NRA Finds A Welcome Audience at State Level

Hamm of the Brady Campaign believes that anti-NRA lobbyists are simply outgunned at the state level and rarely have a chance to succeed. The Brady Campaign's annual budget is about $10 million. The NRA puts its yearly outlay at $180 million. The gun lobby's membership, in addition, is just under 4 million.

"We're a much smaller organization in every respect," Hamm said, "and we're against a huge, powerful and organized opponent."

The Brady Campaign has tried to mitigate that disadvantage at least a little by opening outposts in a few states over the last two years. Hamm said his organization now has state directors in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington state.

Gun-control backers also seem to have a built-in advantage at city councils across the country. The closer to violent, criminal gunplay citizens get, the less sympathy they and their elected representatives seem to have for laws that allow or encourage the use of firearms, Hamm said.

"It's rural versus urban, and state legislatures disproportionately represent rural areas," Hamm explained. "There is no way that the NRA can get anything passed in the Cleveland City Council, but in the Ohio state legislature it's a completely different ballgame."

The NRA, in typically combative fashion, does not concede the point. LaPierre and other spokesmen asserted that the NRA eagerly fights gun-control measures or lobbies for its own initiatives wherever it can, from city councils to the United Nations. And in Washington as well. Last year, for instance, the NRA did manage to get enacted a measure that prohibited lawsuits against firearm manufacturers for third-party criminal misuse of guns.

But this year, the federal front is quiet for a change.

Canceling on Principle

The political action committee of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Keep Our Majority PAC, reported paying a $60,030 "PAC event site cancellation fee" to the Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii. Ron Bonjean, the speaker's spokesman, explained that after Hastert proposed ending privately paid travel for lawmakers in January, he took the idea to heart and canceled his destination fundraisers, including that big one on the big island.

"The speaker wanted to set an example," Bonjean said. And unlike many of his colleagues, Hastert has stuck to his guns. He still refuses to schedule fundraising events in lovely, faraway spots.

Jeffrey Birnbaum writes about the intersection of government and business every other Monday. His e-mail address iskstreetconfidential@washpost.com. He will be online to discuss lawmaking, lobbying and the National Rifle Association at 1 p.m. tomorrow at washingtonpost.com.