Abstract
National Rifle Association of America members are not just defending their right to bear arms but what Melzer explains is their perceived threat to an endangered “frontier masculinity”—a metaphor for concerns regarding diminishing American liberties. The NRA’s ability to spread this message, as explained in Gun Crusaders, helped them become “the most powerful single-issue lobbying group in Washington D.C.” (16). Melzer adeptly humanizes the NRA by sharing members’ fears, motives, and secrets to success. He less effectively critiques their shortcomings. Although he exposes NRA inconsistencies, he does not analyze them.
NRA members are not a cross section of the American population; they are more often white and male, and more generally right-wing. Melzer writes that they are not “gun nuts” or “radicals,” just conservative, and often smart and educated. But, by Melzer’s own account, in many cases their views do seem radical. In one case, an NRA member explains his belief in racial profiling. Melzer writes: “Frank relied on (false) statistics to avoid making explicitly racist generalizations” (160). NRA members tend to blame minorities for homicides against whites, relying on “powerful images of racial and ethnic stereotypes” (158). This, Melzer writes, when whites are more likely to be killed by other whites than by members of other racial groups.
Melzer then explains that NRA members tend to despise liberals, socialists, and feminists for their reliance on emotion rather than logic—but Melzer also says that NRA success is based on its appeal to powerful emotions—fear and rage—both inflamed by rhetoric founded on incorrect perceptions of reality as in the statement above. Instead of commenting on the irony, Melzer takes pains to explain NRA concerns in rational language. For them, “freedom” means that “we should rely on ourselves, not the government, for basic needs like food, shelter, love, and protection” (2).
Melzer also suggests that NRA efficacy lies in its ability to portray gun rights as threatened by influential gun control advocates and liberals. Charlton Heston, NRA President, famously declared: “Today gun owners are the endangered species” (41), yet Melzer downplays their straw men. He writes: “The NRA has ridden and helped build a wave of conservative backlash against liberal group-rights movements, which had some success pushing collectivist agendas in the second half of the 20th century” (256). This is the same period where Reaganomics triumphed through the Clinton administration and exploded under the former Bush administration, begging the question: What collectivist agenda? Democrats are as aware as Republicans that, in American politics, candidates who support gun control (or oppose the death penalty, a companion issue for many NRA members) are dead on arrival, even as these issues have long been considered no-brainers in the rest of the developed world.
Melzer argues that the NRA’s power lies in its ability to connect gun rights to “frontier masculinity” and this with American values such as self-reliance—but he fails to note that herein lies NRA members’ real enemy: that such masculine-oriented expectations are inextricably intertwined with contemporary capitalism run amok. Men, Melzer writes, are held to the “do-it-yourself breadwinner status today, despite an economy that makes it difficult for most men to achieve” (46). Melzer provides the evidence, but doesn’t make the point.
NRA members despise liberals perceived as wanting to create more supports at a time when men, and many Americans generally, find it more difficult, if not impossible, to support themselves and their families. With the unemployment rate in skyrocketing digits, many Americans could use some support. Instead, NRA members tend to see themselves as having “lost the country” to “gays, feminists, and immigrants.” This, while immigrants are being deported, feminism remains an “F” word, and gays can’t even marry in most states, a fact that denies them basic financial and personal citizenship rights.
Gun Crusaders is a fascinating read for the general reader, and a carefully documented scholarly tract. Melzer contributes powerful insights regarding the NRA’s relationship to frontier masculinity as well as the otherwise perplexing power they wield over American politics and consciousness. He takes pains to remain impartial, but his success in this endeavor becomes a deficit where the reader hopes for critical analysis. For those that see the contradictions Melzer lays out, it is a mesmerizing read. He could have reached an even wider audience with more of his own voice, so unfortunately avoided.