The National Rifle Association is busy soliciting new members—even offering discounted membership fees—and spreading its message that President Obama will unveil an anti-gun agenda sometime, perhaps as a "wellness" component of health care reform.
The influence of the NRA can also be seen in a spate of laws passed over the last two years that introduce guns into venues in which they weren't seen before.
In Tennessee, for example, handguns can now be taken into bars and restaurants where alcohol is served, and onto playgrounds and sports fields. Tennessee and Montana also have laws that make weapons manufactured and owned within the state exempt from federal restrictions.
Montana, Kansas and Arizona allow convicted felons who have had their civil rights restored or their convictions expunged to get permits to carry handguns.
And in even in an era when employers worry about shootings by disgruntled or fired workers, businesses in Arizona, Utah, Louisiana and Florida can't prohibit employees from keeping guns in their vehicles when they park in the firms' lots.
But even as these gun-friendly laws proliferate, evidence suggests that many NRA members are more moderate in their thinking than the organization itself and its leaders, as conservative pollster Frank Luntz found when he queried 832 gun owners, 401 of whom were NRA members.
A very high number, for example—86 percent—said the country could "do more to stop criminals from getting guns" while at the same time protecting citizens' rights to own them. Eight-two percent of those who were NRA members said people on terrorist watch lists shouldn't be allowed to buy guns.
Seventy-eight percent of the NRA members polled thought gun owners should be required to notify police if their guns were lost or stolen. (The gun used by a street peddler who died in a shootout with police in New York's Times Square Dec. 10 had earlier been reported stolen in Richmond, Va.; that information started up an investigation of whether the gun might have arrived in New York as part of a gun trafficking operation).
And 69 percent of NRA members polled said vendors at gun shows should have to run criminal background checks on people who buy guns.
