News Gives NRA a Shot in the Arm : Politics: For association’s leaders meeting in Anaheim, the boost couldn’t have come at a better time.

As firearms exhibitors unloaded their wares here Thursday morning for the biggest public event at the National Rifle Assn.’s annual convention, NRA leaders huddled behind closed doors a few hundred yards away to track the real gun news.

“What’s the story?” NRA Chief Executive Officer Warren Cassidy anxiously asked his chief federal lobbyist, who had just gotten off the phone with his staffers in Washington.

The story, as those group leaders who were gathered in the room knew all too well, was the prospect of a U.S. Senate ban on some military-style assault weapons. And for them, the news was good: the sweeping crime bill that included the ban had been stalled indefinitely in a vote that Senate supporters blamed in part on a fierce, last-minute attack by the NRA.

For beleaguered NRA leaders, who will have to explain a series of recent legislative losses to an increasingly frustrated membership at the convention this weekend, the win could not have come at a better time.

The group’s official reaction, as voiced by chief lobbyist Jim Baker at an impromptu press conference at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers hotel, was one of “mixed emotions.”

While the NRA had pushed hard to kill the assault-rifle portion of the bill as a staunch threat to the Second Amendment, it had supported other components on the death penalty and other toughened crime measures, Baker said, making the Senate vote only a partial win.

More typical, however, was the unbridled enthusiasm of Harlon Carter, NRA executive committee member and former president, who said in an interview, “If indeed the crime bill is dead, glory be!”

Cassidy, relating the early-morning update on the Senate bill, said NRA leaders were both relieved and thrilled by word of the legislation’s apparent demise.

But he and other NRA leaders said the assault-gun ban could still be revived in some form by gun-control advocates and warned that they are preparing for a tough fight.

“We don’t feel our enemies are going to give up that easily,” said legislative policy committee chairman Richard Riley, who is likely to be elected the next president of the NRA on Saturday.

In Washington, Senate supporters of the crime bill and its anti-assault gun provision blamed their inability to cut off debate on the measure on a torrent of mailings by the NRA to members in eight states, targeting senators whose votes were seen as threatening. Majority Leader George Mitchell, one of the targets of phone calls from NRA members, said many of the statements in the mailings were “false and misleading.”

But NRA officials insisted that their campaign included only “the truth” about the threat posed by gun controls to law-abiding firearms owners--and the inability to deter criminals who they say will manage to get ahold of guns no matter what the laws.

“If the American people knew the truth,” said Riley, “we wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with.”

But the NRA was in this situation because of the Senate’s surprising decision two weeks ago to include in its crime package a ban on 14 semiautomatic assault rifles and pistols. The move would have expanded the list of banned weapons beyond 43 other imports that President Bush outlawed last summer under an administrative order.

The Senate vote unleashed hundreds of phone calls to the NRA headquarters in Washington from angry members demanding to know what had happened to a group with an $87.5-million annual budget and a reputation as an unbeatable lobbying force on Capitol Hill.

If nothing else, the defeat of the crime bill Thursday shows that the NRA is still a force to be reckoned with in national politics, despite reports of its waning influence, group leaders insisted.

“Seems like our future is supposedly always threatened, but we keep on surviving and keep on thriving,” Carter said. But officials acknowledged that, after a string of gun-control restrictions at the federal level and in California, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states, it may take more than a single vote to pacify NRA members.

“There’s a great deal of frustration among the membership based on a very tough year,” Baker said. “I think that you’re going to see that frustration played out at the annual membership meeting.”

The NRA convention gets into full swing today with the start of the gun exhibit at the Anaheim Convention Center, which is open to the public and is expected to draw about 250 dealers. At the Hilton, about 20,000 members are also expected to take part in workshops, committee meetings, an awards luncheon and a rally to kick off a new anti-gun control campaign.