NRA Convention Launches War Against Gore

Shifting its sights from President Clinton to his would-be successor, the National Rifle Assn. unleashed a furious assault on Vice President Al Gore Saturday in an effort to mobilize its 3.6 million members for the November election.

In a personal message delivered “especially for you, Mr. Gore,” NRA President Charlton Heston brandished a gold-plated gun and declared that the only way the government would take it away was “from my cold, dead hands.”

Heston’s bravado drew wild cheers from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 2,000 members, many of whom regard the actor who played Moses and Ben-Hur as a modern-day icon who has re-energized the gun-rights movement in the face of widespread challenges.

More important, the fiery rhetoric on the second day of the group’s national convention signaled the NRA’s intent to give the gun-control debate an even higher profile in the presidential campaign.

The NRA already has dramatically increased its political spending for this election cycle; its donations of unregulated “soft money” make it one of the top contributors to the Republican Party.

And NRA leaders said Saturday that they intend to raise as much as $15 million for contributions to the party and to candidates by November, an increase of about 25% over their peak spending for past elections.

In recent months, the NRA has stepped up its attacks on Clinton, suggesting that he tolerated gun killings and failed to enforce existing laws to further his own political agenda. But in speech after speech Saturday, NRA leaders showed that Gore is now the primary focus of their broadsides.

And in Washington, exactly one year after Gore cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate for a measure that would have required background checks of sales at gun shows, the vice president’s campaign staff was firing right back.

“George W. Bush and the NRA are working hip holster to hip holster to promote an extremist agenda,” campaign spokesman Chris Lehane said. “Al Gore will continue to fight for common-sense gun reform to protect our families, and he’ll fight against the NRA and George W. Bush’s extremist positions.”

Among the gun-control measures supported by Gore is the licensing of gun owners.

There was virtually no mention at the NRA convention of Texas Gov. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who is seen as far more friendly to gun owners.

Indeed, some Republicans worry that Bush may be seen as too gun-friendly. Earlier this month, a videotape surfaced of an NRA vice president declaring that if Bush is elected, “we’ll have a president” where “we’ll work out of their office.”

James Jay Baker, the NRA’s chief political strategist, said after the convention speeches that despite the controversy over the videotape, NRA leaders made no conscious effort Saturday to avoid mentioning Bush.

“Bush hasn’t been attacking us,” Baker said, while Gore “has basically set himself up for this sort of treatment from us.

“The other side has made a very concerted effort to try to demonize gun ownership . . . and this organization,” he said. “And we’re not going to sit by and let them do that.”

The confrontational tone came in sharp contrast to the softer image the NRA sought to project just a day earlier in announcing plans for a multimedia store and restaurant in New York City’s Times Square that cater to sport shooters.

In announcing those plans Friday, NRA leaders talked in gushing terms about the safe family values that shooting sports embody.

But on Saturday, military imagery dominated the day.

Heston, citing U.S. presidents who “hung around until the war was won,” said he looks forward to being reelected Monday to an unprecedented third term as NRA president because “I’ll hang around until we win this one too.”

And the rallying cry at the packed conference hall, repeated as a mantra by NRA leaders, was: “If Gore is elected . . . “

They predicted that a Gore presidency would mean not only the licensing and registration of handguns, but ultimately a ban on guns--despite the insistence of Clinton administration officials and Gore, who say they have no interest in banning guns.

Wayne R. LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, asked convention-goers to envision a Supreme Court stacked with Hillary Rodham Clinton as chief justice, alongside Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey.

“That’s why this election this fall holds the most critical confrontation the 2nd Amendment has ever faced,” he said.

The idea that more gun-control laws would stem gun violence is “all a big, stinking, dangerous Al Gore lie,” LaPierre said.

“Mr. Gore, you picked the wrong freedom to condemn, and you picked the wrong organization to abuse,” he said.

The theme struck a chord with many of the tens of thousands of NRA members at the convention, where they have been to speeches and seminars, and browsed a hall filled with guns and accessories.

Sunday’s seminars include one on issues for female NRA members and another on methods of carrying a concealed weapon.

A variety of interests brought people to the convention, some from California. Some members are small-game hunters, others are skeet shooters. A few collect finely crafted gun miniatures, while others wanted to check out the latest, most powerful weapons on display.

Many members, however, even new ones such as Danny Rayburn, a 41-year-old insurance adjuster from Charlotte, shared a strong distrust of government.

“Little by little, our rights are being taken away,” said Rayburn, a target and sport shooter who joined the NRA just this weekend. “Any dictator, the first thing they did was take away the guns. . . . If they decide to do that here, we’ll be at their mercy.”

The answer to gun violence, James Pollard of Raleigh, N.C., said as he and his 19-year-old son ogled a .50-caliber rifle, lies not in more gun laws, but in more “personal responsibility.”

Pollard, a maintenance technician who hunts rabbits and other small game, said that even proposals for registering guns and licensing their owners scare him.

“Once the government has got that list--I’ve got this figured out--then they’ll come to your house at 3 o’clock in the morning and say ‘Give us your guns,’ ” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”