by Patrice Taddonio

Wayne LaPierre is one of the National Rifle Association (NRA)’s most recognizable faces, and one of the country’s most vocal gun rights advocates.

Amidst chaos inside the organization that included an attempt to unseat him, LaPierre was unanimously re-elected as the group’s CEO and executive vice president on April 29. He is widely regarded as the man who made the NRA the powerful lobbying organization it is today, and his tough, no-compromise stance on gun issues — including calling for armed security in every American school in the wake of the 2012 Newtown shooting — has helped the organization’s membership swell to what it claims is nearly 5 million people.

But LaPierre wasn’t always a gun enthusiast.

In fact, when he first joined the NRA in 1978, he was more comfortable on K Street than in a duck blind.

“The safest place you could be with Wayne and a gun back then was in a different state, because he really did not know anything about guns,” former NRA spokesman John Aquilino told FRONTLINE in the 2015 documentary Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA. “Politics, yes; guns, no.”

And the hardline, no-apologies approach that LaPierre is now known for wasn’t always his M.O. – rather, it was a lesson learned the hard way in his early battles during the Clinton administration.

Watch a clip from Gunned Down exploring Wayne LaPierre’s evolution:

As Gunned Down recounts, in 1995, in an effort to energize its base, the NRA issued a fundraising appeal that described federal agents as “jack-booted government thugs” who have the power to “take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.”

Outcry over the letter’s characterization of federal agents was swift and widespread — including from mainstream Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush, who publicly renounced his lifetime NRA membership.

LaPierre took to national television to backtrack, telling Larry King, “If you offend people and you didn’t mean to, what you do is apologize.”

To the NRA’s influential hardliners, though, the apology was LaPierre showing weakness.

“The membership wanted a tough guy … somebody that drew a red line, who didn’t compromise, who didn’t cave,” Sheryl Stolberg of The New York Times told FRONTLINE.

From there on out, Gunned Down reports, LaPierre made a fundamental decision: to stand tough. Ever since, his defenses of NRA language, his condemnation of any compromises on gun legislation, and his statements in the wake of mass shootings have been unflinching, with one exception: in the aftermath of the deadly Las Vegas shooting, LaPierre and the head of the NRA’s legal arm issued a call for a review of whether bump stock devices — which were used in the shooting — are lawful, and said that the NRA believes they “should be subject to additional regulations.”

Other than a bump stock ban that was passed after Las Vegas (and that the NRA did not ultimately support), no new federal gun control legislation has been passed since 1994.

For the full story on Wayne LaPierre’s evolution and how the NRA became such a successful lobbying force, stream Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA. From filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, the documentary is an in-depth look at the NRA’s political evolution and influence:

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Jan. 6, 2015. It was updated on April 30, 2019.