When members of the NRA finally held their fundraiser event in Park Slope, local political leaders did not hesitate to issue condemnations, with Brooklyn city councilman Justin Brannan declaring: "We don’t need [the NRA] in Brooklyn.”

But Brooklyn actually has historic ties to the NRA.

George Wood Wingate, who died in the borough in 1928, was the co-founder of the NRA, and a city park in Prospect-Lefferts is named after him. So is a campus which houses several small schools. The following text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project, and is posted in the park:

This park honors George Wood Wingate (1840-1928), best known for co-founding the National Rifle Association (NRA). A Union general in the Civil War, Wingate was disturbed by the inadequate skills of the Northern soldiers, feeling they lacked discipline and were poor marksmen. After the War, in an effort to address these problems and to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis,” he created the NRA with Colonel William Church in 1871. Wingate was also a lawyer and writer and used the latter skill to promote his platform and the necessity of the NRA.

According to a NY Times piece from 2013, the park was known as George Wingate High School Park until 1987, when it was simplified to Wingate Park. They also noted that Wingate retired as "a lawyer whose name lives on in the Brooklyn firm of Wingate Kearney & Cullen, where Wingate’s son practiced (before and after he was the surrogate of Kings County)." Before that, however, he had a different career.



(Library of Congress)

As a leader of a New York National Guard Regiment during the Civil War, Wingate realized soldiers needed better training; he drew up the first marksmanship guidelines for the U.S. military and prodded the New York State legislature to construct a practice range. In 1871, along with William Conant Church, he founded the National Rifle Association of America.

But aside from the name, the organization Wingate helped found isn’t the same NRA we know today — it didn’t have a lobbying arm until 1975. Originally, it was focused on teaching marksmanship to the men and boys who might someday find themselves part of the volunteer U.S. Army.

Among his publications is “Why Boys Should Be Taught to Shoot,” from 1907. “In these days of crowded cities and strenuous work all forms of exercise are valuable to growing boys,” he wrote. “Shooting... develops coolness of nerve under excitement, powers of observation, and rapid judgement, which are important mental qualities.”

Every New York high school should teach boys to use military-grade rifles, he wrote, so that they could be trained before they had to serve. In his role as co-founder and then head of the Public Schools Athletic League, he started a marksmanship program, and he boasted about how New York was an American leader in gun training. But he didn’t think students should use live ammunition, which could lead to accidents. Instead, he helped develop a training gun (he held the patent on one) that used a system of punch cards.



Theodore Roosevelt, Gen. George Wood Wingate, William Vincent Astor, Gustavus Kirby and Solomon R. Guggenheim in a 1913 group portrait taken at a meeting of the Public Schools Athletic League in Central Park. (Library of Congress)

He wrote, “In New England, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas and later in Kentucky, the first settlers held their land and their lives by their skill as riflemen….This skill so impressed the world that even now the popular idea in many countries and among many of our own people is that America is a nation of marksmen.” That was a misimpression, he said. But he thought the NRA, a system of high school gun clubs, and better training of the military would change that.

Also, Brooklyn, did you know we have a PUBLIC PARK named after the FOUNDER of the NRA? George Wood Wingate Park in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Tell @NYCParks to change the name! — Jack Davies (@jg_dav) April 26, 2018

In light of the national backlash against the NRA and the ongoing controversy around monuments in this (and other) cities, we asked the Parks Department if there has been any public demands for a name change. A spokesperson said no, there had not been.