GUNS FEBRUARY 5, 2013
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
The National Rifle Association, though founded as a club for ex-military marksmen, now makes quite clear that it represents another true-blue American constituency: hunters. It's got a whole magazine for hunting, features hunting prominently on its website, and argues that stricter gun laws would simply kibosh a father's ability to take little Jimmy out shooting quail. It's good cover: Politicians, too, tend to talk about not wanting to inhibit an activity so essential to the nation's founding mythology.
Don’t be fooled. The NRA has never cared much about the things that truly matter to hunters.
Take environmental conservation, for example. The biggest factors cited for the long decline in hunting licenses—which, along with a tax on the sale of firearms, provide a dedicated funding stream for conservation efforts—are urbanization and the loss of wildlife habitat. The NRA, however, has been largely absent in the big fights to preserve dwindling wilderness, saying simply that more guns equal more conservation funding.
Here's what the NRA does fight for: The freedom to buy assault weapons—which the group instead refers to as "modern sporting rifles," and are sometimes referred to as "black guns"—and high-capacity magazines, neither of which are commonly used in hunting, but which comprise the lion's share of revenue for gun manufacturers. It even opposes universal background checks, which a large majority of Americans support (and the NRA itself did in 1999).
Some hunters fear the NRA’s hard-line stance is starting to give their sport a bad name.1 "We have to deal with this black cloud, because people who don't like these black rifles are starting to equate, 'those are all hunters, people who are banging around with 30-round magazines,'" says John Cooper, a former secretary of the South Dakota Department of Fish, Game, and Parks. "And that couldn't be further from the truth."
Over the past year, rumblings of discontent with the NRA have surfaced. Hunters have published op-eds in papers big and small calling for a more moderate alternative—some group that could advocate for responsible gun owners, while working towards practical solutions for preventing horrific violence like the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Last week, hunting buddies Rep. John Dingell and former Secretary of State James Baker appealed for a middle way.
Moderate hunting groups do exist, of course. Thus far, however, they've largely stayed out of the Second Amendment debate, fearing retribution from a lobby that—while less powerful than it's been made out to be—still brooks little dissent. Few of these organizations were willing to even talk about gun control on the record.
"Our community has never felt comfortable wading in there," says an executive with a conservation-oriented hunting group who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly about the NRA. "They are so ruthless, and carry such a big hammer, that very few in our community are willing to get in there and risk their wrath."
With the NRA seeming more extreme every week, the question becomes: At what point does standing with the NRA become riskier than speaking out against it?
To understand why it's been so difficult to develop an alternative voice for gun rights, consider that the universe of organizations that advocate for hunters exists on a spectrum. On one end, you've got conservation groups like the venerable Izaak Walton League, which was founded by anglers and retains hunting as part of its DNA, but never talks about guns. On the other, there are groups like the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance and the Safari Club, which advocate for the right to hunt on all public lands using potentially harmful types of ammunition. They'll happily close ranks with the NRA whenever Washington starts making noises about gun control.
"Our main focus isn't modern-style firearms, but obviously we support the ability of people to own firearms, and that won't change," says the Sportsmen's Alliance's vice president of marketing, Doug Jeanneret. "No one should be commenting other than we are pro-gun and we don't want our rights to be infringed upon."
In the vast middle, there are what are known as "critter groups," which represent game animals like pheasants, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, turkeys, ducks, and ruffed grouse. They're serious about conservation, but tend to advocate for whatever habitat matters most for their target of choice—which hasn't done much for hunter solidarity.
"Part of the NRA's success is that any attack on any gun law anywhere is an attack on everybody," says Whit Fosburgh, director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. "I wish we had that fealty. If there's a mule deer problem, it's not a trout problem. Oil and gas development in the west is bad for sage grouse, but it's not a duck problem. So the conservation community dies a death by a thousand cuts."
For any individual critter group, there's little upside to staking out a position on gun rights. They're typically responsible to their members, many of whom are also members of the NRA. Some hunters do use AR-type weapons, for target practice if not shooting animals, and might get miffed if an organization's president refused to defend those guns. Even those who are uncomfortable with some of the NRA's more extreme stances—like, for example, defending “cop-killer” bullets—figure that staking out extreme positions is an important negotiation tactic, ensuring that changes to gun laws end up protecting hunters’ interests.
"I consider the NRA to be a civil rights organization," said another conservation group staffer who asked not to be named. "Their job is to get over to that far edge and stay there. Their job is not to be middle of the road."Lots of hunters, the staffer said, just don't have an alternative. "They'd be happy if the NRA just went away, but there's not really anybody to replace them." 2
Some critter groups are also driven by the same force as the NRA: funding from the firearms industry. A couple weeks ago, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation joined the NRA and the nation's biggest gun sellers in boycotting the annual Eastern Sports and Outdoors Show after its British owner decided not to include AR-type weapons, out of respect for the victims of the Newtown shootings. I asked RMEF’s public relations director, Mark Holyoak, whether his members really needed the types of guns that would've been banned from the show.
