Like many cult leaders, the top echelons of the NRA work hard to convince their community that there is one simple answer to all their fears and anxieties, and that answer is unwavering fidelity to the gun. Look no further than the response by CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre to one of the most horrific massacres in modern U.S. history — the slaughter of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. As Mak recounts in “Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA,” LaPierre insisted after the tragedy that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
LaPierre would undoubtedly consider himself to be a good guy with a gun. By all accounts, though, his skills as a marksman leave much to be desired. Mak, an investigative reporter for NPR, describes a safari trip that LaPierre and his wife, Susan, took to Botswana, video of which was later leaked to the New Yorker. As Mak tells it, “While tracking African bush elephants in 2013, [LaPierre] shot and wounded one of the large mammals, sending it crashing to the ground. . . . Approaching to close range, he attempted three times to fire a fatal round into the elephant, per his guide’s suggestions. He missed the intended target all three times, drawing a chuckle from the guide. Wayne’s friend had to step in to deal the final blow.”
Later in the book, Mak notes that Susan had no such trouble: “Susan fired a shot, and the animal instantly collapsed. Susan burst into laughter after killing the animal, exclaiming, ‘That was amazing . . . wow, my heart is just racing. I feel great!’ Grinning, she then sliced off the end of the elephant’s tail, held it in the air, and cried out ‘Victory!’ ”
This is just one small but telling example of the gulf between the NRA’s rhetoric and the lived realities of its leaders. The group may claim to reflect and protect the rights of the ordinary citizen to defend home and hearth, but it uses the hard-earned money donated by those citizens to fund safari adventures for its top brass. As Mak writes, the NRA’s power comes from “its millions of passionate dues-paying members,” and it is these members whom LaPierre “has betrayed with his fancy getaways and private jets — the blue-collar workers who scrape together five or ten or fifteen dollars a month to contribute to the group.”
It is particularly striking that foremost among the justifications LaPierre offers for his $2.15 million annual compensation, flights on private jets and lavishly outfitted homes is “security concerns.” Being the public face of an organization that relentlessly advocates for more guns in more places, even as Americans are being shot down in elementary schools, movie theaters and grocery stores, doubtless invites some security risks.
But according to the NRA gospel of armed self-reliance, a gun is all anyone needs for protection. NRA spokespeople never tire of ridiculing the idea of relying on law enforcement for personal safety: “When seconds count, police are minutes away.” The fact that LaPierre feels compelled to spend millions of dollars on professional security makes it painfully clear that the “good guy with a gun” strategy is a fantasy. Let the masses believe they can protect themselves with a gun and a prayer; LaPierre will be using their donations to pay for private guards and sophisticated security systems.
But even top-tier security can’t fully control what the NRA has unleashed in America. Even as it flails under the scrutiny of multiple lawsuits alleging misuse of funds and violations of campaign finance law, the NRA continues to set the tone and the terms of the country’s gun debate. The tragedy of the group’s particular grift is that it raises everyone’s risk of dying a violent death; even if we do not belong to or believe in the cult of the gun, we are all hostage to it. As Mak illustrates in fascinating behind-the-scenes stories, this includes the NRA’s most privileged leaders.
Around 4 a.m. on April 4, 2013, the LaPierres were “swatted.” A 911 operator called Susan LaPierre to tell her that police had surrounded their house. They were responding to a call from a person claiming to be Wayne LaPierre, who stated that he had just shot his wife, had barricaded himself inside their home and would come out shooting if police tried to take him. Eventually the operator persuaded Wayne and Susan to emerge from their house, where they were met by a dozen police officers yelling at them to get down. But for some length of time, Susan refused to go outside because she didn’t believe that the caller was a real 911 operator. “ ‘Don’t go outside,’ she told Wayne. ‘You don’t know who that is. They’re going to kill you.’ ”
That night in their expensive, well-secured home, the multimillionaire vice president of the NRA and his wife could not tell if the guys with guns surrounding their house were good or not. Had the couple armed themselves as they emerged, the police would not have been able to tell if they were good guys, either.
One wonders whether Wayne or Susan thinks about how perilously close they came that night to being shot — how easily they might have been the ones collapsing under an agonizing succession of bullets or felled immediately by one well-placed shot.
One wonders if either of them has reflected on how, in a house in the middle of the night, or in a crowded nightclub, or in a dark theater, there are no good guys with guns — there are just guys with guns. And the guns are what makes it impossible to tell who is good.
Misfire
Inside the Downfall
of the NRA
By Tim Mak
Dutton.
371 pp. $29