The National Rifle Association

The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two Union veterans dismayed at how poorly their soldiers had shot during the Civil War. For its first century the NRA was chiefly a sportsmen's organization, devoted to marksmanship training, hunting, competitive shooting, and firearms safety, and it worked comfortably with the government, even supporting some early gun-control laws. It was, for generations, a club rather than a cause.

That changed in 1977. At a convention in Cincinnati, a hardline faction seized control of the organization from its old sporting leadership and reoriented it around political advocacy built on an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. From then on the NRA devoted its energy to opposing gun-control legislation and defending what it framed as the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, a right it presented as fundamental to liberty and self-defense.

Over the following decades the NRA became one of the most effective lobbies in Washington. It graded politicians on their votes, mobilized its millions of members at election time, and repeatedly blocked or weakened gun-control measures even after mass shootings. To its supporters it was the indispensable guardian of a constitutional freedom against government overreach. To its critics it was the chief obstacle to laws they believed could reduce America's uniquely high levels of gun violence.

The association's later years brought financial strain and leadership scandals that dented its power, but it remained at the center of one of the nation's most intractable debates. The argument the NRA embodies — between the right to bear arms and the demand for gun regulation — reaches back to the Second Amendment itself and shows no sign of resolution, making the organization a fixture of American political life.