Party-Group Alignment of the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association

• In Event: Parties, Activists, and Other Groups in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Abstract

The National Rifle Association is widely acknowledged to be a prominent member of the Republican coalition. The organization provides a wide-range of valuable resources to GOP politicians and its members are reliable supporters of Republican candidates and causes. In exchange, the NRA is given substantial influence within the party; the GOP strongly supports the NRA’s policy agenda and often promotes its general worldview. This was not always the case; the NRA used to support candidates from both parties and generally avoided attachment to partisan or ideological labels. Moreover, politicians used to be much less polarized on gun control by party and Republican voters used to support gun regulations at much higher rates than they do now. This paper marshals a wide-range of archival and text-based evidence to examine when and why the NRA and GOP became so closely aligned. It argues that the NRA’s transition into the Republican coalition came as a product of entrepreneurial action, mass-level resources, and institutional developments that together altered the incentives of both the NRA and the GOP.

Author

• Matthew Lacombe, Barnard College, Columbia University