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[justinspoliticalcorner]

As the NRA fades, a more zealous US pro-gun group rises as a lobbying power

Gun Owners of America, formed in belief NRA was ‘too liberal’, spent $3.3m lobbying against gun control and boasts 2m members

Peter Stone at The Guardian:

A zealous gun rights group, even more uncompromising than the once formidable National Rifle Association, is emerging as a force in US politics with a mission to oppose efforts at gun control and ease further America’s already lax regulations on firearms.

Last year the Gun Owners of America (GOA) spent $3.3m on lobbying, a record sum for the hardline foe of gun control that now claims over 2 million members and activists, and has previously operated in the shadows of the larger NRA. The GOA’s record lobbying spending in 2022 was spurred in part by a rise in its annual revenues, which more than tripled from $2.3m in 2016 to $8.7m in 2021, according to tax records. The GOA is an adamant enemy of gun control measures of all stripes, and proudly calls itself the “no compromise” gun lobby. Its surge in lobbying spending reflects one way it has capitalized on the financial and legal problems of the once 5 million-member NRA in the hopes of expanding the GOA’s political clout, say gun experts. “The GOA was formed in the 1970s because they believed the NRA was too liberal,” said Robert Spitzer, the author of several books on guns and a professor emeritus at Suny Cortland in New York. “True to its creed, the GOA has opposed every manner of gun law and attacked the NRA at every turn.”

The GOA’s anti-gun control posture was underscored by its opposition to a bipartisan compromise gun control bill in 2022 that closed some gun law loopholes, including for prospective buyers under 21, and implemented gun violence prevention policies, becoming the first gun control bill enacted since 1994. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act garnered just 29 Republican votes in Congress, but the GOA this year in an alert to its members warning of pending legislative threats suggested those votes were “cowardly”.

The GOA’s lobbying efforts in 2022 were notable in another way: it was the only gun rights group to increase its spending in 2022 according to OpenSecrets, and surpassed the NRA’s lobbying expenditures of $2.6m last year, a drop of over $2m from the NRA’s 2021 total. Through the first six months of 2023, the GOA spent $1.8m on lobbying, putting it on track to equal or surpass the $3.2m it spent last year. As it has ramped up its influence activity in Washington, the GOA also touts its member chapters and allies including the California Gun Rights Foundation and other ones in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas. Nationally the GOA and its chapters have flexed their lobbying and legal muscles in some significant fights in several states. For instance, in New Mexico the GOA has claimed success in obtaining a temporary restraining order against new gun curbs in Albuquerque.

[...] Gun experts say the GOA has long tried to outflank the NRA on the right as the most implacable opponent of gun control measures, and now sees an opening to expand its influence in federal and state battles over gun control. [...] Other anti-gun control groups have also ramped up their lobbying and legal drives. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents the firearms industry, has outspent the NRA on lobbying in recent years. In 2020 and 2021, the NSSF reported spending $4.6m and $5m respectively on federal lobbying. By contrast, the NRA spent $2.2m and $4.9m. Some ex-NRA officials downplay the influence of the GOA and other pro-gun groups in the wake of the NRA’s problems.

As the NRA's influence on the gun rights movement fades, a much more militant competitor in Gun Owners of America is rising to be the face of opposition to gun violence prevention measures.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gun Owners of America – which prides itself in being to the right of the NRA -- has been pushing the creative conspiracy theory that the Obama administration is using the Environmental Protection Agency to institute backdoor gun control. GOA’s story goes that a Missouri lead smelter that shut down rather than comply with clean air regulations was in fact forced shut by the Obama administration in order to suppress the supply of lead used for manufacturing bullets. The first problem with this story is that, as Steve Benen pointed out, the EPA started going after the plant in question during the Bush administration. The story gained so much traction, though, that the NRA felt compelled to issue a statement earlier this month reassuring its members that “this particular facility's closure should not have the dramatic impact that some have predicted.” The word of the great conspiracy also reached a major bullet manufacturer, which itself issued a statement saying that its "supply should not be in jeopardy" and that the Missouri factory’s closure presented “no reason for alarm," as the conservative outlet NewsMax reported.

