I’m curious to know if there any any significant antigun lobbying groups out there. For the United States, of course.
(Since this is GQ, I’d like to avoid any discussion of the actual merits of this group or of the NRA. Let’s keep it factual.)
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Mayors Against Illegal Guns
and some others.
I hope it isn’t non-GQ, but the “illegal” part in the second one does not mean that they don’t try to pass gun control legislation against guns that are currently legal.
And the Brady Campaign was formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc., or HCI.
The Local Handgun Individual.
I’ve never heard of this group.
In any case, there are sixteen groups in the Wikipedia category Gun control advocacy groups in the United States.
Thanks everybody.
I believe you mean the International Longbow Dissociation.
It isn’t a group. The National Rifle Association is a group and the OP asked for the opposite.
I think you’re thinking of the Foreign Smoothbore Diaspora.
The Anti-Rifle Naysayers
The two “big” advocacy groups are the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign. I put “big” in quotes because if you look at their donations and contributions over the last few years they are virtually nil. I suspect that they just went through the roof, but until now gun control advocacy was virtually dead.
There were/are a few other groups, but they are relatively unknown and as such are insignificant in that having a name brand is the key to advocacy. Nobody cares about your start-up organization, they care about the heavy hitters with the PAC money.
I’d say the ACLU could be considered the mirror of the NRA. They both are very, very dedicated to the rights they respectively defend, and both occasionally take an absolutist position further than reason would dictate.
The ACLU is actually pretty likely to stand up for gun rights, since their role is to stand up for any civil rights. (Google gives me too many hits to pick just one.)
The problem is that there isn’t really a true opposite. It really doesn’t exist.
The Brady Campaign raised a little under $3 million in 2010. I don’t know how that compares to the NRA-ILA because they don’t seem to publish an annual report. For that matter, I couldn’t find an NRA annual report either.
Not good for the Brady financials. Have you ever seen NRA headquarters outside of Washington D.C.? It is a large building that probably costs more than $3 million to air condition for the year. I kid but not by much. You have to realize what you are dealing with when you decide to take on the NRA. It is one of the absolute most powerful lobbying groups in the U.S. The AARP is the only other one on that scale.
I say this a gun rights supporter even though I don’t own any now. People who aren’t familiar with large lobbying groups may just think that the NRA is another fringe movement that can be overtaken easily but that is certainly not the case. The NRA is huge and a few million dollars here or there is just pocket change to them. They are almost going to see a huge windfall in the immediate future.
Last I heard, the ACLU’s stance on firearms is that they deliberately choose not to take a stance, because either stance would alienate many of their supporters. Seems reasonable enough to me.
What about the Million Moms?
ACLU is wishy-washy on that issue, except at the state level, the Nevada ACLU is at least one that has supported the second amendment. AFAIK the bigger ACLU has dodged the issue mostly.
I do not see at all how it can be claimed that the NRA and ACLU are “mirrors.” They mostly cover non-overlapping areas. They’re hardly opposing either, except that they might give a tepid response to the other issues, and generally speaking the people who send them money aren’t politically aligned. I also disagree that "both occasionally take an absolutist position further than reason would dictate. " Defending stuff like the Klan’s free speech is distasteful, but it’s still principled in favor of all of our free speech.
The Brady Campaign’s political activity has been essentially zero. If they got $3 million they ate almost all of it internally.
Here is what is says on wikipedia
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Annual revenues for the NRA were around $150 million in 1994, up from $66 million in 1986. It spent $15 million on a new headquarters in the 1990s.
The NRA Office of Advancement[44] was created in 2005 to focus on building the NRA’s endowment and underwriting programs and projects through strategic, planned, and corporate gifts across the organization – including the NRA, the NRA Foundation, NRA-ILA, the NRA Freedom Action Foundation, the NRA Whittington Center, and the Civil Rights Defense Fund. In 2007, the NRA Office of Advancement launched a new donor recognition society called the Ring of Freedom[45] In 2010, the NRA Foundation was designated a Four Star Charity by Charity Navigator for the eighth consecutive year. The Office of Advancement also coordinates the “I’m the NRA and I Give” advertising campaign[46] and publishes the Ring of Freedom magazine.[47]
According to the Better Business Bureau’s web site, the NRA does not fall within the BBB’s scope of Standards for Charity Accountability. They do note the following financials for the NRA as of December 31, 2004. The NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre, received a yearly salary of $895,897 in 2004. They also indicated that fundraising costs accounted for 46% of the contributions received. The NRA is a 501(c)(4) organization and indicated that the NRA’s total income in 2004 was $205,402,491 and had expenses of $206,886,970. Total NRA assets at the end of 2004 were $222,841,128.
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