA co-opted narratives of soldiers' sacrifice for the nation to promote a New War cultural message. We find that magazine contributors retooled the traditional narrative to feature non-military protagonists, to differentiate the nation from the government, and to spotlight freedom as a sacrificial cause. With their strong civil religious overtones, the NRA's sacrifice narratives served as value-laden signposts that elevated the Second Amendment to a sacred God-given freedom, extended the consecration from sacrifice to encompass their mainstream audience of gun owners, and identified political and cultural enemies. These classic American narratives of soldiers’ sacrifice for the nation were thus co-opted to deliver a simultaneously patriotic and anti-government counter-cultural message that would resonate with mainstream American culture.

NY AG Seeking Dissolution of NRA, Removal of and Restitution From Directors

The attorney general of New York, on August 6, filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York, seeking removal of certain executives of the National Rifle Association and restitution by them, as well as dissolution of the NRA (People of the State of New York v. National Rifle Association et al.).

Wilderness, Freedom, Firearms: Sacred Rhetoric at the 53rd Parallel

This article analyzes National Rifle Association past–president Charlton Heston’s 2000 speech to the British Columbia Wildlife Federation. Narrating a shared mythology, Heston mapped a bridge between the two groups by dovetailing three ideas: wilderness, freedom, and firearms – each of which ostensibly transcends national borders. By exploring how Heston engaged a foreign audience dedicated to wildlife conservation, the paper examines the capacity of sacred rhetoric to generate shared ideological ground and thereby both expand, and demarcate, a community’s contours.

Guns and human suffering: A pastoral theological perspective

This article considers the immensity of human suffering caused by gun violence. In an attempt to understand why the United States has not been able to enact reasonable gun control measures, I explore the origins and influence of gun culture and its shaping by the National Rifle Association (NRA). This situation is discussed from theological perspectives and concepts of idolatry, redemptive violence, the spiraling effects of violence as sin, and the nonviolence of Jesus. Finally, I consider pastoral responses in caring for individuals, the faith tradition, the congregation, and the larger sociocultural context.

Addressing Mass Shootings in a New Light.

Locations change, casualties change, but the choice of weapon remains the same: firearms. With mass shootings gaining continuous limelight, we aim through this article to provide the readers an overview of the perpetrator's profile, along with various opinions proposed by the media, government, National Rifle Association (NRA), and health professionals. With mental health linked as a common factor for such incidents, we need to explore the different stances to eliminate such events. This article also provides a collaborative approach to alter the narrative and view it in a new light.

Suing The NRA for Damages

A solution is needed for the gun violence epidemic, where approximately 15,000 innocent persons are shot to death each year. Close analysis reveals that meaningful legislative solutions have failed to move forward. The reason for this failure is the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) stranglehold on federal and state legislators. This Article explores a nonlegislative solution—a tort suit aimed at obtaining compensation for the shooting victims and returning the NRA to its original purpose. It will examine conduct actions by the NRA and consider the NRA’s foundational defenses: failure to engage in any “imminent lawless action,” the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and proximate cause. It will also consider the five tort causes of action: (1) aiding and abetting, (2) civil conspiracy, (3) strict liability, (4) the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and (5) negligence.

From Garden State to Gun Control State: New Jersey’s 1966 Firearms Law and the NRA’s Rise as a Political Lobby

In 1966, the New Jersey legislature passed An Act Concerning Firearms and Other Dangerous Weapons, which imposed significant regulations on gun buyers and dealers. Two years later, members of Congress frequently cited the Garden State’s tough gun control law as a model for the Gun Control Act of 1968. Although New Jersey’s 1966 firearms law has received little attention from scholars, the battle over gun control in New Jersey marked a significant turning point in the nationwide debate between supporters and opponents of gun control and exposed political fissures that endure today. The National Rifle Association (NRA) mobilized its membership to pressure New Jersey legislators to reject gun control. In its effort to oppose gun control in New Jersey, the NRA honed its arguments that gun control infringed upon citizens’ Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms,” contended that gun laws would not reduce crime, and charged that keeping records of gun sales would ultimately lead to confiscation of firearms. The NRA’s fight against gun control in Trenton revealed the organization’s enormous influence and signaled its emergence as one of the most effective political interest groups in the United States.

Toward a Deeper Understanding of Gun Violence.

