How Many Registered Nra Members In California

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Whenever the National Burglarize Association is accused of extremism, it trots out the claim that it represents a large chunk of America's gun owners. Terminal week, it said it has iv.2 million members and counting. Though the group doesn't publish its membership rolls and didn't reply to questions virtually its size, there'due south a lot of anecdotal evidence that it is making itself out to exist bigger than it truly is.

Estimates of the size of the its membership accept varied widely over the past 20 years. At different times in 2008, for instance, it pegged its membership at three million and 4.3 million—a difference of more than forty percent. A 2012 certificate for prospective sponsors of the NRA'due south annual coming together (PDF), institute past Bloomberg News, said the group had 4 million members, of which 2 meg were the "most active and interested."

During the early 1990s, the NRA's membership peaked at around 3.seven million before plunging to 2.6 million in 1998, co-ordinate to newspaper stories at the time. The shrinkage coincided with criticism of the group's extremist rhetoric around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. If the NRA is to be believed, it quickly began replacing those lost members. But did it? Afterwards the late '90s, reports of its size start to spread out like buckshot from a sawed-off bird gun.

In March 2001, the Denver Postal service pegged the NRA's membership at 2 million. A few months later on, an NRA spokesman put the number at four.5 million; the Columbus Dispatch and Colorado Springs Gazette put it at 3 million. What was going on here? One possible explanation comes from Richard Feldman, a one-time NRA lobbyist who wrote the 2007 book, Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist. After George Due west. Bush was elected, Feldman recently told Bloomberg, "in that location was no perceived national threat to gun buying. The NRA'south membership dropped to nether 2-and-a-one-half 1000000, although they never admitted information technology."

Writing in 2000, when the NRA claimed to take 3.6 million members, journalist Osha Grey Davidson speculated on some of the group'due south strategies for fluffing itself upwards:

Two years ago, David Gross, then an NRA board member, confided to me that a substantial number of the group's 1 meg Life Members are, well, dead. "There just isn't that much incentive to get find out when someone passes away," Gross explained. "Not when the toll of maintaining (a dead member) is minimal and when they add together to your membership list."

Who else is included in that effigy of iii.half-dozen million? I may exist—although I haven't been a member for years. Not long ago, I received an NRA form letter stating that in recognition of my previous commitment to the Second Amendment, the gun group had granted me an honorary membership. The mailing even included an NRA membership card embossed with my name.

It's all function of the NRA'southward campaign of smoke and mirrors to make itself announced more formidable in Washington, where appearance often trumps reality. The NRA leadership must offer a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of journalistic sloth and credulity every time a reporter repeats that figure of three.vi one thousand thousand members and the words "record loftier."

An ad for a Taurus pistol in the NRA'due south American Rifleman
magazine offers free membership in the group. American
Rifleman

The NRA has boosted its membership numbers in other means. A 2008 effect of the NRA Recruiter, a newsletter aimed at the association's evangelists, proudly noted that weapons makers and outfitters such as Browning, Beretta, Taurus, Tactical Rifles, and Wilson Combat were offering free NRA memberships to anyone purchasing their products. The newsletter likewise talked upward the benefits of "Join NRA, Get in Free" promotions at gun shows. "This is, by far, the most effective way to substantially increase your numbers," it said. "…[A]ll yous accept to do is 'sell the sizzle.' People are always looking for a bargain."

In 2008, Josh Sugarmann, executive managing director of the pro-gun control Violence Policy Center, came across more than evidence of the NRA'south fuzzy math. He pointed to a piece of junk mail that the NRA's treasurer had sent to members peddling a specialized insurance plan aimed at gun owners. The pitch stated that "with nearly 3 million NRA Members 'on our side of the table,' nosotros negotiated a bargain price." Sugarmann has an intriguing theory why this number may be more apparent than the one that the NRA routinely gives the press: The underwriter for the insurance program was in California, where making "untrue, deceptive, or misleading" statements in insurance materials is outlawed.

Last week, the NRA claimed that information technology had added 100,000 new members in the weeks following he Sandy Hook massacre. "Our goal is to get to five million before this fence is over," a representative of the group told Politico. If all of the NRA'south numbers are to exist believed, it will hitting its target by this fall.

UPDATE: A source writes in with another strong indication that the NRA's true size is closer to iii one thousand thousand. The NRA gives members a gratis subscription to one of four magazines: American Rifleman, American Hunter, America'due south 1st Freedom, or NRA InSights. The beginning 3 magazines are audited by the Alliance for Audited Media, which as of July gave them a combined paid circulation (including newsstand sales) of 3.1 million. NRA InSights is an online-just magazine for kids, with a circulation of 25,000. Though some NRA members may opt out of a costless magazine, it'southward likely that others pay to subscribe to more than one of them. Add in the fact that non-NRA members can pick up the magazines on the newsstand, and the 3.1 meg figure is almost certainly an upper-bound for the NRA'south true size.

How Many Registered Nra Members In California,

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2013/01/nra-membership-numbers/

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