advertising campaigns. Lurid photographs portrayed hapless crime victims in various stages of criminal assault. Typical ad copy read, "If police can't protect you, who will? You alone. You bear ultimate responsibility for your own protection" (Sugarmann, 1992, p. 144). In 1983, the NRA established a handgun safety and self-defense training course, another tactic to increase membership. Since its establishment, more than 500,000 Americans have participated in the course.
The NRA has historically targeted both women and minorities in its membership drives. Again, the sales pitch is based on fear. With women, it is the fear of rape. With minorities, African-Americans in particularly, NRA rhetoric states that gun control is a plot by ivory tower liberals to disarm the urban community.
The NRA's goal of arming every American household with firearms appears to be working. Currently, about 200 million guns are in circulation in the United States, distributed among 70 million gun owners and 20 million hunters. In 1991, the ATF (the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) received 34,000 applications for licenses to sell guns, 99 percent of which were approved (New Yorker, 1993, p. 6).
Despite the proliferation of firearms in the United States, the American public does not share the NRA's hard-line position on gun control. Recent polls indicate that between 70 percent and 80 percent of the population favor firearms controls, particularly bans on handguns (New Yorker, 1993, p. 6). Approximately three-quarters of the population favor banning semi-automatic assault weapons and plastic firearms impervious to metal detectors. More than 90 percent of Americans support a waiting period for handgun sales (Sugarmann, 1992, p. 16). The NRA contends that support for handgun control is the result of a misinformed public influenced by a biased media.
The widespread availability of firearms has led to a...