Word: controller
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...grumble that the pinstripe leadership in Washington has grown too accommodating. Hard-liners have split off to form their own bristling grouplets, while constant maneuvering has become a fact of life among the factions on the N.R.A.'s 75-member board. With more than 50 state and local gun-control bills awaiting action around the country, the group's leaders and many of its members are wondering how often -- if ever -- they should compromise. Just how fiercely should they stick to their guns...
...N.R.A. appears down, it is by no means out, especially since the same fear of crime that leads some people to call for gun control sends many others running to buy a side arm. "It's great to have the N.R.A. out there battling for us," says Jean Pitman of Vero Beach, Fla., who bought a pistol after her home was robbed. "The real worry for me is losing the right...
Nowhere is its enduring clout more evident than in Congress, where the group is preparing for another round in its fight against the Brady bill. (The proposal takes its unofficial name from James Brady and his wife Sarah, who became a gun-control activist after her husband was shot.) When the measure first went before the House in 1988, it lost by a vote of 228 to 182. This year few expect it to pass the House or even to emerge from committee in the Senate. Prospects are not much better for Senate passage of a bill to ban assault...
...N.R.A.'s brightest stars is its chief lobbyist, James Jay Baker, 36, a former assistant county prosecutor in Missouri, who is sometimes touted as the organization's next leader. Baker can talk like a true believer. "Gun control is a cop-out," he says, "an easy solution to a complex problem. And it doesn't work." But in Washington legislation is an art of compromise, and you cannot do much logrolling by digging in your heels. So Baker can also be more accommodating, recognizing the public's changing mood on gun owners' rights. "There are no absolute rights," he acknowledges...
...N.R.A. was founded in 1871 by a group of former Union Army officers dismayed that so many Northern soldiers, often poorly trained, had been scarcely capable of using their weapons. For many years it concentrated on marksmanship and gun safety. Fending off gun control did not become an important N.R.A. concern until the 1930s, when Congress passed a law restricting sawed-off shotguns and machine guns. Then came the 1960s and the grim wave of political assassinations. In the grief and anger that followed the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, Congress passed the Gun Control...