Behind Wayne LaPierre are a team of men working hard to lobby Congress, influence elections and ensure the NRA’s message is embraced by conservatives

The National Rifle Association lost no time in launching its attack against the inevitable demands for greater gun control in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre.

The NRA’s ubiquitous executive vice-president, Wayne LaPierre – the public face with a firm grip the organisation’s tiller – played the fear card for all it was worth with a video asserting that packing a gun is the safest option against the “demons among us”.

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“When evil knocks on our doors, Americans have a power no other people on the planet share: the full-throated right to defend our families and ourselves with our second amendment,” he said.

The NRA, he added, is “freedom’s safest place”.

Attack as a means of defence has worked well for the organisation. Even in the wake of the 2012 killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school it did not give ground to gun control advocates, asserting that the issue was not the availability of weapons but the government’s failure to adequately treat people with mental illnesses.

If the slaughter of 20 children didn’t prompt the US Congress into even small steps toward gun control, such as closing the loophole in background check laws, then the NRA could feel pretty confident that it had the upper hand.

Behind LaPierre are a clutch of officials who may be less well known but have played important roles in lobbying Congress, influencing elections and ensuring the NRA’s agenda is embraced by the broader conservative community.

Two of the most important players are Chris Cox, the NRA’s legislative director who runs political campaigns, and James J Baker, who is responsible for whipping Congress into line and ensuring gun manufacturers do not stray from the NRA’s absolute opposition to any concessions on gun control.

Cox oversees a $30m budget to run political campaigns. The NRA spent $28m in the 2014 midterm elections more than half of which went to oppose candidates, almost all of them Democrats regarded by the organisation as not strongly pro-gun enough.

Cox was at the forefront of organising NRA opposition to Barack Obama’s re-election and is already mobilising against Hillary Clinton as the likely Democratic party nominee.

Obama has blamed the NRA’s “extremely strong grip on Congress” for the failure to pass gun control legislation. Baker plays a leading role in keeping that grip tight. He is at his most active after each massacre in attempting to shift debate away from guns by blaming other factors such as the failure of mental health services.

Baker has also been instrumental in bringing gun manufacturers into line after some flirted with agreeing to measures such as trigger locks.

Others have played an important part in pushing the NRA agenda within the broader conservative community. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union for more than a quarter of a century and now editorial page director of the Washington Times, is a long-time NRA board member and served two years as the organisation’s president until 2011.

Then there are the executives of the gun manufacturers and major donors, among them George K Kollitides II, the chief executive of the group which has the largest gun sales in the US and manufactured the semiautomatic rifle used to kill children at Sandy Hook. Kollitides is a trustee of the NRA Foundation, one of the major sources of funding for the NRA itself. Freedom Group has made more than $1m in donations to the foundation.

The leading players within the NRA include:

Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice-president

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wayne LaPierre at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

LaPierre is nominally subordinate to the NRA’s president but after 24 years as executive vice-president he is the real power within the organisation.

LaPierre, who earns about $1m a year, has built considerable support within the gun rights community with an aggressive interpretation of the second amendment as the virtually unrestricted right to carry a weapon and his willingness to target the government as the enemy.

He has also driven a strategy to portray gun control as part of the broader “culture war” over God, race, abortions and big government.

LaPierre’s opposition to any new form of gun control has only hardened over the years. After the Columbine school massacre in 1999, he supported background checks on buyers at gun shows. By the time of the Sandy Hook school killings three years ago, he was against it because the most vocal activists within the NRA – it claims 4 million members but only a small percentage vote – were strongly opposed.

LaPierre was not a particularly strong gun enthusiast nor a charismatic speaker when he joined the NRA in 1977 when it was still mostly a sporting association looking for an administrator. He has been characterised by former colleagues as a policy wonk and an “absent-minded professor”.

But he forged a relationship with an Oklahoma public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen, which according to Richard Feldman, a former Reagan administration commerce department official who went on to work as an NRA regional political director, turned LaPierre into “a rock star within the gun community”.

Ackerman McQueen designed the confrontational campaigns in favour of gun rights which went on the offensive after each mass killing in the US by portraying any new restrictions as an attempt by the government to “ban your guns”. These in turn made LaPierre hugely popular within sections of the gun rights community.

“LaPierre wields enormous power,” said Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “LaPierre really solidified his power by bringing in Ackerman McQueen and kind of creating the professional PR fundraising juggernaut that’s been very good financially for the organisation. It’s been very difficult for anyone to challenge him even though he did not have any credentials as a ‘gun man’.”

Before joining the NRA, LaPierre worked for George McGovern, the Democratic former senator and presidential candidate. Later he was an aide to a pro-gun Virginia state legislator which set him on the path to the NRA.

An NRA former spokesman, John Aquillino, told the Associated Press that he once asked LaPierre what he would like to do after he leaves the organisation. LaPierre said he’d “like to run an ice cream parlor in Maine”.

