NRA's historie og politiske indflydelse

- 1871Union Officers concerned by the poor marksmanship they had witnessed in battle formed NRA to train young man how to shoot better.

-1903 The NRA promoted shooting as a sport at colleges and universities and later they created a summer youth camp

- Before WW1 the NRA helped armed and trained civilians

-Before WW2, the NRA offered its ranges to military for marksmanship courses

- During the interwar years, after the repeal of prohibition the NRA became active in politics

- 1934 Congress moved to regulate guns for the first time particularly those used by Gangsters like AL Capone

- The NRA through its new legislative affairs division and new magazine

- Later, they banned machine guns and sawed-off shotguns after the assassination of President Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald who bought his gun through an ad in the American Rifleman

- Congress tried to end mail-order gun sales. The bill languished until 1968 after the killings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

-The gun control act of 1968 put new limits on firearm sales, regulating who could buy and sell them

-In 1970 with crime on the rise, a rift developed within the organization between those who want to focus on training, hunting and members who wanted to take a hardline on Second Amendment rights. The hardliners won.