"For elk hunting, no," Holyoak answers. "But there are many people who have those firearms and like to take them out to the shooting range and do what they do." Nonetheless, they usually stick to conservation—"We like to stay back in the bushes, and make sure those bushes are healthy," he says—unless a key revenue stream depends on defending the companies that pay its bills. "We rely on the outdoor industry, because that's how we exist," Holyoak says. "Our funds do come from somewhere." 3
Despite the obstacles, there may finally be some movement toward hunter-centric gun rights advocacy. This latest round of negotiations, in which Vice President Joe Biden invited a wide range of organizations to participate, created an opening for groups that usually outsource their advocacy to the NRA. Among them was the Colorado-based Bull Moose Sportsmen's Alliance, which Gaspar Perricone founded a couple years ago to serve as the hunter's voice in Washington.
"In the wake of past strategies, we've felt stigmatized, and we've withdrawn from the debate," Perricone says. "There's a relatively strong cultural divide in America between gun owners and non–gun owners. All gun owners are lumped into the same community. The sportsmen's community is probably a little different in that we are first and foremost wildlife and conservation advocates."
Perricone dodges questions about how his group differs from the NRA, but he also doesn’t interpret the Second Amendment in absolute terms. "It has been talked about previously as 'should or should we not own guns,'" Perricone says. In particular, he favors more widespread background checks. "People do kill people, but there's no sense in providing a loophole for the criminally insane."
Perricone is just one of many voices of reason and moderation in the hunting community. And Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive director, is just one man. But Perricone’s group has 4,500 members, while the NRA has added 500,000 members since Newtown alone, bringing membership to 4.5 million. With a flock that large, LaPierre has the power to drown out 1,000 Perricones.
Then again, 13.7 million people went hunting in 2011, the latest year for which figures are available. Suddenly, the NRA’s 4.5 million members don’t seem as imposing. For every hunter who might quit, say, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for taking a stand against the NRA’s extremism, there are dozens more who might become members for that very reason. And the more groups that speak out, the more the media and Capitol Hill will pay attention to the legions of hunters whom LaPierre doesn’t represent.
11 comments
A much-needed call to sanity. There are still more sane people in America than there are absolutist nuts. And someday they will prevail.
- magboy47.
February 5, 2013 at 12:28am
Good reporting. I think this sentence is a general assessment of much about current Republican politics. 'With the NRA seeming more extreme every week, the question becomes: At what point does standing with the NRA become riskier than speaking out against it?'
- Nusholtz
February 5, 2013 at 6:58am
These days, any organization may be understood by a visit to its website. One may join the NRA, via its website, by making a donation and identifying himself or herself. . The NRA contends that it is unfair to publish names of those who possess "carry" permits. Therefore, the NRA would resist publishing any yearly list of its donors. What other organizations keep their membership lists proprietary, promote the use of weapons and engage in both lobbying and public relations campaigns?
- Doug12
February 5, 2013 at 9:43am
"Part of the NRA's success is that any attack on any gun law anywhere is an attack on everybody," says Whit Fosburgh, director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. "I wish we had that fealty. If there's a mule deer problem, it's not a trout problem. Oil and gas development in the west is bad for sage grouse, but it's not a duck problem. So the conservation community dies a death by a thousand cuts." For pro-hunting conservation groups like the TRC and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation a lack of support from smaller conservation advocacy groups as reason to not confront or contradict the NRA seem to feel a bit disingenuous. There are pro-conservation groups that would help advocate for reasonable gun legislation and that would be the more left-leaning conservation and environmental groups. Where the disconnect lay between the two side of the conservation discussion is that groups like RMEF, as of late, aren’t necessarily interested in habitat preservation so much as they are for complete and unabridged access to public lands (using ATVs on National Forest lands for example) and using public dollars to eliminate predator species (wolf and coyote culls) that compete with their big game goals. RMEF is purely interested in habitat for the elk as a means to hunt. So before they’ve even entered the game to talk about reasonable gun legislation, they’re already loosing members for other reasons. This isn't to say they can't be a voice of reason contra the NRA. http://www.hcn.org/wotr/a-once-proud-conservation-group-has-lost-its-way?searchterm=rocky+mountain+elk+ The NRA isn’t and never has been a pro-hunting or conservation organization. They use those two issues as cover for simply being a pro-gun manufacturer front organization that feeds off of the outsized, far-right paranoia that any sort of reasonable gun legislation is a figurative assault on a person’s second amendment right and an abridgement of their freedom. What the more reasonable hunting advocacy and conservation groups could do is pool resources into an umbrella organization that is separate from and opposite to the NRA. I know more hunters that are non-NRA than NRA and many more that are pro-conservation. The common goal of conservation groups and environmental groups is to restore, sustain, maintain and preserve wild habitat and open space access. Shooting ARs on public lands isn’t and shouldn’t really part of that effort.
- singlspeed
February 5, 2013 at 11:07am
The New Republic needs to fix the search engine so that I go hunting for articles.
- arnon1
February 5, 2013 at 12:07pm
Don't forget, interpretation of the Constitution means determining the "intent" of the founders. How could the Founders legitimize multi-shot, rapid fire weapons they could not have known about? They intended to protect single-shot muzzle loading "arms" carried by well regulated militias. The NRA should be plumping for Kentucky squirrel rifles and brown bess muskets....
