by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President - Monday, July 24, 2017

This feature appears in the August ’17 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.

For the older members of our political family, none have seen anything like the mass hatred leveled at a sitting president. Hatred isn’t strong enough. It is coldly staged, organized rage. It’s everywhere in a willing media, and it’s leveled against what should be the normal, peaceful change in government. It is manufactured rage against the good Americans who voted for a change of direction for our nation.



In all of this, the media rage-machine is promoting talk of impeachment—on nothing but blind anger.

But the rage is not just against a good, duly elected president, Donald Trump; it is against his promise of a better nation. The rage is against all Americans who want to end the planned decline of the United States, orchestrated by eight years of Barack Obama and his political machine.

But the rage is not just against a good, duly elected president, Donald Trump; it is against his promise of a better nation.The elite rage is against you, me, our families, friends and co-workers who believe in Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” The rage is against Trump succeeding and keeping his promises.

Those who are orchestrating this relentless campaign are the keepers of the swamp.

This is a class hatred most Americans in modern times have never witnessed.



I say most Americans, because as NRA members, we are used to the bigoted hostility of the media and the enemies of freedom. We have borne the brunt of it since NRA emerged as the most potent lobbying force in the nation.

This year, we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of what has come to be known as the “Cincinnati Revolution”—the unique and proud moment in the history of the association when members rose up in a spontaneous movement and took back their NRA from internal players who were hell-bent on abandoning the defense of the right to keep and bear arms, which they found embarrassing.

But the revolution, which made possible the power and status of the NRA today, began two years earlier, in 1975, when a handful of leaders—including then Congressman John Dingell and just-past NRA President Allan Cors, among others—convinced the Board of Directors to create a separate, independent lobbying arm—the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA). It was a far-sighted move that the members demanded.

The Institute was staffed by young, diverse and—above all—totally dedicated men and women who worked tirelessly to forever change the political landscape of our nation. For all of these men and women, losing was not in their vocabulary.

These remarkable pioneers understood the collective power of NRA members. Under the astute leadership of former NRA President Harlon B. Carter, almost overnight ILA established itself as a force to be reckoned with. In its first year of existence, ILA won battles on Capitol Hill never thought possible.

These remarkable pioneers understood the collective power of NRA members.But as ILA succeeded beyond expectations, forces within the NRA were organizing an internal coup intended to abandon and destroy this new lobby and move the NRA in a whole new direction. Literally these forces within the hierarchy and on the Board wanted to move the NRA away from saving the Second Amendment into policy areas to curry the respect of the Second Amendment-denying media.



Their scheme to turn away from the Second Amendment was doomed by the rank-and-file members of the NRA through a spontaneous reaction that came to a head at the members meeting in Cincinnati in 1977. During an all-night session of the Annual Meeting of Members, ILA was saved and the NRA was put on a permanent path with a single goal—preserving the liberty uniquely reserved to individual Americans. It was a birthright moment, and it indeed changed the course of American history.

That outcome at Cincinnati—the total dedication of NRA as the oldest civil rights organization in the nation—was a forceful transition into the NRA we know today.

That solidarity was met with a new and more hateful reaction by the media. From then through today, the media has referred to Cincinnati as a takeover by “radicals.” What is radical about being dedicated to the preservation of the Bill of Rights for all peaceable Americans? If that is radical, then we all should embrace the word.

Cincinnati was not the takeover of the NRA by “crazies,” it was a reaffirmation of our role in preserving American liberty—the will of the members.

In the watershed 2016 election, Trump and his majorities in both houses of Congress have a mandate: Put the nation back on track.And that gets back to the venom of the media and of the political elites against the transition of power and the election of President Trump.

In the watershed 2016 election, Trump and his majorities in both houses of Congress have a mandate: Put the nation back on track.

The election was about returning to what President Abraham Lincoln described as the vision of the founders—a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

For the eight years of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation,” it had become his government “of the elites, by the elites and for the elites.”

What we are seeing in the deluge of hatred and bigotry against the remarkable change in the direction of our nation—against the will of a beleaguered people—is the elites gone rabid.

Trump has sworn to make our nation great again, and the elites can’t allow that to happen.

Hence we are beginning to hear talk of “impeachment.” It’s growing in the media. It’s crazy.

But it can’t happen unless the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and their media cheerleaders succeed in winning majorities in the coming 2018 mid-term congressional elections. Removing Trump will be their single evil election issue. Bank on it.



But just as NRA members were a major factor in electing the most pro-Second Amendment president since Ronald Reagan, and a Congress to back him, we must work hard to maintain our majorities in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. And we must protect our gains in state legislatures and governorships.



We must organize. We must overcome the unending false attacks against all things Trump so that the elites will not have a chance to attain their ultimate goal: to make America theirs again!