Christopher Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA), talks to Brown Political Review’s Omar Ben Halim and Chris Wilbur.
Brown Political Review: What does it mean to be a gun owner?
Christopher Cox: Well, owning a firearm means different things to different Americans. The Second Amendment protects the fundamental right to own a gun for any lawful purpose. In this country that right has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and people own guns for a variety of different reasons. They own them to hunt, for competitive shooting—such as Olympic shooting, which is a very popular and highly watched athletic event—and recreational shooting. People own firearms primarily in this country for self-defense. So the Second Amendment means different things for different people, but it’s all lawful use, and again, the exercise of this freedom primarily is about self-defense.
BPR: What does it mean to be a gun owner to you?
CC: It has changed over the course of my life. I was introduced to safe and responsible gun ownership from my father, who was a retired surgeon and who thought it was important to pass the shooting and hunting heritage down to my three brothers and me. So I started hunting at a young age, took my NRA hunters safety class when I was about 11 or 12 years old, and I grew up a sportsman, hunting with my father and brothers. As I got older, it started to mean something different.
When I was living by myself in the D.C. area, I started taking self-defense more seriously. Living in an area that wasn’t necessarily the safest area, owning guns outside of recreation became important to me. And now, as a husband and father, I take the defense of my family very seriously and so it has a more all-encompassing significance now in my life.
BPR: Senator Richard Blumenthal says there is a disparity between NRA leadership and members, and that responsible gun owners support a lot of the pending legislation. What do you think of this?
CC: Senator Blumenthal is basing his remarks off of a poll that was conducted and paid for by Mayor Bloomberg. We don’t give NRA membership lists to anyone. So he is using a bogus poll to pursue a bogus agenda, but that’s what we have come to expect. We did a scientific poll and released it to the media, so no one could ask questions about the way we ask questions or about the nature of the poll. We weighted it to the 2012 election, that President Obama won, so no one could question that we weighted it heavier in any particular demographic area, and the poll came back overwhelmingly positive, indicating that over 92 percent of our members support the position of the National Rifle Association. I am happy to get you that poll.
BPR: You support mental health background checks, but there is a constellation of issues in getting that information from states to the federal government. Accomplishing this could be time consuming and costly. What would be the monetary cost to the American taxpayer?
CC: Well, you know it’s a difficult issue. The NICS [National Instant Checks System] system was started in 1993 and over a billion dollars has already been spent. The way the system was set up initially was to give block grants directly to the states to get their records to the national system. Some states we found supported legislation in 2007 called the “NICS Improvement Act,” a bipartisan bill supported even by the gun control groups, to encourage the states to get those minimal adjudication records into the system.
It hasn’t worked, for a variety of reasons. Some states have state privacy laws prohibiting these kinds of records from getting into the system, so we are currently working with a number of states to change these laws so that the states are actually legally capable of putting them in the system. Mark Kelly testified that in Arizona there are over one hundred and twenty thousand records that were not put into state records. Some governors have not, for political reasons, wanted to put the records in the system. They are more interested in protecting and avoiding stigmatizing people who have been adjudicated as violent by not entering their names into the system. Governor O’Malley of Maryland has expressed a lack of willingness to enter those names into the system.
It is challenging, but if we are going to have a system, all the NRA has said is that it needs to be accurate and it needs to be fair. It is not only the mental health records, but also the felony records that were underreported, and the records on restraining orders were underreported. If you look at Newtown or Aurora or Tucson, a background check would not have prevented any of those individuals’ actions because they weren’t in the system. They had not been adjudicated by a court, and that goes to the problem of civil commitments in this country.
It is also impossible to get people into the system unless they have already committed a crime, and sadly many of these mass murderers are not in the system because people were not able to get them civilly committed. That is a bigger problem that we hope and pray Congress will address.
BPR: Are there cheaper alternatives, even in terms of political capital, because there’s clearly political opposition to this measure?
CC: Yes, and part of it is that we’re working right now with the states to clear those hurdles—because there are people in some states that want to cooperate and want to put their mental health records in the system, but are literally prevented by state law from doing so. So we are expending our political capital to support those changes at the state level, to make sure those records are put in. Some states will tell you it’s a human resource issue—they don’t have the staffing. Some will say it’s just a time consuming, technology or lack of technology issue. Originally, in the 2007 bill, there was a carrot-and-stick approach, and what we found there was very little carrot and even less stick associated with the implementation, so we’re hopeful that they’ll do a better job and that the states will recognize the need and the priority to get this done.
