Factor 1 – History of personal possession of arms: Hunting was a profession and a major source of food when the US was an agrarian society.
Guns also kept the wild animals away, so, good shooting skills meant survival and something that separated men from the boys.
When America’s war of independence against Britain began in 1775, the army relied on soldiers to bring their own weapons.
Prior to this war, there was neither budget nor government desire to maintain a full-time army; an army was seen as a tool for oppression, and thus personal possession of arms was promoted over the establishment of army.
Factor 2 – Civil war and birth of NRA: The tipping point for gun culture was the civil war that broke out in 1861 between the North and a few Southern states that were against banning slavery and thus wanted to separate from the US.
The war ended in 1865 with the defeat of the south but it was found that the target-hitting of the North was very bad; for every 1000 bullets they fired, they hit one.
So, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871 with the objective of improving marksmanship using club practice, etc. and till 1975, that is mostly what the NRA did.
US army donated surplus rifles to NRA and NRA kept growing; it held competitions & kept its member informed about gun-related laws and policies.
Then assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s led to the Gun Control Act of 1968 to restrict and regulate the sale of firearms.
This created a divide between the NRA members with moderates favoring gun control and radicals supporting the right to gun ownership.
In 1975, NRA started its lobbying organ, ILA (short for Institute for Legislative Action) and control started shifting towards the radicals.
Then Political Victory Fund was started to support*In the US, groups, and individuals are legally allowed to back or attack candidates, as long as those campaigns are not made in cooperation with, or at the request of, a candidate. & fund gun rights laws and pro-gun political candidates.
In 1996, the NRA lobbied to make changes*Dickey Amendment in the federal spending bill that ensured negligible money was available for research that could promote gun control; this means in the last 25 years, there is no data collected on the impact of gun violence.
Today, NRA is believed to have 5 million official members and 17 million identifying themselves as members; this is a highly motivated pro-gun-candidates’ voter base.
Some of these members are in powerful positions and they are believed to have cultivated legal experts inside the judicial system that led to the 2008 Supreme Court’s ruling, which allowed everybody to have a gun with minimal restrictions.
Big money & power have helped the NRA to create a pro-gun environment by rewriting laws and positioning guns as a symbol of an individual’s right to protect himself/herself.
