GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News – The hue and cry that has greeted President Obama’s proposals to impose commonsense limits on his country’s multi-billion dollar firearms industry is a reminder of how entrenched the gun lobby has become in American politics. To foreign eyes the President’s 23 executive actions − based on proposals from Vice-President Biden’s task force − barely scratch the surface of the gun culture, or the industry that fuels it, yet there has been widespread alarm at Obama’s efforts to improve background checks for gun sales and his call for a law to limit magazine capacities and the sale of assault weapons. One Republican legislator has even threatened to file articles of impeachment if the President pursues these mild initiatives towards gun control. The story of how the National Rifle Association has managed to make gun control anathema to America’s legislators is well told by Tim Dickinson in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. One of the chief architects of the organization’s remarkable political ascendancy is its current executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, the man who recently proposed arming guards at every one of America’s 100,000 schools in the wake of the Newtown killings. Despite that misjudgment of the national mood, LaPierre has consistently gauged the climate in Washington perfectly and he and his colleagues have been instrumental in either gutting previous efforts at gun control or in procuring legislation that shields gun manufacturers from the legal consequences product liability laws would usually entail. One key to the NRA’s success has been the way the association – traditionally a voice for gun owners – has annexed itself to an “$11.7 billion industry [that] has fed tens of millions of dollars into [its] coffers” enabling it to “string together victories that would have seemed fantastic just 15 years ago.” Importantly, the manufacturers’ largesse has allowed NRA management to lobby Congress for positions that few NRA members actually hold. In May 2012, for instance, a respected GOP pollster found that three-quarters of the NRA’s 4 million members approve of background checks and almost as many believe gun owners should be obliged to report lost or stolen weapons to the police — measures the group’s lobbyists and allies vociferously oppose in Washington.
