Book Review

Guns and Violence

Under Fire: The NRA and the battle for gun control

N Engl J Med 1994; 330:373February 3, 1994

Article

Under Fire: The NRA and the battle for gun control
By Osha Gray Davidson. 305 pp. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1993. $25. ISBN: 0-8050-1904-9

For many of us, the shocking assassinations of John Kennedy in 1963 and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 first made us aware that we had two problems: one with guns and another with a lobbying group opposed to even the most modest control of guns. I remember being somewhat annoyed several years later when my son returned from summer camp with a marksman certificate emblazoned with the emblem of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Even though I wondered why an independent camp had allowed the NRA to capture the attention of young boys, I did not do anything about it. Like many people, I had concerns about the NRA, but at the time, with so many other compelling issues at hand, I paid little attention to the gun lobby. Yet given the widespread threats to personal safety from guns, few people today have the luxury of assuming that guns and the gun lobby are part of the “background noise.” Until recently, little was made public about the nature of the gun industry, but several series in leading newspapers have begun to explore its assets and its practices. Even less has been made public about the NRA.

In Under Fire, Osha Gray Davidson examines the evolution of the NRA from its roots in the 19th century as a sporting club to its current status as arguably the most effective special-interest group in the second half of the 20th century. The story is told without passion but in an easy-to-read, hard-to-put-down style that many novelists would envy. Davidson, a freelance journalist, manages to describe the NRA without falling into either its clutches or those of its opponents. The result is a sufficiently objective yet richly revealing portrait of this powerful lobby.

The first chapter, on Patrick Purdy's 1989 massacre of innocent children in Stockton, California, with an AK-47 automatic rifle, starkly frames the issues. Gun advocates argue that guns did not cause the tragedy; a deranged person did. Gun opponents blame the weapon. This difference of opinion dominates the NRA's history and defines the political struggles detailed in the rest of the book. The NRA today would be unrecognizable to either its founders or its members in the first half of the 20th century. Although the organization engaged in some political action against gun control in earlier years, it assumed its current single-interest stance against all gun-control legislation only 15 years ago.

Providing a close look at the NRA from the inside, Davidson elaborates on features of the organization generally unknown to the public. He describes conflicts over its mission, internal battles for control, and changes in the character of its leadership. The political astuteness of the NRA's officers and lobbyists and the nearly religious resolve of its members are carefully chronicled. Particularly revealing to me were some of the organization's tactics. Although I had assumed that money was the chief weapon that the NRA used against its opponents, I was surprised to learn that harrassment of gun-control advocates by phone calls and letters from the rank-and-file members and scurrilous advertising campaigns have sometimes been even more effective.

The concluding chapters detail the travails of the NRA: its falling-out with leading police organizations, its inability to prevent both houses of Congress from passing the Brady bill, and its failure to oppose the election of some candidates for political office. Finally, Davidson offers advice to both sides -- namely, to give a little on their hard-and-fast positions. He cautions the reader, however, not to expect much flexibility from the NRA.

Under Fire is a terrific book and long overdue. My only regret is its paucity of financial information. I hope Davidson or someone else will take the next step and identify in detail the sources of support and the nature of the expenditures of the NRA and other parts of the gun lobby. Such data should prove illuminating.

Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D.
New England Journal of Medicine, Boston, MA 02115