Gun owners find new outlets as NRA fades
Bob Mokos is a passionate gun owner who on the surface would seem like a card-carrying National Rifle Association member.
The retired airline pilot has been shooting guns since he was a child. The Vietnam veteran got more serious about firearms as a civilian after one of his sisters was fatally shot during a mugging in Chicago. After the 9/11 terror attacks, he became qualified to carry a gun in the cockpit.
But Mokos has grown so disillusioned with the NRA over the years that he has joined forces with a rival organization — the gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
“The more gun owners I contacted, the more I found out that everybody is thinking the same thing: The NRA does not speak for us,” said Mokos, who was a founder of the Minnesota Gun Owners for Safety.
As the 2020 presidential campaign draws closer, gun control groups are seizing on the turmoil engulfing the NRA — as well as recent high profile shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio, and this weekend's in Odessa and Midland, Texas — to court firearms owners in hopes of persuading them that there can be bipartisan solutions to gun violence that don't infringe on their Second Amendment rights.
Giffords' group formed coalitions this year with gun owners in Colorado, Minnesota and Texas in outreach that managing director Robin Lloyd said was done expressly to show that not all gun owners believe in the NRA.
“The fallacy that the NRA has perpetuated for so long is that you're either for the Second Amendment or you're for taking away people's guns,” Lloyd said.
At the same time, various pro-gun organizations at the state level have been more active in staking their claim as the true defenders of the Second Amendment. Many of those advocates see the NRA as too focused on raking in donations to fuel a large organization out of touch with American gun owners.
“I don' t think anybody doubts, even the most ardent critics, that they're the biggest gun lobby on the block and probably will be still for the foreseeable future,” said Greg Pruett, president of Idaho Second Amendment Alliance. “But I think a lot of people are starting to realize ... we have this large machine but it's not doing what we're paying it to do, so where do we turn in the meantime until they either get things cleaned up? Or is the NRA done in some regards and we're going to suffer the consequences of their bad leadership at the ballot box?”
Long viewed as the most powerful gun lobby in the world, the NRA has been facing internal and external pressures over its operations and spending habits. Law enforcement authorities have launched probes that threaten its non-profit status and there has been a revolt by members who are questioning the NRA's finances and leadership.