National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is an American non-profit 501(c)(4) lobbying group that advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection of hunting and self-defense in the United States.
The NRA sponsors firearm safety training courses, as well as marksmanship events featuring shooting skill and sports. According to a 1999 Fortune survey, lawmakers and congressional staffers considered NRA the most influential lobbying group. Its political activity is based on the principle that gun ownership is a civil liberty protected by the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and is the oldest continuously operating civil rights organization in the United States. According to its website, the NRA has 4.3 million members.
Read more about National Rifle Association: History, Political Activity, Publications, Current Leadership and Policies, Finances, Popular Culture
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“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp’s rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,—a Sharp’s rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)