Under Fire

In Scottsdale, Ariz., National Rifle Association President Joe Foss knows exactly where he stands on the question of gun control. A highly decorated World War II fighter pilot, a former Governor of South Dakota, first commissioner of the American Football League, and a retired brigadier general, Foss speaks with the relish of a man with unyielding convictions. "I say all guns are good guns," he pronounces. "There are no bad guns. I say the whole nation should be an armed nation. Period."

At a time when firearms in the U.S. are involved in more than 30,000 deaths each year and drug gangs sport arsenals that a small army might envy, that militantly progun position has put the National Rifle Association at odds with the majority of Americans. To its opponents, the N.R.A. is the Darth Vader of special-interest groups, a force of 2.8 million members who can launch a tidal wave of constituent letters toward any legislator who ventures a word in support of gun control. Speaking before Congress last year, James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was wounded during John Hinckley's 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan, called the N.R.A. an "evil empire" that tries to block any effort to redress the tragedy of gun violence.

That kind of hyperbole too often characterizes the gun debate on both sides. For one thing, Brady's description hardly does justice to a complex association that is partly a lobby, partly a sporting group and largely a gathering of the faithful. It also won't do because the N.R.A. is not just another special-interest group. It is the pivotal player in the evolving national concern about guns. What the N.R.A. is, and what it becomes, will do much to determine the outcome of that debate.

In a nation of 70 million gun owners, the N.R.A. speaks to a venerable American attachment to firearms. There may be no other society in which guns enjoy such a deeply embedded prestige or such enduring glamour. Many Americans contend that the wide distribution of firepower among all levels of society was crucial to establishing the republic and is essential to maintaining it. The N.R.A. has gone further, putting firearms at the center of a faith so fierce that the ordinary terms of political belief -- words like "conviction" and "position" -- may not be sufficient to grasp it. Says N.R.A. Executive Vice President J. Warren Cassidy: "You would get a far better understanding if you approached us as if you were approaching one of the great religions of the world."

Like most religions, the N.R.A. must contend with heretics and schisms. And like many empires, it may not be as imposing as it looks. Some N.R.A. members complain that the organization is in the grip of extremists who have turned off the public, while others grumble that the pinstripe leadership in Washington has grown too accommodating. Hard-liners have split off to form their own bristling grouplets, while constant maneuvering has become a fact of life among the factions on the N.R.A.'s 75-member board. With more than 50 state and local gun-control bills awaiting action around the country, the group's leaders and many of its members are wondering how often -- if ever -- they should compromise. Just how fiercely should they stick to their guns?