Since the National Rifle Association’s statement that physicians should “stay in [our] lane” and avoid talking about gun violence, many doctors have been stirred to speak up. Using the hashtag “#thisisourlane,” doctors have publicly shared photographs of blood-stained scrubs and shoes, documenting our first-hand encounters with the tragedy of gun violence. We both spend part of our professional lives teaching other physicians and public health professionals about gun violence. One of our goals is to help doctors move beyond statistics and individual stories and toward a deeper understanding of the issues. Given that gun violence is the second leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the United States, accounting for 15% of all child deaths nationwide,1 pediatricians must join the public debate. Here, we discuss 3 concepts that help explain why we have the highest levels of gun violence among high-income countries2 and how we might begin fixing the problem. These 3 concepts can make pediatricians wanting to reduce gun violence more informed, effective advocates. When people are exposed to a gun, or even the image of a gun, some appear to act more aggressively, which is a phenomenon known as “the weapons effect.” An early demonstration of this, in 1967, placed research subjects around 2 different tables: on one table was badminton equipment, and on the other table were guns. The subjects were told that the objects had been left over from another experiment and that they should be ignored. Then the … Address correspondence to Nancy A. Dodson, MD, MPH, Division of Adolescent Medicine, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 3415 Bainbridge Ave, Bronx, NY 10467. E-mail: ndodson{at}montefiore.org

Sport and Social Relationships in the Falkland Islands up to 1982

ABSTRACT This article uses sport as a means of examining aspects of social relationships amongst Falkland Islanders up to the 1982 Falklands War. This examination – researched primarily via archival, newspaper, and interview evidence – is accomplished via four routes. Firstly, rifle shooting, including the territorial Falkland Islands Defence Force (FIDF)’s annual participation in the National Rifle Association (NRA)’s imperial tournaments, is used examine the application of popular imperialism and gubernatorial power within Falklands society. Horse racing and other agricultural-based sports are used to display how sport was used a means of displaying occupation prowess, in the context of a paternalistic farming (mono)culture created and managed by the absentee landlords of the Falkland Islands Company (FIC). Third: badminton’s popularity, primarily in the capital, Stanley, is applied towards examining the social lives of women, including amongst its British-born community. Finally, football – whose English clubs were well-followed bye Falklands men over the BBC Empire/World Service – is used to elucidate aspects of Islanders’ relationships with their South American neighbours, including Argentina, which continually claimed sovereignty over the Falklands. This article makes the case that sports culture in the Falklands was both reflective of greater trends in British imperial culture, whilst also containing peculiarities relating to its location, demographics, and unusual political status.

I choose you! Interest group endorsements in the 2018 US House midterm elections

In 2018, the interest group EMILY’s List endorsed over fifty women running for the US Congress, a list that is far from inclusive of the almost three-hundred women running in the November mid-term election. Extant work leads us to believe that incumbency status is the primary motivation behind whether an interest group will endorse a candidate for public office. However, scholarship has yet to systematically consider why interest groups endorse non-incumbent candidates and how these groups come to choose one incumbent over another. By studying the symbolic and substantive endorsements of two interest groups—EMILY’s List and the National Rifle Association—we show that interest groups place varying value on incumbent legislators and also take other factors (like district partisanship and seat competitiveness) into account when endorsing candidates. Further, we find that district-level characteristics, not candidate characteristics, are most important for interest groups in their endorsement decisions of candidates in open-seat races. Our findings have important implications for understanding how interest groups come to select candidates to endorse and also call into question the power of incumbency in these decisions.

Polarizing Organizations and Image Repair: The Effects of Extreme Disposition and Ego-Involvement on ELM Processing Routes for Organizational Responses

ABSTRACTThis study examined elaboration likelihood model (ELM) processing routes used by audiences to evaluate image repair messages for two organizations that often provoke polarizing dispositions in audiences: the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the New England Patriots football team. Involvement is a key concept in the ELM paradigm, yet studies have overlooked issues on the extreme ends of the dispositional spectrum, especially where ego-involvement motivates individuals. In order to test this largely unexplored idea, participants in the study were presented with post-incident message responses for the Columbine and Sandy Hook school shootings and the Spygate and Deflategate cheating scandals. Results indicated that the relationship between disposition and peripheral processing was curvilinear, with an increased use of peripheral processing at dispositional extremes. Ego-involvement fully mediated this relationship for most messages. Study items measuring reaction to the message source also showed statistical similarities to central processing variables. Although message source is often treated as a peripheral cue in ELM studies, the results of this analysis suggested that the message source was not used as a peripheral cue here. These findings are consistent with several other past studies on dual process models that align message source more closely with a likelihood to elaborate.

