User:Thenub314/sandbox

For most of its history the NRA was primarily focused on sports, hunting, and recreation use of firearms lasting through the 1960s. Eventually conflict arose who between the "old-guard moderates" who wanted to move the focus of the NRA toward hunting and conservation and the political branch of the NRA. In the 1977 national convention the political branch of the NRA came into power and has made politics the groups primary focus .

Original source

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is the nation's largest, oldest, and most politically powerful interest group that opposes gun laws and favors gun rights. It publishes three magazines (American Rifleman, American Hunter, and America's 1st Freedom) and consists of several divisions, the largest and most powerful of which is its political arm, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA).

...

Although the NRA opposed gun controls for decades, the NRA leadership had maintained the organization's primary focus on sporting, hunting, and other recreational gun uses through the 1960s. The "old guard moderates" in control of the organization sought to return the organization away from politics and back toward hunting and conservation. Symptomatic of this effort were plans promoted by the old gaurd to create a national shooting center in New Mexico and move the NRA's headquarters to Colorado Srings. Meanwhile, the NRA's recently from ILA, headed by hardliner Harlon Carter, complained bitterly at the devotion of organizational resources to this nonpolitical efforts. The response of the old guard was to fire seventy four employees, most of whom were hardliners. The simmering dispute surfaced at the NRA's 1977 national convention in Cincinnati. Rallying a faction called the Federation for NRA, Carter won organizational changes giving the convention members greater control over decision making. He and his allies then used those rules to depose the old guard at the convention in what was dubbed the Revolt at Cincinnati. From this point forward, the ILA became the primary power center of the NRA and politics became the NRA's primary focus.