WHY IS THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION A SUCCESSFUL INTEREST GROUP?

Hello--

I have the answer to your question.

The main reason the National Rifle Association is a successful
interest group is that it can lobby for its cause from the deepest of
roots. The NRA has members and supporters across the country. And most
of these supporters are adamant supporters. They contact their local
representatives whenever gun-control debates hit Congress. And
representatives have no choice but to listen to what their
constituents say. If these elected officials want to continue
receiving support from the massive number of members of the NRA, they
need to look hard at whether they should vote in favor of their
interests.

In addition, the NRA is a single-issue lobbying group. While many
political action committees champion several main causes, the NRA only
has one: fighting gun control. This allows the organization to focus
more clearly on the subject at hand, spend more money on this single
cause, and get more results.

Thirdly, the NRA acquires big-name celebrities to fight for its
causes. The long-time president of the NRA has been Charlton Heston.
Simply through name recognition, the group acquires media coverage and
more attention by elected officials.

You can read "The Audience for Arts Advocacy: Building a Political
Constituency." The link is http://www.artsnet.org/ATHEEJ/audience.htm

You can read "The Guidelines to Effective Lobbying." The link is
http://www.advocacy.com/guidelines.html

You can read "Politically Feeble Churches and the Strategic
Imperative." The link is
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=1343

To conduct this research, I used the following search terms: "national
rifle association" "lobbying techniques"

I hope this helps!

darrel-ga

One trend of almost all successful pressure groups with large
memberships is that most of their members -- who provide most of the
groups money -- do not join because of the group's political activism.
Few people join the AARP because of its political stands, but the AARP
uses its members' dues to become one of Washington's most-feared
interest groups.

Not everyone involved in the NRA joins the organization because he or
she supports its political campaigns. Much of what the NRA does
involves shooting competions, marksmanship training, gun safety,
hunting, etc. I am not saying that the NRA does not also benefit from
a core of extremely intense idealogues in its membership. I am only
noting that successful lobbying groups, like the NRA, do other things
to attract membership and money. (Actually, in the NRA's case, the
other things came first, but that's another story.)

For more on this theory of interest groups, see Mancur Olson's book
The Logic of Collective Action.