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Meet the 2 Texans who took over the NRA and made the gun rights group a feared and powerful force

Harlon Carter was a Border Patrol leader with a dark secret in his past. Neal Knox was a journalist for gun magazines with a deep suspicion of the federal government.

Decades ago, before school shootings became a special American terror, before military-style weapons and ammunition were widely available at the sporting goods store, before guns became a reason for kids to march on Washington, two Texans decided the right to bear arms was the most crucial freedom afforded to Americans, and they would ensure politicians knew it.

Harlon Carter was a Border Patrol leader with a dark secret in his past. Neal Knox was a journalist for gun magazines with a deep suspicion of the federal government. The two Texans coupled their distrust of the government with an allegiance to the Second Amendment that was absolute. To them, the nation’s freedom rested, even depended, on the right of individuals to defend themselves. Against criminals. Against enemies. If necessary, against tyranny.

Together, Carter and Knox  would shift the National Rifle Association from a moderate hunting and shooting sports group that offered some support of gun control measures into an absolutist organization.

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Harlon Carter (left), executive vice president of the National Rife Association, and Neal...
Harlon Carter (left), executive vice president of the National Rife Association, and Neal Knox, executive director for the group, chatted before testifying May 4, 1978, in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee during hearings on gun control legislation.(File Photo / The Associated Press)
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Today, as the NRA prepares to open its annual meeting this week in Dallas, it is one of the nation's most powerful and partisan lobbying groups, with hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal from an estimated 5 million  members and a philosophy that any impingement on gun rights is a threat to the fabric of American freedom.

Straight shooting

It wasn’t always this way.

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The NRA was really born on the battlefields of the Civil War. Union officers, Col. William Church and Gen. George Wingate, noticed early on that their men were poor shots relative to Confederates.

In 1871, after the war was over, Church and Wingate created the NRA as a way to teach Americans — particularly in urban areas — the basics of marksmanship. Ambrose Burnside, a retired Union Army general, was the NRA’s first president, and his goal was to improve shooting and maintain readiness in case of war.

In the many years that followed, the NRA devoted itself largely to shooting competitions and gun safety education programs. The Army helped out by donating surplus equipment.

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In the 1920s, when Prohibition created a black market for alcohol and the weapon of choice for organized crime became the Tommy gun — or, more precisely,  the Thompson submachine gun — the NRA supported the final version of the first major gun-control laws enacted by Congress.

The National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed strict controls on the sale of fully automatic weapons; the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 required federal licensing of gun dealers and included a ban on selling firearms to convicted felons.

During testimony before Congress, then-NRA president Karl Frederick said he “did not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns.”

“I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses,” he said. He added that he believed criminals would still find a way to get guns regardless of any laws.

In the late 1960s, after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, America again began to look at restricting access to firearms. Urban rioting, student demonstrations, the war in Vietnam, and a massive peace movement had left Americans deeply divided and on edge. Many were ready to explore stricter laws controlling access to guns.

Days after President Kennedy's assassination, Sen. Thomas Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced legislation that would restrict mail-order sales of rifles like the one Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill the president. Oswald had ordered the weapon through an ad in the NRA's magazine, American Rifleman.

Dodd was a former FBI special agent, anti-Communist and supporter of the Vietnam War. Still, his proposals drew little support in 1963.

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It wasn’t until the race riots and the rise of the Black Panther movement later in the decade that his plan would get Congress’s interest.

In 1968, two major gun control laws passed. Together, they prohibited interstate sales of firearms except by licensed manufacturers and dealers. They also prohibited the sale of handguns to those under 21, as well as to felons, drug abusers and those judged mentally incompetent.

The NRA helped defeat the toughest part of the legislation, which called for a national registry of all guns and a license for all gun carriers.

But the head of the NRA at the time, Franklin Orth,  told American Rifleman that he wasn't displeased with the final regulations. "The measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with,"  he said.

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The slippery slope

There was nothing about the legislation Neal Knox could live with. Nor Harlon Carter. Nor a large segment of NRA members. They saw the bills as part of an inexorable march to gun confiscation, said Jeff Knox, whose father died in 2005 at age 69.

“Dad was one of those who was saying, “Look where this is leading. They’re never going to be satisfied until they take away all our guns,” said Knox, who operates The Firearms Coalition, a gun rights group.

Born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, Neal Knox attended Abilene Christian University, where he married a woman who kept a rifle in her dorm room closet and shared his passion for hunting.

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Neal Knox was one of the Texans involved in the "Revolt at Cincinnati," at the 1977 NRA...
Neal Knox was one of the Texans involved in the "Revolt at Cincinnati," at the 1977 NRA annual convention in Cincinnati, which helped turn the organization into the hard-line gun rights group it is today. (Ric Field / Associated Press)

In the mid-1960s, Knox worked as a reporter and editor with newspapers in Vernon and Wichita Falls before getting a job as founding editor of Gun Week, a newspaper covering firearms issues of the day. From his base in Arizona, the bearded gun evangelist spent the next 40 years railing against gun control and pitting himself against NRA leaders he saw as too compromising.

