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"He doesn't care if he dies"
A former racist skinhead remembers spending Hitler's birthday with Buford Furrow.
By Vivienne Walt
[08/12/99]

Lunatic fringe
Jews can't let crackpots like Buford Furrow convince them that anti-Semitism is rising in America.
By Samuel G. Freedman
[08/12/99]

No surrender
The shooting rampage in a Los Angeles Jewish day-care center draws attention from around the world, but does little to soften the resolve of gun supporters.
By Vivienne Walt
[08/12/99]

"Christian Identity is for pantywaists"
Right-wingers debate Buford Furrow's goals and his organizational ties.
By Jeff Stein
[08/12/99]

Guns and money
The owner of the firm that made the assault rifle used in the L.A. shooting was, until recently, a key George W. Bush fund-raiser.
By Jake Tapper
[08/11/99]

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But judging by their foot-dragging on new gun-control measures, our representatives in Washington seem to think that they represent a slice of America consisting entirely of Charlton Heston's bungalow.

That Congress continues to slay any and every gun law -- no matter how popular, incidental or seemingly reasonable -- is a tribute to the gun industry's powerhouse of a lobby, the National Rifle Association.

The NRA's superpowers originate in its wallet -- the group donated $1.6 million in PAC contributions to candidates for federal office last election cycle alone. From 1991-98, the NRA gave nearly $9 million to candidates, parties and PACs, all the more impressive compared with the relatively paltry sum ($146,000) offered up by Handgun Control Inc., Washington's largest anti-gun lobby. (Full disclosure: I worked for Handgun Control for six months in 1997.)

For the NRA, as for other big political contributors, money is leverage. The senators who voted against a recent measure that would have required background checks at gun shows received an average of $10,500 from pro-gun groups, while those who voted to close the loophole received, on average, closer to $300.

The sizable coffers also allow the NRA to present a united lobbying front on Capitol Hill. The NRA spent $2.25 million on lobbying in 1998 alone -- cash that allowed the interest group to employ 10 full-time lobbyists in addition to the six lobbying firms it keeps in its holster on retainer.

But it's overly simplistic to argue that the NRA rules with its wallet alone. The NRA has a mobilized and active grass-roots membership it claims to be 3 million strong. These are largely single-issue men (and some women) who write millions of postcards, attend town meetings and candidate forums and vote. As a result, they command attention from their representatives.

Money and membership are significant bullets in the NRA's Uzi, but there's more to it than that. Lost among all of this financial and electoral clout is the fact that the NRA's allies in Congress happen to agree with the NRA's hard-line stance on the Second Amendment.

Staunch NRA advocates have held the House leadership's feet to the fire in the face of the new push for gun restrictions on Capitol Hill, according to Kristin Rand of the Violence Policy Center.

She says House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "is a problem, but he's not a true believer. Hastert has at least made some conciliatory statements. He's sent signals that he's sympathetic to a compromise on some of these issues. He's in no way an NRA stalwart. I suspect that if he didn't have [Whip Tom] DeLay and [Majority Leader Dick] Armey and [Rep. Bob] Barr tugging him so far right on this, Hastert would probably have let the amendment [closing the gun-show loophole] go."

Here, however, are the true believers -- in order, a list of the NRA's 10 best friends in Washington.

Next page | The big guns