Gun lobby prepares for battle over rights

Last Saturday, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, urged delegates at the group’s annual convention in St Louis, Missouri, to prepare for “the storm that lies ahead”.

He was referring to the threat posed to the gun lobby by a Democratic-controlled Congress and the risk that the White House could also fall into enemy hands next year.

Mr LaPierre cannot have imagined that the storm he predicted would arrive two days later in the most tragic circumstances.

Monday’s fatal shooting of 32 students on a Virginia college campus has thrust the issue of gun control back towards the top of the political agenda and put the country’s powerful gun lobby on the defensive.

Opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Americans would support stricter controls – a Gallup poll last year found 56 per cent in favour – and the proportion is likely to increase following this week’s tragedy.

But, for many of the estimated 80m Americans in possession of a firearm, gun ownership remains a cherished constitutional right.

According to accounts of his speech at the NRA convention, Mr LaPierre implored gun-owners to resist those seeking to limit the “right to bear arms”. “Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure,” he warned.

The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying organisations in the US, with more than 4m members and a $180m annual budget. Its role in helping secure Republican control of the White House and Congress for much of the past decade has arguably been matched only by the Christian conservative movement.

Before the 2000 presidential election, the NRA boasted that it was so close to George W. Bush that it would “work out of [his] office”.