Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202100219
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE NRA HAS HUNTERS IN ITS SIGHTS
You had to look carefully, but there it was, on the lapel of the blue business suit that Wayne LaPierre Jr. wore when he came back home to the Roanoke Valley last week.A small, bronze pin depicting a well-antlered stag with the letters NRA beneath it, succinctly contained the message that the National Rifle Association has made a direction change.
At the tiller is LaPierre, the chief executive officer of the association since April, a man who grew up in Roanoke, graduated from Patrick Henry High School in 1967 and served as a legislative aid to Del. Vic Thomas.
"What we have decided is that the NRA is going to come in and become the No. 1 hunting lobby in America," said LaPierre.
That message is being touted in a $1 million-plus advertising campaign carried in 50 hunting, firearms and farm magazines. It is being preached at 15 NRA whitetail deer clinics now on the road from Florida to New Hampshire.
Last week, when LaPierre watched more than 1,000 hunters stream into the Salem Civic Center for a clinic - twice the number expected - he turned to James Norine, director of NRA's Hunter Services Division:
"This is the NRA," said LaPierre. "This is where we will be working."
The NRA membership had fallen by 300,000 when LaPierre took over the daily operations of a staff of 450 and an annual budget of $90 million. The past six months, the Washington, D.C.-based organization has been growing at the rate of 10,000 new members a month. At last count, it had reached 2.6 million.
Hunters - there are 16 million to 20 million of them in the country - are making a difference, LaPierre said.
"People are begining to realize that unless they stand up and get active they are going to lose their right to own a gun and they are going to lose their right to hunt."
The careful listener will detect that guns and hunting have become synonymous in LaPierre's message. That fact has put a wide grin on the face of Norine, a 16-year staffer with the NRA.
In charge of hunter programs, Norine can remember when his division was viewed as the association's step child.
"We had difficulty getting promotions in the American Hunter Magazine - our publication - to support this effort. I think the best kept secret in the NRA, until Wayne came along, was our Hunter Services Division."
LaPierre put it to the forefront, taking it out of General Operations, which included competitive shooting and law enforcement programs, and making Norine answer directly to him.
"We are going to give you what you want out of the National Rifle Association," LaPierre told the gathering of deer hunters in the Salem Civic Center. "I promise you that. We are going to be there in every legislative arena, out front, proud to tell the whole country that we are pro-hunting."
"He means it," Norine said from the back of the auditorium.
The fact that LaPierre is wearing a trophy stage lapel pin rather than the traditional NRA symbol - an eagle with cross rifles in its talons - doesn't mean there is a lessening of commitment to the country's 70 million gun owners.
"No, I think both are natural constituents for the National Rifle Association," he said. "The great, great majority of hunters own firearms and are strongly in our corner on the firearm's issue anyway. So it is a natural mix of issues for the National Rifle Association."
While its membership is about 80 percent hunters, the NRA "got away from its public commitment to the hunting issues," LaPierre said.
Some hunters even had backed away from the organization, viewing it as putting an ideological straitjacket on the nation's efforts to fight growing crime.
"We have taken a terrible bad rap in the press on some issues, like cop-killer bullets, plastic guns and things like that," said LaPierre. "When you looked at what the actual position of the organization was on those issues it is no where near what a lot of the public believed."
Part of the blame can be put on the organization, itself, LaPierre said.
"I think the NRA had some management problems. I think they were not as aggressive as they should have been on some issues on telling their side of the stroy. They let some of this mud that was thrown at the organization by people who were basically anti-firearms and anti-hunting stick because the NRA didn't respond. I think now that we are being real aggressive about responding."
Hunters need to know that there is a coalition of 30 anti-hunting groups whose goal is to stop hunting, LaPierre said. Some pro-hunting groups are in retreat, turning their back on hunters.
"We intend to become the organization of hunters. It is very clear to us that we need them, and I think they realize that they need us. It takes a big organization with significant clout in numbers to win battles in D.C."
To be effective on Capitol Hill, the NRA recognizes it must have grassroot programs, said LaPierre. It can't just be a national organization that mails out a monthly magazine.
So it is adding wildlife biologists to the staff, beefing up hunting seminars and clinics and making plans to build franchised shooting ranges, he said.
"The NRA is coming to the cities and towns throughout this country with real programs that Americans can participate in."
In Salem, LaPierre signed autographs and pumped hands and savored the warm feeling of being welcome, even popular.
"People say, `Doesn't it bother you that you may not be popular in Washington D.C.?' We weren't put there to be popular. We are there to represent the values and opinions of our members, and they are located in cities and towns scattered throughout this country."
As the whitetail tour headed north from Salem, tapping the swelling interest in deer hunting, Norine was busy rescheduling clinics to larger auditoriums in cities where advanced reservations were far exceeding expectations.
"There are 12 million whitetail deer hunters in this country and we want to make them all NRA members," said LaPierre.