GO AHEAD, MAKE OUR DAY

Ray guzman is just the sort of person you'd trust with a gun. Three years ago, after buying a weekend home in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, Guzman decided to take up hunting. But before he bought his 12-gauge Remington shotgun, he enrolled in a National Rifle Association safety course. "I didn't want to be a hypocrite as a firearm owner who doesn't practice firearm safety," he said. But now Guzman, 41, a sign-shop owner, is thinking of quitting the organization. While he supports the N.R.A.'s education programs, he is disturbed that in the midst of public anxiety about antigovernment violence, the N.R.A. is plowing ahead with its campaign to repeal the federal ban on assault weapons. And he takes issue with the N.R.A. fund-raising letter that called federal officials "jackbooted government thugs," the language that prompted former President Bush to quit the N.R.A. "George Bush has really opened my eyes," says Guzman. "The N.R.A. is too much to the right."

David Dunklee, on the other hand, feels a renewed pride in the N.R.A. now that its focus has shifted from sporting issues to a zealous defense of gun ownership. Like many N.R.A. members, he fears that the citizenry's right to bear arms has been sorely challenged by such incidents as the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the 1992 standoff between Randy Weaver and federal agents at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. "There should be more investigation. The government needs to explain itself more fully," says Dunklee, a range instructor in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been an N.R.A. member since 1989, but only recently felt passionate enough to pay $500 for a lifetime membership. "If you can't protect yourself and the police can't either," he says, "then you're in trouble."

On the surface, the N.R.A. would appear to be the one in trouble, with its house divided, its behavior widely condemned, its membership perceived as kooky, its legislative agenda upended by such defeats as the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. But in fact the n.r.a. is making a powerful comeback, as a more militant organization. While it has increasingly alienated a majority of America's gun owners, not to mention the public at large, the N.R.A. has attracted a more radical following that is willing to give money and work vigorously toward the organization's goals.

Armed with an increasingly combative message that posits a tyrannical government as its main adversary, the 124-year-old organization is at peak power. Annual revenues for 1994 stood at $148 million, up 16% over the prior year, and membership has surged to a record 3.5 million members. "That's twice as many as the Christian Coalition," boasts Arizona sheriff Richard Mack. At the same time, the N.R.A. has developed a grass-roots network of political activists that, at a time of low voter turnout, is inspiring a new level of fear on Capitol Hill. "We have a political system that rewards intensity," says Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "The only way you overcome that is to match their intensity with an intensity among those on the other side, and in the gun debate that has not happened."