How the NRA Went From Best Friend of the Nation's Police to Harsh Enemy of Law Enforcement [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/how-nra-went-best-friend-nations-police-harsh-enemy-law-enforcement?akid=9979.277129.cAtWbd&rd=1&src=newsletter783906&t=3



For years, the National Rifle Association cultivated a reputation as an unbeatable political powerhouse—a legacy that was challenged on Thursday with the introduction of major new gun control legislation in the U.S. Senate banning more than 100 military-style guns.

But the NRA’s tough reputation unwinds if one delves into the history behind its harshest rhetoric—which began in the 1970s and escalated as former allies, notably America’s police, rejected its increasingly militant demands. What today’s NRA would like to forget is how its unbending extremism led to a losing streak in Congress two decades ago, a period whose gun politics echo today but gun controls nevertheless passed.

Perhaps the best way to understand how the NRA is not the all-powerful lobby it seeks to portray itself as is to look at how the organization went from being a "best friend" of the nation’s police to a political enemy of law enforcement, from federal agents at the top of the ladder to local police chiefs and police unions below. As it became more outspoken and unwilling to compromise over insignificant gun controls, it became the group it remains today, vainly claiming to be the last line against impending government tryanny.

“Once you go down that road, how do you walk that rhetoric back?” said Robert Spitzer, a gun rights historian and SUNY-Cortland’s political science department chairman.