President Obama, expected to unveil his full guns package today, knows a ban on assault weapons or large clips will face

an epic fight

in Congress. Yet it seems counter-intuitive: Since civilians don’t need weapons that spray lots of bullets, why such a backlash?

Just follow the money trail. Our debate over gun control is no longer about your hunting rifle, the beliefs of the average gun owner or even the Second Amendment — it’s about profits.

The NRA depends on the financial backing of gun manufacturers, and they depend on the sale of militarized weapons. So Obama's real battle isn't against gun owners. It's against the gunmakers and their powerful trade lobby: the NRA.

Flemington resident Michael Pohle, whose son was gunned down at Virginia Tech, was onto something when he said the weapons used in mass shootings are becoming more powerful. His son, Mike Jr., was killed with a semi-automatic handgun. The children in Newtown were riddled with bullets from an assault rifle.

Gunmakers have increasingly relied on weapons of war and large-capacity magazines to expand their market, due to the decline of game hunting. As many as 11 of the top 15 gun manufacturers now sell assault weapons. And while tens of millions of Americans own guns, most don’t buy new ones regularly. So the industry has been forced to adapt.

It’s morphed into a trafficker of paramilitary weapons and handguns — modeled on warfare, not sport. And to protect its profits, it found a good front: The NRA.

Nobody admires that more than Big Tobacco. In fact, Philip Morris modeled an early smokers’ rights group after the NRA, in an effort to replicate its lobbying prowess and deceptive grassroots image.

These days, the NRA takes in $200 million a year, more than it ever did from sportsmen. From 2004 to 2010, its revenue from fundraising, including gifts from gunmakers, grew twice as fast as its income from members' dues. That's reflected in its priorities.

Consider why the NRA pushed Virginia to repeal its one-handgun-a-month purchase law, which most state residents supported because it cut down on interstate gun trafficking. Or why the NRA not only helped win passage of a federal law that limited liability claims against gunmakers, but also tried to block gun owners from suing over their defective weapons. Or why it opposed reporting bulk sales of assault rifles, or cross-checking names of people on the terrorist watch list with those of gun buyers.

Again and again — to protect gun sales, at any cost.

Most Americans,

including gun owners

, support reasonable gun restrictions. But rank-and-file gun owners don’t hold much sway over NRA decisions. That’s by design, Peter Dreier, a politics professor at Occidental College,

wrote

in the Huffington Post this week. The NRA has limited the right to vote for board members to those who have belonged for at least five consecutive years, a fraction of its overall membership. As a result, the board is

dominated

by industry-affiliated staffers, lobbyists and politicians.

They include Steve Hornady, president of Hornady Ammunition, which manufactures armor-piercing bullets marketed to civilians; Ronnie Barrett, founder and CEO of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing Inc., and designer of the .50-caliber sniper rifle; and Pete Brownell, president of Brownells Inc., the world’s largest supplier of firearm parts and equipment.

The NRA’s top corporate benefactor is MidwayUSA, which sells high-capacity magazines. So don’t be surprised when NRA lobbyists and their political friends refuse to compromise on even the most basic controls over rapid-fire guns or large-capacity clips. This isn’t about gun rights — it’s about gun money.

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