ПОЛІТИКА США ЩОДО ВОГНЕПАЛЬНОЇ ЗБРОЇ: ВНУТРІШНЬОДЕРЖАВНИЙ ТА ЗОВНІШНЬОПОЛІТИЧНИЙ ВИМІРИ

The purpose of the article is to explore proliferation of firearms in the United States due to social problems (mass shootings) and public demand for increasing gun control. Primary challenges cover exploring the U.S. firearms history, which provides a key to understanding the causes of the current situation in this area; reviewing of Americans’ attitudes toward gun ownership; studying the U.S. foreign policy in the context of arms exports from Ukraine to the United States. Moreover, attention is paid to exploring the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Donald Trump’s decision on arms control and a comparative analysis of his gun policy with the policy of his predecessors. The methodological basis of the study includes a set of general and special research methods. Systematic approach is used to consider the U.S. gun policy as a complex system with the determinism of domestic and foreign policy levels. A significant role is played by descriptive-historical and chronological methods that allow to examine the evolution of the U.S. legal framework for firearms and small-arms control. The comparative method makes it possible to compare the approaches of George W. Bush’s, Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s administrations to the gun policy. The statistical method allows to consider the peculiarities of the U.S. exports of small arms and Ukraine’s exports of such type of weapons to the USA. The scientific novelty lies in one of the first attempts among Ukrainian authors to make a comprehensive analysis of the interdependence of internal and external aspects of firearms trafficking among the U.S. civilians. In this context, the paper examines the U.S.–Ukrainian relations. The study concludes that the U.S. gun traditions are the main stumbling block for tightening firearms legislation. On the gun issue, the U.S. domestic policy, which is heavily influenced by the NRA, determines the state’s foreign policy. At the same time, society is demanding reforms aimed at restricting the possession of firearms by the civilian population, which may increase the level of domestic security.

Whose Right Is It?: The Second Amendment and the Fight Over Guns by Hana Bajramovic

Reviewed by: Whose Right Is It?: The Second Amendment and the Fight Over Guns by Hana Bajramovic Elizabeth Bush Bajramovic, Hana Whose Right Is It?: The Second Amendment and the Fight Over Guns. Holt, 2020 [256p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 9781250224255 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250224279 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12 Teens who fear or face gun violence in schools—and that is, arguably, most teens—may be pondering how it all came to this. Bajramovic takes a deep dive into the history of the contentious Second Amendment, whose ambiguous phrasing was long interpreted as focusing on the need for militia, or similarly sanctioned military, for public defense but more recently was interpreted as conferring the right to gun ownership on individuals. Painstakingly connecting the dots from the Founders to the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision, the author observes how, over time, various citizen groups used the amendment to wield or claim power, often driven by a racial agenda, such as white supremacists disarming Blacks in the name of security, or Black Panthers claiming the right of individual gun ownership in the cause of self-defense. The history of the National Rifle Association is also examined at some length, from its genesis as an organization promoting a citizenry better prepared for military service, to the hard-line defender of individual ownership rights it became in the later twentieth century. Although Bajramovic makes a beeline for her gun control conclusion, her argument is thoroughly supported with copious source citations, and even readers personally invested the gun rights position [End Page 7] will find the historical context eye-opening. A discussion guide, bibliography, and index are also included. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Editor's Column: “the beacon thing”: Musings on John Steinbeck, America, and Light

Editor's Column: “the beacon thing”: Musings on John Steinbeck, America, and Light

Called to arms: the NRA, the gun culture & women

ABSTRACT The National Rifle Association (NRA) faces a challenge in its battle to expand the gun culture: incorporating women. While NRA content aimed at women once focused on self-defense, recent communications materials have shifted toward recreational shooting and hunting. How can we understand this shift? How does the NRA use narrative to challenge gender ideologies that discourage women’s participation in the gun culture? Drawing on the Narrative Policy Framework, this paper presents a thematic analysis of three NRATV programs. It argues that the gun culture is a source of support that the NRA draws upon to achieve its primary policy goal of expanding access to firearms. The organization mobilizes narratives that frame participation in the gun culture as both enjoyable and empowering for women in order to overcome barriers posed by masculinist norms. This case study has theoretical implications for our understanding of the connection between collective actors, cultures, and policy.

Second Amendment and the Gun-Control Controversies: A Flaw in Constitutional Framing and an Antinomy of American Conservatism

Second Amendment and the Gun-Control Controversies: A Flaw in Constitutional Framing and an Antinomy of American Conservatism

The Political Weaponization of Gun Owners: The National Rifle Association’s Cultivation, Dissemination, and Use of a Group Social Identity

There is substantial evidence indicating that the NRA’s (National Rifle Association) political influence is closely tied to the deep political engagement of the minority of Americans who oppose str...

President Trump “Unsigns” Arms Trade Treaty After Requesting Its Return from the Senate

In a speech before the National Rifle Association (NRA) on April 26, 2019, President Trump announced that he was requesting the return of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) from the Senate and that the United States would unsign this treaty. Shortly thereafter, Trump issued a formal letter to the Senate requesting the ATT's return. As of late September, the Senate had not formally approved Trump's request. Nonetheless, on July 18, 2019, the Trump administration communicated to the secretary-general of the United Nations that the United States does not intend to become a party to the ATT and thus has no future legal obligations stemming from signature.