- JohnC
February 5, 2013 at 12:28pm
Beware the echo chamber. The shooting community is a huge group of people, a mathematical set, if you will. It contains subsets of hunters, men, women, competitive shooters, shotgunners, plinkers and collectors, with overlapping of those subsets. Hunters do not constitute the majority of shooters - there are many shooters who have no interest in killing animals. There is also the subset of gun owners who have bought a handgun, shotgun, or rifle for their own protection as a force multiplier and who seldom or never shoot it at all. The NRA membership consists of the shooters, the non-shooting owners, and some who have no guns but belong for ideological or political reasons, but historically the NRA membership was only a small portion of the shooting community or the gun ownership community - why pop thirty or forty bucks for membership in an organization when it buys a couple of boxes of ammunition? The current push for "sanity" is rapidly changing minds. For example, as a former Democratic state office holder, I have regularly pitched NRA solicitations in the circular file. I am now a Life Member, which cost me more at my age than it would have to pay the regular dues for the rest of my shooting career. I have also given an endowment. I spend a great deal of time practicing shooting skills and since December 15 my upper-class yuppie suburban shooting range has had an hour's wait for a shooting lane. And I question the claim that the NRA is a paper tiger; I believe it has sufficient teeth unto the task because there are six Democratic senators in red states up for reelection in 2014 and about 17 Democratic congressmen from districts that went for Romney, who are tenuously holding their seats. Finally, if gun control measures pass the Senate, a rather large "if," and go to the House, even should all Democrats vote for passage the proponents will have to flip seventeen Republicans; fat chance. In the meantime, the buying frenzy has put 25 million new guns on the street since Dec. 1. Stores are empty, distributors are sold out, and manufacturers are backordered. Articles such as this one are not fact, they are whistling through the cemetery. The NRA is growing exponentially, and the membership is more motivated than I can recall in my six decades of observation. There is no one left in the shooting community who believes any new regulation is NOT an incremental step toward an attempt at a total ban. The crunch will come when a bill reaches the Senate floor and, prior to the actual vote, all is random speculation.
- Rochefort
February 5, 2013 at 1:16pm
What you're saying, ROCHEFORT, maybe without even knowing it, is that you and other gun owners in America are preparing for an armed revolution. Good luck with that little venture--and I do mean little. Just remember that the government has tactical nuclear weapons. Are NRA members able to buy those? There comes a point in the life of a citizen in a free country when he or she has to trust that the government is not going to exterminate him or her. The American government has rarely, if ever, taken a gun away from a law-abiding citizen. But, as Jefferson Airplane once sang, paranoia strikes deep. It's obviously very deep in you. And that's the kind of paranoia that makes people do very destructive and very self-destructive things. Why don't you wait until you actually see the government confiscating more than one gun every ten years before you panic? You and those like you will certainly have enough weapons stockpiled by then to go to war. You very obviously don't know what it means to be a citizen in a free society. Making up huge, evil scenarios in your head without any historical evidence is not part of being free. It's part of unjustified, anti-American revolution.
- magboy47.
February 5, 2013 at 8:26pm
Actually, I'm not in the least paranoid. Nor am I plotting an armed insurrection. It appears that the paranoia and vitriol of MAGBOY47 and others is driving the gun-control movement. There is a paucity of level-headed conversation and we've reached a juncture where, apparently for the first time since opinion polling began, that 53% of the public believes "the federal government represents a serious threat to the rights and privileges of ordinary citizens." Of course there is no breakdown of the rights and/or privileges in question and I seriously doubt they are all referring to Second Amendment rights, but it's still rather disturbing for me to see that so many people see the government as other than benevolent.
- Rochefort
February 6, 2013 at 3:58pm
SHOW 1 RESPONSE
I agree with arnon. This site is a mess. I give you the top of the home page as evidence.
- magboy47.
February 5, 2013 at 8:31pm
I want to, somewhat, second Singlespeed's comment. I'm a backpacker and as such I share a lot of overlap with hunters. In fact, I meet them all the time on my hikes. So far I've never met a hunter that I didn't feel perfectly safe around-- or for that matter, wouldn't give me a lift out of the woods if I needed it. However, there is friction between hunters and hikers on the issue of ATVs. Hunters want ATV access into all parts of public lands-- something that backpackers generally do not want. And (and this is the interesting part), hikers don't want it not because of hunters (who are generally nice guys) but because of ATV-ers who are drunken douchebags whose main goals seem to be making as much noise and tearing up as much terrain as possible. Last bit on hunters. A lot of the hunters I've met will eventually confess that the "hunting" is mostly an excuse to go camping and to do some "crossing country"-- in fact, some of them don't care that much if they get an animal or not. In essence, they are basically hikers who need the cover of "hunting" to get out into the woods. I guess maybe their buddies (or their wives) would give them too much grief if they weren't "doing something" (hunting), as opposed to doing nothing (hiking).
- Tobbar
February 6, 2013 at 11:31am