On January 5, Variety magazine ran a column admitting the tremendous power of the NRA, and suggested the gun control lobby is figuring out that the only way to beat the pro-Second Amendment group is to bypass Congress. This means bypassing lawmakers loyal to the NRA as well.
In other words, when Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts said her group can win by bypassing Congress, she was unwittingly showing the way to beat the NRA as well.
According to Variety, the NRA is a powerful, “unyielding” group with a “stranglehold on politics.” It was once a mild-mannered group, until being taken over by “dissident-members” in 1977 then supercharged by Charlton Heston’s famous “from my cold dead hands” speech in 1999. The group then stepped into politics in 2000–helping George W. Bush defeat Al Gore–and has never looked back.
Today, the NRA has reached a pinnacle of power that allows it to talk to the mainstream media when it wants or completely shut them out when doing so seems best. Either way, the NRA’s “political clout is so sweeping” that they remain victors against the gun control lobby.
But there may now be a way to beat them. It is the way Moms Demand Action plans to go in 2015.
Variety senses opportunity, and equates an “end run” around Congress with an “end run around the NRA’s well-fortified position in Washington.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.