In the 1960s and '70s, the gun industry and the NRA were “inclined toward pragmatism” said Jeff Knox, from his home in Buckeye, Ariz., and “willing to make concessions.”

The elder Knox believed strongly that the Second Amendment was absolute, and he especially didn’t like the idea of registering guns, which to him raised the specter of a dictator confiscating all arms and subduing the citizenry, Jeff Knox said. At one point, in the mid-1990s, Neal Knox even suggested the assassinations of Kennedy and King might have been staged to build support for gun control.

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Knox’s doctrinaire views found a sympathetic ear in Harlon Carter, a fellow member of the NRA who had grown disillusioned with the course of the NRA in the mid-1970s.

Carter was born in Granbury and grew up in Laredo. In 1931, Carter, then 17,  shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy and claimed self-defense.

A jury disagreed, and Carter was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction on grounds that the trial judge had not adequately instructed the jurors on the law of self-defense, according to The New York Times, which broke the news of the case in 1981.

After his release, Carter joined the Border Patrol and rose through the ranks, ultimately becoming its top official in 1950. A longtime member of the NRA, Carter was an expert marksman who’d set dozens of national and world sharpshooting records. Barrel-chested, with a head as smooth and bald as a gun barrel, he cut an imposing figure.

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Through the 1960s and '70s, both Knox and Carter were boiling at the NRA’s direction and concerned that greater gun restrictions were on the way.

In 1977, the NRA was headed by a man named Maxwell Rich, who was considering moving its headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Colorado Springs, Colo. The move was part of an overall shift back to the organization’s roots in marksmanship and hunting and away from politics. The NRA also planned to build a $30 million recreational facility in New Mexico called the National Outdoor Center.

That was a screaming red flag to Carter and Knox, and a do-or-die moment for the NRA hardliners, who started a grassroots movement to kick out the Old Guard.

That year, at the NRA’s annual convention in Cincinnati, Knox and Carter made their move.

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On the night of May 21, with the meeting stretching into the next morning,  the hardliners took over. Harlon Carter was named the NRA’s new executive vice president — the position with the most power over day-to-day operations.

“They felt the membership could take control of the meeting,” said Jeff Knox. “They went to Cincinnati with the intention of getting more control — and they succeeded.”

Carter appointed Knox as the NRA’s chief lobbyist, and he served four years as executive director of the Institute for Legislative Action — the NRA’s lobbying arm. He was later elected to the NRA board of directors.

Led by Knox and Carter, the NRA hardliners had staged an overnight coup, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms.

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“Literally, when the sun rose the next day, the NRA refocused on Second Amendment political advocacy and further removed itself from hunting and sports shooting.”

During Carter’s eight-year tenure, the NRA’s membership nearly tripled to 3 million. With the moderates gone, the NRA focused more and more on politics. Carter became known for his uncompromising, even extreme, views on gun rights.

Once, during testimony before a Senate committee, Carter was asked if he would allow convicted felons, the mentally incompetent and drug addicts to own guns rather than submit to background screening.  He replied that he would, calling it ''a price we pay for freedom.''

Harlon Carter, former executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
Harlon Carter, former executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.(Steve Ueckert)
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Since the takeover by Knox and Carter, the NRA has been unswerving in its mission, said historian Patrick Charles, author of Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry.

“It’s now about Second Amendment absolutism,” Charles said.

'Fiercest warrior'

The NRA’s current leader, Wayne LaPierre, was hired by Knox  shortly after Carter’s coup and worked for the NRA’s lobbying arm. By 1986, LaPierre was head of the NRA lobby. He took over the NRA’s top position as executive vice president in 1991.

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When Carter died that year, LaPierre called him “our champion and fiercest warrior.”

LaPierre cemented the NRA’s hard turn and carried forward Carter’s legacy of  fiery rhetoric. He was forced to apologize after a 1995 fundraising letter called federal agents “jack-booted thugs.” Former President George H.W. Bush later revealed that he had resigned from the group in protest of the letter.

Wayne LaPierre,  executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, spoke at the Leadership Forum...
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, spoke at the Leadership Forum at the 146th NRA annual meeting in Atlanta on April 28, 2017.(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

But LaPierre didn’t back off, and during the NRA’s 1995 annual meeting in Phoenix, he issued a warning to President Bill Clinton. "We're the people who helped clean out Congress in 1994 — and we are going to help clean your clock in 1996,” he said.

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In 2000, the NRA had what has become its signature moment. Charlton Heston — fading from his storied acting career but positioned as the president of the NRA — walked on the stage at the annual meeting and dared anyone to try to take his guns.

"From my cold, dead hands!" he thundered, hoisting a rifle in a clenched fist above his head.

The call echoes from the days of Carter and Knox and through the NRA today. It will sound again in Dallas.