Is the NRA really pro-hunter?

OK, I am politically green.  In other words, if I go for a single issue:  it's the environment.  I have been active in environmentalism since I was a kid.  I love the outdoors, but does the NRA really love the outdoors as much as they claim?

The National Rifle Association has long claimed to represent America’s hunters and shooters in the fight to protect one of America’s oldest traditions as the self-proclaimed "largest pro-hunting organization in the world"  The NRA’s bylaws even include an article setting a core goal "to promote and defend hunting…as a viable and necessary method of fostering the propagation, growth and conservation…of our renewable wildlife resources". But it turns out that its by-laws are just empty rhetoric.

A report by the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) showed that  the NRA gave much more money to and gave much higher ratings to politicians who:

• In 2001, opposed the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which was defeated even though it would have protected millions of acres of our best hunting land.
• In 2005, tried to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land to “corporate interests at prices far below market value,” as stated in the report. “While conservation groups across America came out against the (sale of public land), the NRA stayed silent.”
• In 2007, opposed the so-called “Katrina Amendment” proposed to prevent future catastrophic flooding and protect wetlands and wildlife habitat threatened by climate change.

An annual survey conducted by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is the best source we have to judge the NRA's political leanings   It was the primarily source used by ASHA to come to its conclusions. On the front page of the report, in fact, AHSA states that the NRA gave campaign contributions to 52 of the 53 members of Congress who received a zero rating from LCV for their conservation voting records. 

Two new reports published from the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Gun Truth Project and Corporate Accountability International, show that the NRA following contributions from oil and gas companies, the NRA lent its support to legislation that would open up more federal public lands to fossil-fuel extraction, compromising the wilderness that many hunters value.

In 2012, six oil and gas companies contributed a total of between $1.3 million and $5.6 million to the NRA, according to CAP. (The companies are Clayton Williams Energy, J.L. Davis Gas Consulting, Kamps Propane, Barrett Brothers Oil and Gas, Saulsbury Energy Services, and KS Industries.)

The NRA's heftiest energy contributor by far is Clayton Williams Energy. CWE is the NRA's largest corporate donor outside of the firearm industry, and one of its six largest overall donors. The publicly owned Texas energy company has donated no less than $2 million to the NRA in the past four years: at least $1 million in 2010, according to an SEC filing, and at least $1 million in 2012, according to the NRA. In 2010, CEO, president, director, and board chairman Clayton Williams Jr. told a meeting of oil drillers that he'd given more than $3 million to the NRA. In 2013, Williams and his wife Modesta were inducted into the NRA's Golden Ring of Freedom, a small circle of major donors. The couple was celebrated in a 10-page feature story in a 2011 issue of the NRA's Ring of Freedom magazine.

The reality is that the NRA is out of line with America’s dedicated conservation organizations.  The nation’s biggest gun lobby gave $4,085,277 to support the 193 members of Congress who received poor conservation ratings from the LCV and only $390,897, 10 times less, to the 245 members of Congress who have received high conservation ratings.

Additionally,  the NRA's lobbying on bills detrimental to the environment contradicts the express commitment of of its lobbying arm to "be involved in any issue that directly or indirectly affects firearms ownership and use. These involve such topics as hunting and access to hunting lands [and] wilderness and wildlife conservation." CAP's report also cites several polls showing that preservation of wildlife is important to most sportsmen: A 2012 poll found that two-thirds of sportsmen want to maintain current conservation levels and oppose "allowing private companies to develop public lands when it would limit the public's enjoyment of—or access to—these lands."

Additionally, a 2013 survey of hunters and anglers, nearly 75 percent of respondents opposed selling public lands to help reduce the deficit.  On the other hand, there is a big push to sell public lands from the Libertarian segment of the republican party.

It would seem that the NRA is working against the interest of hunters and sportsmens despite its by-laws to the contrary.   In fact, I would say that the NRA works against the interests of responsible gun owners--if there are still very many left.

Actually, I haven't seen the NRA point to any actual legislation they have supported which would give any credence to their claim of being "pro-conservation".   In fact, I have seen more destruction of the US countryside in the past 40 odd years.  It seems to me that if the NRA were as "pro-environment" as it is "pro-gun" that there wouldn't be a problem with development and the US would not have decaying cities in the same way that guns have become an epidemic health crisis.

Sources:

• The Anti-Conservation Mission of the NRA
• Oil and Gas Industry Influence in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International 
• Is Oil Money Turning the NRA Against Hunters?
• NRA Leadership Still Selling Hunters Down the River: New NRA Grades Show They Support Members Who Support a Radical Anti-Conservation Agenda

Playground: We are the NRA

A song about the United States, where life is cheap.