Chris Cox, legislative director

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Cox during the annual meeting of members at the NRA convention in April. Photograph: Mark Humphrey/AP

The NRA describes Cox as its “chief lobbyist and principal political strategist”. He oversees a $30m budget as director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action to run political campaigns, including endorsements for candidates for Congress, and is chair of the NRA’s political action committee, the Political Victory Fund.

The NRA says he serves as its principal contact with the White House, Congress and federal agencies. Some regard Cox as LaPierre’s heir apparent.

A former lobbyist and congressional aide who joined the NRA 20 years ago, Cox recently oversaw the organisation’s successful campaign to defeat the gun control candidate who held the congressional seat vacated by Gabrielle Giffords after she was wounded and six people killed in a 2011 massacre in Tucson, Arizona.

Cox led the NRA’s lobbying in 2004 to block renewal of the assault weapons ban. The same year, he mobilised support for the re-election of President George W Bush.

Cox has been part of the NRA’s push to link gun control to the broader political agenda. He told the Washington Times earlier this year that the gun issue is part of a bigger campaign against “suffocating” government such as Obama’s healthcare reforms.

“There’s this realization – gun owners know their rights are under attack – but there’s a bigger issue out there: that people are feeling suffocated, whether it’s businesses being stifled from regulation, Obamacare or being told how much soda we can drink. There’s been an overreach into our personal freedom. It’s a serious issue, and people are taking notice,” he said.

In April, Cox told the NRA’s annual gathering that the organisation was gearing up to fight Hillary Clinton’s run for president.

“When it comes to attacking our second amendment freedoms, you can bet she’ll make Barack Obama look like an amateur. Obama won’t admit that he wants to register guns, but Hillary’s proud to support it,” he said. “The only reason to register guns is to tax ’em or take ’em – and there’s no doubt Her Royal Highness would love to do both! … There’s no limit to the destruction of individual freedom she’d cause with four or eight years in office.”

Last year, the ILA called demonstrations by members of Texas Open Carry carrying semiautomatic rifles into public places such as fast food restaurants “downright weird”. It warned that groups of men with guns scared the public and undermined legislative support for further loosening of gun control laws.

The next day, Cox called the ILA statement a mistake, saying that it is not for the NRA “to criticise the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners”. He said the organisation supports gun rights “unapologetically” and blamed the statement on an ILA staffer expressing his “personal opinion”.

In his effort to tie gun control to the wider culture wars, Cox told the NRA convention last year that there is a battle in schools with those who have driven God and guns out.

Cox wears a lot of other hats, including as president of the NRA Freedom Action Foundation “which conducts non-partisan voter registration and citizen education” and chairman of NRA Country which uses country music stars to promote gun rights.

James J Baker, head of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s federal affairs division

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Baker of the NRA. Photograph: Screengrab

Cox’s most important deputy is James J Baker, head of the ILA’s federal affairs division who works the halls of Congress and is described by one of those who has dealt with him as “one of the smarter guys” in the NRA. Baker strongly backed LaPierre’s selection as executive vice-president, threatening to resign from the NRA if he didn’t get the job.

Baker played an essential role in blocking new gun control measures in recent years. After Sandy Hook, he was the NRA’s representative at a meeting with Vice-President Joe Biden at which he pushed the line that the killings resulted from the government’s failure to treat mental illness and to enforce existing gun laws. He argued for placing armed security guards in schools.

Baker was also instrumental in opposing the renewal by Congress in 2004 of a ban on assault weapons and in maintaining legislation which blocks the federal government from researching gun violence.

But perhaps Baker’s most significant contribution to the rise of the NRA was to ensure that weapons manufacturers did not undermine its unswerving opposition to any strengthening of gun control legislation.

When the leaders of an industry group, the American Shooting Sports Council (ASSC), met President Bill Clinton in 1999 to discuss curbs on automatic weapons and magazine sizes in the wake of the Columbine school massacre, Baker led the NRA pushback.

The ASSC was shut down. Its director, Robert Ricker, accused the NRA and Baker of pressuring the gun industry to disband the organisation.

“Baker controls everything,” Ricker told the authors of Outgunned: Up Against the NRA. “That has made me so angry. There are gun companies out there willing to be responsible and ready to stop illegal use of guns – more than willing. But the NRA, and Baker in particular, will not let them. Any gun company who ventures outside the fold is kicked back into line. They go along with the NRA to save their factories.”

Ricker later told the New York Times “we’ve got a bunch of rightwing wackos at the NRA controlling everything”.

Baker was instrumental in whipping Smith & Wesson into line 15 years ago after it bowed to pressure from the Clinton administration to make changes to its products, including placing locks on its handguns and “smart gun” technology that would only allow the owner to fire it.

The NRA accused Smith & Wesson of “running up the white flag of surrender”. It led a boycott of the company which cut its sales in half and nearly drove it into bankruptcy. That was the end of any cooperation between the industry and gun control advocates.

