The National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is commonly regarded as one of the most powerful lobbies in the United States. If much needed gun reform never sees the light of day, the power of the NRA to influence lawmakers and shape legislation is often held to blame.  In On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling and the NRA, Noah Schwartz argues that when we reduce the NRA to a political lobby we miss the true sources of its power and influence.  By weaving together stories about guns with American history and the American family the NRA has been highly influential in the war over the hearts and minds of gun owners.  Through its diverse communications and outreach programs the NRA has crafted a powerful understanding and attachment to guns that it can use to mobilize an army of American gun owners.  

The conservative wave beginning in the 1980s dramatically expanded membership and funds available to the NRA.  However, compared to other industries with lobbies, such as oil and gas, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and even cannabis, the NRA spends far less on lobbying.  Most NRA funds go to communications materials, their annual meeting, their three museums and diverse education programs.  What makes the NRA unusual is its cultural resources that allow it to connect with and shape the millions of Americans who make up the gun owning community.  From magazine articles to gun safety classes, the soft power of the NRA resides in its ability to use its cultural resources to frame guns and gun culture in terms of the stories it tells and the themes it foregrounds.  

While the NRA uses a wide array of historical narratives in its messaging to gun owners, it relies principally on a few core macro narratives.  Noah Schwartz identifies these macro narratives as the « Good Good Guy (expanded to Good Gal) with a Gun, » freedom, and firearms as an essential element of American culture.  What makes these macro narratives resonate is that they are not invented from scratch.  Instead NRA messaging puts a spin on themes, histories and elements of American culture that are already well-established.

If you understand the use of arms by ordinary citizens during the American Revolution as a key source of the revolution’s success, it opens the door to seeing firearms as a check on excessive state power in the present day. It also helps to explain why citizens of other developed countries tend to find this argument unintelligible.  Without this collective memory this argument makes no sense…It is a macro-narrative that must be retold in order to survive, and the NRA sees itself as a key actor in its retelling. Noah S. Schwartz, On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling, and the NRA.

The Good Guy or Gal with a Gun narrative, for example, taps into the rich cultural reservoir of American icons who acted alone to preserve law and order and to defend the American way of life.  From the Lone Ranger to Bruce Willis in the Die Hard franchise, the idea of the good guy or gal with a gun fighting against evil doers and standing up for what’s right is a theme repeated ad infinitem in Hollywood dramas.   Stories of how gun owners foil home invasions or take down mass shooters is just another iteration of a time honored American theme.  From burglaries to domestic violence, The Armed Citizen, is a column in the NRA publication, America’s 1st Freedom, that uses every edition to feature stories about how law-abiding gun owners helped prevent tragedy.  

As the title of the NRA’s magazine, America’s 1st Freedom demonstrates, freedom is one of the most common associations the NRA makes with guns.  In American Riflemen, an NRA magazine with a circulation close to that of Sports Illustrated, Noah Schwartz found that the freedom/gun connection surfaced in articles on key periods in American history from the American Revolution to World War II.  But the freedom/gun connection could also be evoked in reference to histories that have nothing to do with the United States.  From Lawrence of Arabia to Israel’s War of Independence, what matters is showcasing the role guns played in struggles for freedom.  

The NRA uses its diverse communications resources to cast guns as an essential element in American culture.  Naturalizing guns as part of the American family experience is an important way of doing this.  For example NRA publications like the American Rifleman feature stories about how guns are passed down from one generation to the next with the power to evoke cherished memories that bind families together.   From hunting to shooting ranges guns are part of important pastimes that represent deeply meaningful shared experiences for family members.  The NRA understands and cultivates the deep meanings of guns to strengthen its connection to its members.   

Where the dynamism and diversity of America gun culture are most visible is at the NRA annual meeting.  With hundreds of manufactures putting their merchandise on display in a massive exhibit hall, the annual meeting offers gun enthusiasts an opportunity to see far more than just the latest firearms.  From concealed weapons gear and body armor to site finders and silencers the accessories often end up costing gun owners far more than their firearms.  From gear for hunting to old west style costumes and replica pistols and rifles for sports like Cowboy Action Shooting, the diversity of exhibits reflects the wide array of interests and activities within American gun culture.  The NRA not only sponsors these very real passions through events like its annual meetings, it also offers steeply discounted membership deals right at the entrance.   

Beyond providing an important venue for gun enthusiasts to share their passion for firearms, the NRA annual meeting communicates the organization’s key macro narratives.  Special guest speakers tell stories about home break ins and how owning a gun helped prevent unknown harm.  In other cases quick thinking gun owners were able to neutralize a mass shooter preventing greater loss of life.  These stories of the good guy or gal with a gun are crafted to pull on the heart strings of listeners.  They are meant to encourage listeners to put themselves in the place of the speaker and imagine what might have happened had there been no good guy or gal with a gun.  

The NRA began after the Civil War as an organization created to improve American shooting skills. Marksmanship and gun safety class remain central to the work of the NRA and an important connection to its members.  Noah Schwartz describes firearms classes as “community building tools.”  The NRA uses gun ranges to distribute literature, to advertise, and promote its brand.  Gun ranges function like community centers with a board of directors, cafes, and planned events.  Through the shared experience of learning to care for and the thrill of firing a weapon, members form meaningful bonds that strengthen their connection to the larger gun owning community and culture.  

Unlike other advocacy groups the NRA has its own museums. The NRA National Firearms Museum, located inside the organization’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, has some 15,000 square feet of floor space with 3,200 firearms on display.  Display subjects, ranging from World War II to the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion, showcase the roles guns have played in diverse struggles for freedom.  A Wild West Section uses images of Hollywood action heroes like John Wayne to evoke the theme of the good guy with a gun.   A recreated children’s bedroom from the 1950s or 1960s uses everything from cowboy comic books and BB guns to paintings with cowboys and Indians to suggest that guns have always been part of the quintessential American childhood experience.  With some 350,000 visitors each year the NRA museums are yet another important but typically ignored example of the soft power of the organization.  

The NRA is currently experiencing troubled times.  A corruption scandal forced long time leader Wayne LaPierre from power.  Fewer and fewer congressional candidates receive the organization’s top A rating.  Even Donald Trump is cast as having a strained relationship with the organization.  Yet all of these indicators of declining influence miss the lasting achievement of the NRA.  Through everything from firearms classes to gun shows, the NRA has forged American gun owners into a cultural community that see guns as an essential part of their American identity, history, and the larger cause of freedom.  Whatever happens to the NRA in the future, this cultural community is here to stay.