3 GOP Leaders Take Aim at NRA Rhetoric

When the National Rifle Assn., firing its semiautomatic assault mouth, discharges a full clip of hate rhetoric comparing federal law officers to Nazi thugs, it becomes a fat target even Republicans can’t resist.

The GOP is the NRA’s natural ally. Republican politicians who are not apologists for the gun lobby--once widely respected, but now increasingly bellicose--usually just slink away from its inflammatory antics in embarrassment.

The California Capitol’s top three Republicans, however, fired off warning shots last week signaling that they think the organization is becoming intolerably reckless.

They were provoked by the same diatribe that prompted former President George Bush to resign his lifetime membership--the NRA fund-raising letter which referred to federal agents as “jack-booted thugs . . . wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms.”

“In Clinton’s Administration,” the letter said, “if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and state Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy are no friends of the Clinton Administration, but they couldn’t stomach that invective.

Addressing an annual memorial ceremony for slain peace officers, Wilson called the NRA hyperbole “an inexcusable slander” that was “not only a grotesque smear, but gives comfort to the real thugs--the brutal animals who take innocent lives. . . . It’s an insult to every officer who daily puts on a badge.”

Almost as an afterthought, the governor--speaking through a surrogate because he’s still recovering from throat surgery--added that “thankfully, the NRA has had the decency to apologize.”

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But Lungren called it “a limp apology.”

“Character isn’t just saying you’re in love with your guns,” the attorney general asserted in an interview. “Character is admitting you’re wrong--not issuing, after three weeks, that mealy-mouth apology.”

The NRA apologized to anyone who “thought the intention was to paint all federal law enforcement officials with the same broad brush.”

Lungren denounced the fund-raising letter as “obnoxious, abhorrent and totally irresponsible.”

For law officers, he said, “It’s worse than a slap in the face, it’s a spit in the face. If this kind of language were being spewed by leaders of inner-city gangs, there would be wholesale condemnation of it without batting an eyelash. I’m not going to accept this kind of conduct whether it comes from the NRA or street gangs like Crips and Bloods. . . .

“At some point, people should call them on this stuff.”

Lungren’s comments are intriguing politically--they’re both courageous and shrewd--because he wants to run for governor in 1998. His political base is conservative and so is the NRA’s. He could be risking loss of some right-wing support, but also might be broadening his base toward the center.

Already, gun groups have been picketing the attorney general, protesting his enforcement of California’s ban on assault weapons.

“Most people don’t think every gun conceived by man ought to be readily available on the street,” he said. “You don’t need to have bazookas, flamethrowers and semiautomatic weapons with 50-round magazines.”

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The unceasing fight over semiautomatics is an issue that separates Wilson from most GOP presidential contenders.

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas both advocate repealing the national ban on assault weapons that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pushed through last year. It was Feinstein, incidentally, who publicly disclosed Dole’s letter to the NRA pledging to lead the repeal effort, and later leaked the NRA fund-raising letter.

Wilson strongly opposes assault guns. “The name ‘assault weapon’ tells you what they’re for. They’re for combat,” he recently told me. “Yes, there is a right to keep and bear arms. But an assault weapon has no legitimate justification in a civilized society.”

Sen. Maddy represents a pro-gun district based in Fresno, but he still opposes assault weapons. “In many ways,” he said, “the NRA is a liability for Republicans.”

“We cannot be in the impossible position where to be an NRA supporter also puts us in the category of thinking fish and game officers are storm troopers,” Maddy declared. “I won’t fall victim to that. I’m not going to placate it. . . . The NRA is becoming harder for Republicans to support.”

The NRA should keep a lock on its hair-trigger rhetoric. It might raise less money from members, but it also could regain credibility and political support.