But according to Gun Owners of America, these denials just serve to confirm the group's suspicions. GOA spokesman Mike Hammond told NewsMax yesterday that the NRA and the manufacturer’s dismissals of the EPA-gun control conspiracy theory "only drive home his point."

h/t: Miranda Blue at RWW

[justinspoliticalcorner]

In a blog post this week, former Florida congressman Allen West gets behind a conspiracy theory that holds that the Environmental Protection Agency is launching a “clandestine” and “backdoor” assault on the Second Amendment. The gist of the theory is that President Obama used the EPA to shut down a Missouri smelter that refused to comply with anti-pollution regulations, thereby creating a scarcity of bullets and, in West’s words, “destroy[ing] the Second Amendment.”

Of course, there is no actual evidence to support West’s claim. In fact, the EPA first went after the smelter in question in 2008, the year before Obama became president. Steve Benen notes: “If enforcement of environmental safeguards was used to secretly undermine access to ammunition, the plot was launched by the notorious gun-grabbers in the Bush/Cheney administration.”

Despite the lack of evidence and the fact that the smelter was targeted before Obama even took office, now Gun Owners of America is also embracing the patently bogus conspiracy.

H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW

[justinspoliticalcorner]

(via GOoA's Pratt Suggests Defunding VA in Retaliation For Imaginary Nazi/Soviet Gun Confiscation | Right Wing Watch)

It seems that Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt never meets an anti-Obama conspiracy theory that he doesn’t like. So, when an InfoWars host last month told Pratt about a conspiracy theory that the Department of Veterans Affairs is arbitrarily disarming veterans and throwing them into psychiatric hospitals – a chain-email driven rumor that has been strongly debunked by a number of conservative bloggers – Pratt declared it “a return to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia” and suggested that Congress defund the VA in retaliation.

Earlier in the interview, Pratt discussed his theory that President Obama is using health care reform as part of a communist plot to destroy America: “The communist understands that you have to destroy the existing system before you can rebuild paradise on the rubble that they have created in their revolution.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the popular right-wing theory that Trayvon Martin’s murder and the subsequent police inaction had nothing to do with race and that President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and others are the real racists for daring to talk about racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Pratt brought his argument today to the sympathetic audience of American Family Radio’s Tim Wildmon and Jim Stanley, telling them up front that “Holder is a racist.”

In fact, Pratt tells them, Holder is considering civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in order to “intimidate the rest of the country so that we don’t think about defending ourselves” against “attacks by black mobs on white individuals.”

He cites, of course, the phony scandal surrounding two members of the New Black Panther Party who stood briefly in front of a heavily-Democratic polling place in Philadelphia during the 2008 election – the Justice Department eventually dropped charges against the unarmed member of the pair, provoking a Fox News-driven storm of outrage. Holder later told members of Congress that the phony outrage and comparisons of the Philadelphia incident to systematic voter intimidation and suppression in the Jim Crow South did “a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line for my people.”

Pratt, of course, takes Holder’s “my people” quote unrecognizably out of context in order to suggest that the attorney general doesn’t “belong in this country” and should move to Cuba.

From the 08.15.2013 edition of AFR's Today's Issues:

h/t: RWW

[justinspoliticalcorner]

(via Gun Owners' Pratt Claims DHS Buying Bullets to Prepare for Economic Collapse and Social Unrest | Right Wing Watch)

Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt continues to push the completely debunked conspiracy theory that the Department of Homeland Security is stockpiling ammunition to, as he put it recently, allow President Obama to raise a private army “equally as powerful as the military.” In an interview at a recent conference in Oklahoma, Pratt falsely claimed that the DHS “won’t answer” right-wing questions about ammo purchases. “The most benign explanation” for the DHS’s purchases, Pratt said, is that the Obama administration is “destroying the economy” and preparing to respond to the ensuing “social unrest.” 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt is upset that just because President Obama “got 50-plus percent of the vote,” he thinks can now carry out his policy agenda. In one of his frequent interviews with conspiracy nut Alex Jones recently, Pratt alleged that the president is a “communist,” a “full-bore Marxist” and a “Mr. Dictator” who is “grabbing ahold of every bit of power and centralizing in his hands.” Pratt also agreed with Jones that Democrats “had to steal the election” and urged supporters to take jobs as election monitors because “it’s either that or the republic.”

H/T: RWW

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gun Owners of America may soon join fellow conservatives in opposing comprehensive immigration reform, warning that a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would lead to an increase in “anti-gun voters.”

Not only does the group oppose comprehensive legislation for clear partisan reasons, GOA spokesman Mike Hammond told the American Family Association’s news service the group may also work to defeat such bills if they include biometric identification or background checks for jobs.

h/t: Right Wing Watch