Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force by political scientist Matthew Lacombe is one of my Top 5 books on guns in America (as of August 2022). Lacombe correctly argues that much of the legislative strength of the National Rifle Association is due to its ability to politically mobilize guns owners on its behalf. And key to that political “weaponization” has been the cultivation of “gun owner” as a social identity in the first place.

Unlike many who tell a simplistic tale of the NRA, Lacombe rightly observes that the NRA was both highly political and highly ideological prior to the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977. In fact, in the Virtual Book Club I am running right now on Gun Country (another piece of The Master Narrative), Andrew McKevitt highlights activist journalist Carl Bakal’s claim in his book The Right to Bear Arms that “the NRA has for nearly four decades conducted one of the most intensive and imaginative lobbying operations witnessed in Washington” (p. 8). Written in 1966. The post-1977 difference is that the NRA became partisan and Lacombe explains how today’s NRA political alignment with the GOP grew.

This work contributes to The Master Narrative mostly in the final conclusion Lacombe draws from his meticulous and clever empirical analysis. In the final paragraph of the book he writes that the NRA “represents something of a democratic paradox: it subverts the will of the majority, but does so by working the levers of democracy” (pp. 236-7). Furthermore, “the NRA’s identity-based appeals tend to rely on fear in a way that encourages polarization, discourages compromise, and–in some cases–advances conspiratorial views that are misleading and offensive” (p. 237). The final sentence of the book that secures its standing in The Master Narrative reads: “In the end, then, the NRA demonstrates that groups can be effective at using democracy to their advantage, even to the point of undermining it” (p. 237).

My first example is actually not by a scholar, but the book so purely reflects The Master Narrative that it provides a great starting point: Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse. (I have previously reviewed the book here.) Busse is the former Vice President of Sales for the gun manufacturer Kimber. He is mad and he doesn’t deny it. He also wants to atone for his sins and this book is part of that process.

Busse argues that the National Rifle Association and its economic arm, the gun industry, have played a “leading role” in politically radicalizing America (p. 57). He concludes, “The gun industry and the NRA have successfully transformed an entire country” (p. 303).