OPINION:
As a young lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre found himself in the offices of powerful then-Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat, with then-Rep. Larry Craig, Idaho Republican, facing the fact that they didn’t have the votes to defeat a bill the NRA opposed.
The NRA, founded in New York in the years after the Civil War, counted among its early presidents the likes of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Philip Sheridan. It focused on gun safety training, competition running national firearms matches and promoting civilian gun ownership and use.
It was bipartisan, avoided politics whenever possible and employed no lobbyists, for there was no real need to do so. There was little argument about the meaning of the Second Amendment, though the NRA had fought some former Confederate states that had enacted legislation restricting gun ownership and possession along racial lines.
That changed, and by the 1960s, “gun control” had become part of the liberal agenda. The Gun Control Act of 1968 had been enacted at the behest of then-President Lyndon Johnson, and his Republican successor, Richard Nixon, favored even stricter regulations. Gun owners, hunters and those in Congress who represented them were worried.
It was in this atmosphere that Dingell observed that Second Amendment supporters had to be careful because, as he put it, the NRA was essentially a paper tiger. “She can roar, but she has no teeth,” Mr. Craig remembers him saying.
As Mr. LaPierre, a former high school teacher who grew up in Virginia, and Mr. Craig left Dingell’s office, they looked at each other and agreed that they’d better get the tiger some teeth. And that is exactly what they did.
Dingell, a staunch Second Amendment supporter, had earlier pushed the NRA to get more involved. The result was the creation of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action in 1975, which Mr. LaPierre would build into a powerhouse able to mobilize hundreds of thousands and later millions of gun owners to vote for their principles.
As head of the institute and later as executive vice president of the NRA itself, Mr. LaPierre built the NRA into one of the most influential and, yes, feared lobbying operations in U.S. history — the teeth it so badly needed.
Under his leadership, the NRA’s membership grew fivefold. NRA members won victory after victory in Congress, state legislatures and the courts. Today, more than 17 million Americans have permits allowing them to carry concealed weapons. Attempts to ban guns have been defeated time after time, and American gun owners have learned to look to the NRA and Wayne LaPierre for leadership in defending their rights.
That has made him one of the most loved and hated public figures in the country. His success has come at a price. NRA members love him, but those who disagree loath him and have been on the attack against him for years.
Gun control activists have celebrated the demise of Mr. LaPierre’s activist NRA more times than one can count. Following the passage of the Clinton administration’s so-called assault weapons ban, The Washington Post featured an above-the-fold. front-page headline predicting the end of NRA influence. They were wrong then, and those celebrating Mr. LaPierre’s departure now will be proved wrong, too.
Mr. LaPierre’s influence and ability to provide teeth to what was a paper tiger when he took over is a tribute to his sense of mission and hard work, along with a lifelong identification with the values of the millions of American gun owners who make up what he has always referred to as the NRA family.
He may have headed the family for more than 30 years, but he knew better than anyone that it was not he but the millions of Americans who make it up that have made the NRA the powerhouse it has become. For all of that, every Second Amendment supporter owes him a debt of gratitude.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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