Glock, which had been talking to the Clinton White House about agreeing to similar measures, cut off discussions.

In an effort to restore sales, the Smith & Wesson management was forced out. The company’s new president sought out Baker and had a photograph taken with him which the company sent to gun dealers across the US.

Smith & Wesson’s sales bounced back and it is now a major financial contributor to the NRA.

David Keene, former NRA president

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Keene speaks at the Harvard Kennedy School. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

LaPierre has worked closely with David Keene, a conservative powerbroker and ex-NRA president, a post in which he played an important role in scuppering gun control after Sandy Hook. He accused advocates of “exploiting the victims of a madman”. He remains a long-time member of the NRA’s board.

Keene has been an important link with the wider conservative community in the US. For 27 years, until 2011, he was chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU). He oversaw the rise of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) from a sideshow to a key event in the political calendar. He was at one time so influential that friends nicknamed him “Baby Doc” after the ruthless former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

From that position, he helped solidify conservative policy and the NRA agenda.

Today he is opinion editor of the Washington Times which provides a forum for opponents of gun control and is strongly pro-NRA.

Keene was a political aide to disgraced US vice-president Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration. He served as coordinator of Ronald Reagan’s 1976 southern campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and as national political director for George HW Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign.

On his appointment as NRA president in 2011 he said the organisation’s principal goal was to see the defeat of Obama in the following year’s presidential election.

Addressing the NRA convention two years ago, Keene said after the Sandy Hook massacre that gun rights advocates are also “under attack since the Connecticut tragedy by those who would exploit the victims of a madman to advance their own anti-second amendment agenda”. He has also likened pro-gun advocates to Hitler stripping Germans of guns in order to impose Nazi power.

Keene has been among the most influential conservative organisers in the US, although that influence has declined in recent years in part because of “pay to play” donations from big business but also because he opened CPAC to the Republican gay organisation, GOProud.

In 2012, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an NRA board member, described Keene as “a conservative Forrest Gump”.

“He has been in the center of all things conservative for decades,” he said.

The intertwining of the ACU and NRA was clear when Keene awarded Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, the Defender of Freedom Award on behalf of the two organisations for his work to loosen gun laws.

During the 2012 CPAC, Keene was asked by a female military veteran who fought in Afghanistan why the NRA pushed legislation to prevent commanders from asking suicidal service personnel about weapons they owned. Keene responded that the military should deal with the cause of suicidal intentions not the means by which self-harm is carried out. He said that if service personnel do not kill themselves with guns they would use something else.

“There are a million ways to commit suicide,” he said.

Keene’s ex-wife was jailed in 2011 for embezzling up to $400,000 from the ACU when she was its administrative director. His son, David, who worked for his father at the ACU, was sent to prison for 10 years in 2002 for shooting at another driver in a road rage incident, narrowly missing his target’s head.

Allan Cors, NRA president (since April 2015)

Although technically LaPierre’s superior, Cors wields less power. The presidency generally changes hands every two years while La Pierre has remained entrenched with day-to-day control of the NRA for more than two decades.

But Cors is not without influence. He has ties to Congress, having served as counsel for the House judiciary committee before holding a number of posts within the NRA. He is president of the NRA Foundation and is a member of the executive committee. The NRA says “he was a principal advocate for the establishment of the NRA’s Political Action Committee”.

Gun industry and donors

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Kollitides, CEO of Freedom Group, the parent company of Remington Arms Company, in 2013. Photograph: Danny Johnston/AP

Among the important players from the gun industry within the NRA is George Kollitides, CEO of the Freedom Group until earlier this year, which owns the manufacturer of the semiautomatic rifle Adam Lanza used to kill children at Sandy Hook. Freedom Group, which includes Remington and Bushmaster, has weapons sales of around $1bn a year, the largest in the US.

Kollitides is also a trustee of the NRA Foundation to which Freedom Group has made more than $1m in donations and holds a place on the NRA nominating committee, which has considerable sway over who can serve on the organisation’s board and therefore decide policy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Debney: CEO of Smith and Wesson in Ring of Freedom, the NRA’s magazine. Photograph: Screengrab

James Debney, CEO of Smith & Wesson, is a member of the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom for donations of well over $1m.

Debney ramped up his company’s gifts to the NRA, telling the organisation’s Ring of Freedom magazine two years ago that he felt Smith & Wesson had not done enough to back the fight to protect the second amendment. However, the increased donations came as Smith & Wesson continues to woo the NRA following the boycott.

Pete Brownell, CEO of Brownells, the world’s largest manufacturer of gun parts and tools served as the NRA second vice-president. His father, Frank, chairman of the company board, is president of the NRA Foundation.

Larry and Brenda Potterfield are among the NRA’s biggest donors. They are owners of MidwayUSA, a hunting goods retailer which has given more than $11m to the organisation. Customers at the company’s shops are asked to round up the costs of their purchases to donate the difference to the NRA.