Faltering NRA Finds Itself Under the Gun : Convention: Setbacks on Capitol Hill and in statehouses around the country are forcing the powerful lobbying group to take stock.

Once the object of fear and envy of any group that ever sought to influence a piece of legislation, the National Rifle Assn. comes here today in a virtual shambles.

The wounds still fresh from a stinging loss in the U.S. Senate two weeks ago over assault weapons, about 20,000 NRA members will try to regroup during their annual convention. One task will be to figure out what has gone wrong for a lobbying force seen by some as indomitable on Capitol Hill and in statehouses around the country.

“This is a very important meeting for us,” said Dick Riley, a four-decade NRA member who will probably become its newest president Saturday. “We’re at a period in our history when we’re seeing as great an assault on legitimate gun ownership and the Second Amendment as there’s ever been.”

But even as leaders of the 2.8-million-member organization seek a unified front behind a barrage of law-and-order talks and festive rallies this weekend, they will face potentially deep divisions within their own ranks, according to officials both inside and outside the Washington-based organization.

Underscoring the predicament faced by NRA leadership is that their convention is being held in a state that handed gun owners two critical recent losses--a ban on military-style assault weapons in the wake of the Stockton massacre of five schoolchildren and the imposition of a 15-day waiting period on the purchase of recreational rifles and shotguns.

“What the NRA is going to have to do at this meeting,” suggested Susan Whitmore, communications director at Handgun Control Inc., the NRA’s biggest nemesis, “is to explain to its membership a string of defeats and why it’s happened. . . .

“The scuttlebutt is that it’s possible there will be a shake-up at the convention because essentially, the NRA has had to learn two new words in the last year--lose and compromise, and the members are not happy,” she added. “The leadership is going to be held accountable.”

NRA leaders dismiss such talk as wishful thinking by their old adversaries in the gun-control sector and by a handful of malcontents within a group that reportedly has an annual budget of $87.5 million. And they insist that critics will see no moderation in their strong defense of gun rights--only a more aggressive posture in Washington and around the country in pressing for those rights.

Confident they can unify their members once again, NRA leaders plan to display that new aggressiveness with a public relations splash during the four-day convention.

U.S. Rep. Mike Espy, an NRA member, will address the group at its convention center at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers Hotel. He is billed as the first black congressman to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction, and his appearance is seen by some observers as an attempt by the NRA to reach out to blacks and inner-city residents who in public opinion polls have overwhelmingly favored gun control.

Ellen Morphonios, a U.S. Circuit Court judge in Florida with a tough “law-and-order “ reputation, will speak, too. The traditional gun exhibitors and instructors will be present in full force. And organizers plan a Friday evening rally, replete with music, speakers and streamers, to kick off a new campaign aimed at heading off gun-control initiatives around the country.

But behind the scenes, in closed sessions that will begin this morning, NRA leaders will be looking at long-range strategies, deciding fund-raising priorities and lobbying targets and, in general, trying to find a way to regain their position of strength.

“When any organization loses and doesn’t accomplish its objectives, there are always questions from its members as to how this could happen,” Riley said. “That’s only natural. But we’re prepared for it.”

And gun buff Neal Knox of Maryland, a longtime rabble-rouser within the NRA, says he has rarely, if ever, seen such signs of discontent within the organization.

A gun magazine writer and editor, Knox, 54, says he has received dozens of calls in recent weeks from gun-owning compatriots who are anxiously looking to this week’s convention to express their worries about the trend in gun control in this country and the NRA’s waning efforts to counter it.

Some suggest that the “Evil Empire”--so dubbed by former White House press secretary James Brady--may be crumbling. Brady, who was paralyzed in a 1981 assassination attempt, coined the phrase because of the NRA’s seeming ability to thwart any gun control initiatives.

“We’ve been slapped repeatedly and severely in the last year (by gun-control measures around the country), and I think it’s been the most traumatic time that gun owners have ever encountered,” Knox said.

The current NRA leadership, he said, has given too much in the name of compromise, abandoning the “hard-line” approach that has been its trademark. And he added: “If I were an NRA official right now, I wouldn’t be relishing going before a bunch of angry members.”

Added T.J. Johnston of Anaheim, another NRA member who is critical of the current leadership:

“There’s going to be a lot of kicking and screaming on that convention floor. . . . We have the right to own firearms until we misuse them, and that right should not be in any way restricted. The problem is, the NRA lately hasn’t been playing hardball enough in making that point.”

As divided as the organization appears, all seem to trace their recent losses in legislatures and in public opinion polls to the same source: associations of police chiefs around the country that were once strong allies of the NRA but that are now leading the charge for still-greater controls on the purchase and use of firearms.

James Baker, the NRA’s chief Washington lobbyist, acknowledges that, at a time of heightened public concern over crime, the image of a battle-weary police chief appealing for legislation that would get guns off the street is a difficult one to counteract.

But in a statement that is disputed by gun-control advocates, he added: “What doesn’t get reported is that there is a genuine division between these police chiefs’ associations (which are endorsing gun-control measures) and the rank-and-file police.

“The rank and file know that criminals by definition do not obey the law and will get their guns somehow, so all you’ve really done by passing these measures is to give the criminal another piece of paper to laugh at,” Baker said. “Our worst enemies are those who would seek to link law-abiding gun owners and the crime problem. Because the two have nothing to do with one another.”