There were 21 victims in the shooting rampage at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
A day after, U.S President Joe Biden said this
As a nation we have to ask when in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby.
And I remember being really struck by that.
I mean here was the President of the United States practically begging Americans to do something
and for many years presidents have tried and failed
There is no conceivable excuse to delay this action one more day.
We can't tolerate this anymore.
These tragedies must end.
So the question we've been asking is how is it possible that the gun lobby is still winning?
Now when we say gun lobby, we should talk about what that actually means
The first group that everyone thinks about is the National Rifle Association.
To secure the rights of our fellow citizens.
I'm honoured to be here with the wonderful patriots of the NRA.
It is the largest and most influential gun rights group in the United States
but it's also been in decline.
According to its tax filings its membership revenue is down it's being investigated for fraud
it filed unsuccessfully for bankruptcy, it's been plagued by infighting
and I was surprised to find out that it's not even close to being the biggest lobby group in the United States.
Not even close. But it does spend its money very strategically
pouring millions of dollars into Congress directly.
For example, Republican Senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr has had support over the years
from the NRA to the tune of $6 million U.S.
And he's just one guy. Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz
big name Republicans with a lot of sway, they've all benefited
Now we have Jody Madeira joining us who is an author also a law professor at Indiana University.
Hi, Jody. Hello.
So what is the secret to the NRA's success? Like is it just about money?
Well I think that's a very complicated question, but I don't think money alone really explains it
and I mean it really is across the board and it has a lot of power I think
in terms of keeping politicians very focused on gun rights.
The NRA finds, you know, weaknesses in states by investing in state legislatures and investing in state races
the NRA can have a voice that it really cannot have on the federal level.
Thus creating the illusion that these majors are now part of a national firearms culture.
So here's something that's really interesting, according to Pew Research most Americans
do support expanded background checks, increasing the gun purchase age, waiting periods, licenses
tracking, all of that stuff.
But one thing the gun lobby has done to great effect is to frame the issue in absolute terms
They take your guns, they take your freedom.
And have a look at this on the NRA website right at the bottom
they frame themselves as a civil rights organization.
Saying they are proud defenders of history's patriots and diligent protectors of the second amendment.
The truth is if you disarm your people you put them in a vulnerable position.
The United States is one of the only countries in the entire world to have enshrined gun rights in its constitution.
There have been others; Bolivia, Costa Rica Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Liberia in Africa
but they've all since rescinded that right.
The only three countries to have kept it, the United States, Mexico and Guatemala.
Now Robert Spitzer is someone that we knew we had to talk to because he has
literally spent decades studying this very question of how the NRA and the gun lobby came
to be as influential as it has, and Robert it really is in the last several decades that the NRA
itself took what you would call a sharp right turn.
Yes, the organization was founded in 1871 and it was devoted to marksmanship shooting skills.
Come the mid-1970s, a dissident group within the organization decided
that it wasn't political enough, it wasn't pushing hard enough to defend gun rights
and it wasn't conservative enough.
And how did that manifest? I mean what did that actually look like?
It began to endorse political candidates, it never done that before
it contributed more and more money to political campaigns and it began a systematic process of stoking its base
Sending it its base relentlessly apocalyptic and dark messaging
about how the government was going to come and take their guns away
and fear is a pretty good motivator in politics.
We will not allow our second amendment rights to be taken away from us by a bunch of cheap politicians.
From my cold dead hands
And fast forward to 2022, I mean, how much bigger has the gun lobby gotten beyond the NRA itself?
In a certain respect the old NRA doesn't need to lead the parade anymore.
So now we've really opened a can of worms because what it did take me a little while to realize
is that we really do have to get away from this idea of thinking of the gun lobby as just one organization.
It really is a rich mix of groups across a spectrum.
If you pan around, I mean this is not all white's out here right so
how could it be a white nationalist rally?
Now I want to call up Dave Workman because he's with the Second Amendment Foundation
and that's a gun rights education, information, litigation advocacy group there in the United States.
How are you doing?
Well, I'm fine, Andrew. How are you?
Not too bad not too bad. Thanks for chatting with us.
So you know full disclosure, I'm not an American, I don't own a gun
and you know I think it would be it's very tempting, too easy, for me to to generalize when I think about gun owners
and gun rights advocates, to think that these groups are all made up of the same sort of people
who all want exactly the same sort of thing. Tell me otherwise, I mean how do you how do you see that?
There are an estimated 100 million gun owners in the United States
they own somewhere in the neighbourhood of
350 to 400 million firearms, but you have the Second Amendment Foundation
we have 700,000 approximate members and supporters across the United States
we concentrate on education and most definitely on litigation.
Right now, the foundation has somewhere above 35 court cases
challenging state and local gun laws to make sure that they are constitutional.
The second amendment, we believe is the one right that protects all the others.
Do you not understand what the second amendment's about
we don't need gun control, we need demon control.
Laws won't change evil.
Evil doesn't obey laws.
What they need to do is harden the schools and protect the kids.
I did not kill a human being that day, I took out evil.
Armed, law abiding citizens.
So to recap the gun lobby wins because it's easier to resist
change than to make it, it has money, connections
but most importantly the gun lobby has managed to sow its ideology
into the very foundational framework of the country itself.
Guns aren't just guns, they're a symbol worth fighting for