The Myth of "The Revolt at Cincinnati."

[ScottS]

A lot a anti's like to propagate the fiction that the NRA wasn't always a pro-2A group, and that the change happened at the Annual Convention in 1977, when hard-liners staged a "coup" and forever shifted the NRA to the right. It was after that takeover that the NRA became a political powerhouse. You see that story repeated a lot, as in this example from SFGate:

For most of its history, the NRA completely ignored the Second Amendment. If you go through old issues of the NRA's signature publication, American Rifleman, from the 1940s and 1950s, you can read issue after issue without finding a single mention of the Second Amendment. The organization was focused on marksmanship and hunting, not shooting down gun control.

All that was before what is known in gun circles as the "Cincinnati Revolt" of 1977. The gun-control movement was gaining steam because of a large spike in urban crime rates. The leaders of the NRA decided to quit Washington politics and move the headquarters to Colorado Springs, where they could focus on outdoors activities and recreational shooting.

This enraged an emerging group of gun-rights hardliners who thought guns weren't primarily about hunting; they were for self-defense against criminals. Led by Harlon Carter, the hardliners secretly organized against the NRA's moderate leadership at the annual meeting of the membership in Cincinnati. Manipulating the rules of order, the hardliners staged a coup from the floor.

When the sun rose the next day, the entire leadership of the NRA had been replaced by strong advocates of the right to bear arms.

or the Washington Post:

In gun lore it’s known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. On May 21, 1977, and into the morning of May 22, a rump caucus of gun rights radicals took over the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association.

“Before Cincinnati, you had a bunch of people who wanted to turn the NRA into a sports publishing organization and get rid of guns,” recalls one of the rebels, John D. Aquilino, speaking by phone from the border city of Brownsville, Tex.

What unfolded that hot night in Cincinnati forever reoriented the NRA. And this was an event with broader national reverberations. The NRA didn’t get swept up in the culture wars of the past century so much as it helped invent them — and kept inflaming them. In the process, the NRA overcame tremendous internal tumult and existential crises, developed an astonishing grass-roots operation and became closely aligned with the Republican Party.

So, check out this editorial published in Life Magazine in 1967, pre-GCA '68. It could have been written today. The bullshit rhetoric really hasn't changed in 50 years.

The money shot:

Polls have consistently shown that two thirds of all Americans want some form of control over the gun trade. But that majority of Americans has so far not had its way because Congress chooses to listen instead to the vocal minority that opposes any real controls. Speaking most forcefully through the National Rifle Association, the gun buffs have lobbied to death every attempt at a sensible bill.

Swap "control over the gun trade" with "universal background checks" and that editorial could have run yesterday. In fact, it probably did run somewhere yesterday.

 

[tk421991]

So, check out this editorial published in Life Magazine in 1967, pre-GCA '68. It could have been written today. The bullshit rhetoric really hasn't changed in 50 years.

An old hippie neighbor decided to "give" (pronounced dump his junk at my doorstep) me a pile of old gun magazines and other mags. If you read a Guns magazine from like 1959, 1962, 1967, 1968, the pro-gun side was using the same "the end is nigh, give now!" lines that they do now. So why wouldn't the antis do the same?

People and places in general don't change, just time itself passes.