BPR: You’ve talked a lot about a culture of violence in America. Where does it come from?
CC: You know, it’s a fair question from an overall statistical standpoint. Crime, including violent crime and murder, is at 40-to-50 year lows, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a significant level of violent crime out there. There are 25,000 violent crimes committed every week in this country, so obviously we feel from the Second Amendment standpoint that law-abiding people should have the ability to defend themselves because police, despite their best efforts in responding to attacks and in responding to crimes, can’t be everywhere, and people have a right in this country to defend themselves.
As for the overall level of violence, there’s been a lot of attention to the violent movies, to violent TV shows, to violent video games. I’m not suggesting that the solution by any stretch is to ban violent video games or to ban violent movies, but certainly common sense tells you that it’s an area that needs to be discussed.
And there have been proposals to have commissions look into the role of gratuitous violence in video games that are marketed to young people, what role that plays. Like I said, I don’t know what the answer is, but I think common sense tells most people that the nature of video games has changed over the last twenty years. The level of violence in movies has changed over the last twenty years, and the ability to access those forms of entertainment by people who aren’t adults has become a lot easier just due to the internet and the availability. When I was growing up you couldn’t get into an R-rated movie—you would get carded and have to show ID—and now you can go online and watch anything you want. Does that mean that violent movies or violent video games are responsible? Of course not, but it’s certainly an area, whether it’s rating, whether it’s marketing or best practices, that should be part of the larger discussion.
BPR: A large bulk of NRA revenue comes from corporate sponsors, 74 percent of which comes from companies involved in the firearms industry. How do you, as the chief lobbyist for the NRA, balance your commitment to the interests of the NRA members with the interests of your corporate sponsors?
CC: That issue has gotten a lot of attention. I think it’s important to understand that in the NRA as a whole, less than 15 percent of the National Rifle Association’s annual budget goes towards our political and lobbying operations. We’re a very large organization: over 85 percent of our revenue goes to programs like children’s safety, youth hunting initiatives, law enforcement training, military training, good safety and responsibility type deals. The average contribution to the NRA is about $25, so it’s not an organization that’s funded with large contributions. There is support from the industry for a variety of different NRA programs. We have a law enforcement division within the NRA; we have a range development division within the NRA. These are all areas where it’s very logical and very understandable why the industry would be supportive of those sorts of programs.
BPR: According to a study by Johns Hopkins, 74 percent of NRA members support background checks on all gun purchases. Why would the NRA be opposed to such a measure?
CC: When you say Johns Hopkins, you should use the full name. It’s the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Mayor Bloomberg has given over $1 billion to Johns Hopkins. As I said earlier, he paid for the polling that was done on NRA members despite not having the list of NRA members, so I would go back to my original comment that we did polling, and the polling came back overwhelmingly that our members support the positions of the organization.
BPR: You say the White House is more concerned with attacking legitimate gun owners than coming to an agreement on workable legislation. What would you say their incentives are?
CC: Unfortunately, this discussion has turned by and large, at least for the White House’s standpoint and from Mayor Bloomberg’s standpoint, into a discussion on gun control. We’re happy to debate gun control. That’s what we do. We’re the National Rifle Association. But the proposals that they have introduced would not have prevented Newtown, Connecticut. They would not have prevented Aurora, they would not have prevented Tucson. What we had hoped for was a meaningful conversation on how we keep our kids safe, and there are things that can and should be done.
Unfortunately, they [the White House] seem more interested in a decades-old political agenda to push gun control and not address the underlying problems. When we say they’re not interested in addressing underlying problems, we don’t say that in a dismissive way. We say that in a disappointed way, because there are things that can be done and should be done. We’re having meaningful conversations with elected officials across the country, including in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill about things that can address the underlying problems out there; lack of school security, a breakdown in the mental health system, and a lack of prosecution of criminals. You’ve got a couple of different problems here; the mass murderer is very different from the street criminal who is a criminal by trade. The mass murderer is someone with obviously severe mental illness, who is willing to carry out a murderous fantasy in their attempt at either infamy or suicide or both. There are things that could be done to address both of those problems, but gun control is not a serious solution to addressing those problems.