NRA's political clout is waning

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The NRA may have become a victim of its own success.

Congress hasn't passed major legislation to restrict gun use in 14 years. Democrats -- scarred by past NRA campaigns -- almost never talk about the issue anymore.

And Americans now show little interest in gun control. Just half want tougher rules for gun sales, compared with nearly two-thirds in 2000.

"The issue has been essentially removed from the political agenda," said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York in Cortland who has written extensively about the politics of gun control.

This marks a major victory for gun rights groups, which less than a decade ago were fending off demands from both Democrats and Republicans for strict new limits on gun ownership after the 1999 Columbine school shootings.

Yet that very triumph may prove politically perilous for Republicans hoping to put John McCain in the White House. Two years ago, GOP candidates backed by the NRA lost in a number of swing states, including Virginia, Missouri and Wisconsin, that could play pivotal roles this fall.

NRA leaders, who plan to spend millions on the presidential campaign, said they would be able to mobilize their members and bring key states into the GOP column Nov. 4.

"Voters have proven election after election that this issue is one of their first freedoms," NRA Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said in a recent interview. "When people feel uncertain, when people feel unsafe, they run right back to the 2nd Amendment."

In 2000, the gun group converted that emotion into results. Tony Coelho, a former California congressman who managed Gore's presidential campaign, is among many analysts who think the NRA delivered the election for George W. Bush by highlighting Gore's endorsement of tougher gun laws. "It was critical," he said.

Coelho noted that had more gun owners voted for Gore in West Virginia, Tennessee or Arkansas -- all states targeted by the NRA -- he would have been president.

This year, gun rights groups see Obama's past positions on gun control as an equally inviting target.

When Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996, he appeared to endorse a ban on handguns. (He has since said that campaign aides incorrectly indicated that position on a candidate questionnaire and that he has never favored a ban.)

Obama voted against state legislation in 2001 and 2004 to ease restrictions on gun use. And in Washington, the senator opposed a 2005 bill to give gun manufacturers new protections from lawsuits.

He provided further ammunition for his critics in April with comments about "bitter" voters who "cling to guns or religion." Three weeks later in the Pennsylvania primary, Obama lost nearly two-thirds of voters from gun-owning households, according to exit polls.

The NRA has already begun attacking Obama in its magazines, a key medium for communicating with members. The group claims a membership of 4 million; critics say it is less.

"Right now, one of the most anti-gun politicians ever to set foot in Washington, D.C., may be just one election away from the Oval Office," NRA President John C. Sigler warned in the June issue of America's 1st Freedom, which also labeled Obama a "gun-ban elitist."

At the NRA's annual convention last month, Republican Party leaders, including McCain and former Bush strategist Karl Rove, echoed the NRA rhetoric, drawn from its well-thumbed political playbook that casts Democrats as foes of sportsmen and other gun owners.

But the new battle cries come at a time when the NRA has largely won the war.