NRA Stares Down Gun Backlash Without Its Old Power Brokers
The massacres in El Paso and Dayton are the first major test of the gun group without its former lobbyist and PR firm.
President Donald Trump speaking to the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum in 2017.
Photographer: JIM WATSON/AFP
In February 2018, two weeks after a shooting at a Florida high school left 17 dead, President Donald Trump made a blunt declaration to a roomful of politicians during a televised discussion on school safety: “You’re afraid of the NRA.” The president promised action and—just as he has this week following two mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, that killed 31—vowed to expand background checks on firearms purchases as a way to prevent shootings.
The earlier push for background checks brought a familiar figure to the White House. Chris Cox, then the National Rifle Association’s chief lobbyist and longtime power broker, emerged from the Oval Office a day after Trump’s promises on guns with a clear message of his own: “POTUS & VPOTUS support the Second Amendment, support strong due process and don’t want gun control,” Cox wrote on Twitter.