What is the value of life in the US?
The cost of a bullet!

Fact of the day

From the same group that one proposed gun control laws and had a president who said “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons...I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

In 1975, the NRA published a Fact Book on Firearms Control that endorsed “reasonable regulation” such as a “waiting period between purchase and delivery,” recordkeeping requirements for “manufacturers, importers, dealers and pawnbrokers,” laws that “control all machine guns and destructive devices,” and the enforcement of “reasonable conditions” for those “wishing to carry a concealed firearm.”

See Also:

• White Men and Their Guns 
• The NRA once supported gun control

Guess what? There's A Massive Secret Database Of Gun Owners!

And it's not in the hands of FEMA or some other evil gumment agency!

While the National Rifle Association publicly fights against a national gun registry, the organization has gone to incredible lengths to compile information on “tens of millions” of gun owners — without their consent.

But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.

That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines and other sources.

More here

Armed Citizens and the Stories They Tell

I found this in my travels:

Armed Citizens and the Stories They Tell The National Rifle Association's Achievement of Terror and Masculinity, Kevin Lewis O'Neill, Stanford University, Men and Masculinities April 2007 vol. 9 no. 4 457-475 

Abstract

Since 1926, the National Rifle Association's (NRA) flagship publication has without pause featured “The Armed Citizen,” a column that reports instances in which law-abiding citizens have successfully defended their property, person, and/or family with firearms. These reports are brief (100 to 200 words) and have remained remarkably untouched over the past 80 years with regard to style, diction, and narrative structure. Their rhetorical effect, however, has not. In 1977, the year the NRA became a social movement, these narratives began to contribute to the production of a terror-filled, deeply masculine (and surprisingly biblical) NRA discourse that led (and continues to lead) to the mobilization of its members to defend the right to keep and bear arms in the face of extraordinary public opposition: to perpetuate what has come to be known as the “gun-control paradox.”

Articles citing this article  

Good Guys With Guns: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns Gender & Society April 1, 2012 26: 216-238

Abstract

In most states in the U.S. it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, but little is known about why people want to do this. While the existing literature argues that guns symbolize masculinity, most research on the actual use of guns has focused on marginalized men. The issue of concealed handguns is interesting because they must remain concealed and because relatively privileged men are most likely to have a license to carry one. Using in-depth interviews with 20 men, this article explores how they draw on discourses of masculinity to explain their use of concealed handguns. These men claim that they are motivated by a desire to protect their wives and children, to compensate for lost strength as they age, and to defend themselves against people and places they perceive as dangerous, especially those involving racial/ethnic minority men. These findings suggest that part of the appeal of carrying a concealed firearm is that it allows men to identify with hegemonic masculinity through fantasies of violence and self-defense.

Aims of the National Rifle Association of the United Kingdom

I have to admit curiousity after mentioning this site in a comment and seeing these Aims and Objectives as to what they would be. From http://www.nra.org.uk/:

1. AIM and OBJECTIVES
a) The National Rifle Association (NRA) aims to become, or become part of, the governing body for the sport of all lawful target shooting throughout the United Kingdom.
b) As such, it will have as its primary objective the promotion of the sport of target shooting in all its various lawful forms, throughout the United Kingdom, and to all who may wish to participate.
c) Historically the NRA has had a parallel objective of assisting military and civilian defence forces in their requirements for marksmanship, ammunition testing and weapons training, providing competitions for Services personnel and cadets and co-operating with the military wherever it was consistent with the original Objectives of the NRA.

Of course, I find it difficult to relate the US NRA since they have moved from being a sportsmen's organisation and have become fixated on "self-defence".

One US environmental campaigner has complained that there is little or no hunter and shooting sport presence in the Anti-fracking debate. This is despite the fact that fracking removes land from the areas that can be used for hunting. Additionally, poisoning the waters helps to kill any huntable game.

Having a gun for hunting isn't very useful if there is no where and nothing to hunt.

And while we are at it, here is the Metropolitan Police's Website for Firearms, which includes the applications for firearms licences. I should note that self-defence is not considered a valid reason for owning a firearm in the UK.

See also:
http://www.met.police.uk/firearms_licensing/documents/firearms_certificate_form_101.pdf

Why you should distrust the NRA.

Betcha didn't know that the NRA is a long-time member and longtime funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and an NRA representative has served on the Public Safety and Elections Task Force for many years.

See this video from 2008 where ALEC's Michael Huff discusses "ALEC’s strong relationship with the NRA and explains the support of gun rights and ownership."

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. This is the case even though ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board. Big business funds almost all of ALEC's operations.

Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right.

Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org

See also:
ALECexposed.org
ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection
ALEC Watch
Who funds ALEC
Source Watch--Koch