Faced with budget pressures and an invigorated gun control movement, the National Rifle Association has found a new cause amid the pandemic — fighting to keep gun stores open as its fundraising appeals depict the government’s coronavirus response as a threat to Second Amendment rights.
On Thursday, the group sued the state of New York over its decision to include gun retailers among the many businesses that have been forced to close during the crisis. The NRA had already filed two suits against California, where the governor had left the decision to counties.
NEWS: NRA Sues NY, Seeks Gun Stores to be Designated “Essential”
“This is clearly another assault by Gov. Cuomo on the NRA, on the rights of New Yorkers to defend themselves and their families, and on our 2A freedoms. NRA will continue to fight all such attacks.” –Wayne LaPierre
— NRA (@NRA) April 3, 2020
The suits come as the NRA and other gun groups have successfully lobbied the White House to get the Department of Homeland Security to add firearms vendors to its list of essential businesses. That prompted states like New Jersey to reverse course and allow such stores to remain open. But New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, has resisted, viewing the shutdown of businesses across the state as a vital safety measure.
“There isn’t a single person who has ever used a gun in self-defense who would consider it nonessential,” the NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, said in a statement, calling the shutdown of gun stores an assault “on our Second Amendment freedoms.”
Letitia James, attorney general of New York, said in a statement that “everyone — including the NRA — must follow the law and all executive orders of New York.”
“We will aggressively defend the state against yet another legal assault by the NRA,” she added.
Heading into the pandemic, gun control groups viewed 2020 as an opportunity. Their spending has been surging in recent elections, and Everytown for Gun Safety, whose biggest backer has been Michael Bloomberg, plans to spend $60 million this year across the ballot.
By contrast, the NRA has been in a weakened position. While it played a pivotal role in the 2016 race, spending $30 million to help elect President Donald Trump, it has more recently been sapped by internal dissent, litigation and outside investigations, and was already seen as unlikely to match that figure this year.
Over the past several months, the White House and the Trump campaign have hedged their bets by more aggressively reaching out to other gun groups. While the NRA’s preeminence remains, in part because of its ability to mobilize supporters, it faced further challenges when the pandemic forced it to cancel its convention, an important source of revenue, as well as a number of fundraising events, leading to a round of layoffs and to pay cuts of at least 20% across the organization.
“We’re all confronting this,” Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA spokesman, said in an interview. “The convention was millions of dollars,” adding that “just like everyone else, we’re facing a loss of revenue.”
But demand for firearms has been surging as lines form at some gun stores during the pandemic, with background checks rising more than 40% in March from a year earlier, developments seen as an opportunity by the NRA.
“This has brought new people into the gun rights movement,” Arulanandam said. The surge in sales, he said, would “end up strengthening us.”
The group has been retooling its strategy. Many on the right played down the virus, including at the NRA — Willes Lee, the board’s second vice president, called it an “election ploy.” But the organization itself has focused on the ramifications of the sweeping response in many states, sending out messages to its supporters with headlines like “COVID-19: Threat to Second Amendment” and “Pandemic Exposes Dangers of So-Called ‘Universal’ Background Checks.”
On Wednesday, the NRA tweeted about the sharp rise in gun sales: “what do they expect when they are releasing inmates while closing gun shops during a pandemic.” The group has also circulated a video in which a disabled woman holding an assault weapon issues a warning to people buying extra food: “If you aren’t preparing to defend your property when everything goes wrong, you’re really just stockpiling for somebody else.”
NEWS: 2.5 MILLION GUNS WERE SOLD IN MARCH – the highest sales volume in recorded history.
Gun-hating politicians won’t like this, but what do they expect when they are releasing inmates while closing gun shops during a pandemic.
Americans don’t want to be defenseless. #2A
— NRA (@NRA) April 1, 2020
Such sentiments are maddening to the NRA’s opponents.
“They’re mired in crisis, strapped for cash, and so revert to the old playbook — fearmongering about the collapse of society — in order to raise money,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, adding that the NRA was trying to convince people that “apocalypse is on its way.”
The lawsuit against New York is the NRA’s latest legal battle with the state. In February, regulators charged the company with improperly selling insurance in the state without a license. For the past year, the NRA, a nonprofit chartered in New York, has been under investigation by James’ office, which is examining allegations of corruption and self-dealing. The NRA has also sued the state, claiming that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration improperly pressured banks and insurers to stop doing business with the gun group.
As the two sides of the firearms debate prepare to square off in the 2020 election, gun control groups have rallied around the likely Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. Guns are one of the rare issues on which Biden has more progressive credentials than his remaining rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has had a cautious approach to gun control.
But for gun groups, Biden has become a polarizing figure. Last month, the NRA seized on Biden’s confrontation with a gun owner at a Michigan assembly plant. Gun activists were also incensed when Biden embraced former Rep. Beto O’Rourke at a Texas rally earlier this year, promising, “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me.” O’Rourke took the hardest line on gun control during his presidential bid, proposing not just to end sales of assault weapons but to confiscate existing ones.
The election will be a test for the NRA and for LaPierre. Amid the NRA’s troubles last year, the White House increased its contacts with other organizations.
“They are reaching out to other gun rights groups for this election,” Alan Gottlieb, head of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in an interview earlier this year. Gottlieb said that he had come to the West Wing in December and met with officials there, though not Trump, and that he separately met with Trump campaign officials in the fall and had been in contact since.
“The fact they have been reaching out as much as they have been, since things started internally at the NRA, one has to assume that they want to stay plugged in to the gun rights constituency,” he said.
Several organizations, along with the NRA, were involved in the lobbying effort to have gun stores declared essential.
“We talked to a number of folks at the White House and Homeland Security,” said Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group. “The ability to exercise your constitutional rights begins at the retail counter. If you can’t purchase at the retail counter, your rights are denied.”
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