Interest Groups: National Rifle Association And Brady Campaign

An interest group is a group of people that tries to take action on a political issue or concern. The goal of an interest group is to recruit politicians as endorsements and persuade the government to take action on their respective issue. There are interest groups for mostly every issue or concern for the country. For example, the National Rifle Association and Brady Campaign are both interest groups that are concerned with gun control and gun violence. Both groups have stated their interests in influencing the American government to apply stricter gun laws and reduce the amount of shootings and deaths by firearms by a drastic margin.
The NRA-Political Victory Fund is a system that ranks politicians based on their contributions to the NRA,

He stated this after the Port Arthur Massacre, an incident in which a gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia. The incident was so brutal that it led to Australia completely changing their gun control laws. Since the change in gun control laws, Australia has had very few mass murders, the largest being the Sydney hostage crisis in 2014 in which 3 people were shot in a terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia. Some people feel that the reason that Congress has not been passing gun control laws is due to the fact that the NRA donates millions of dollars each year to Republican lawmakers in

The Brady Campaign was named after James “Jim” Brady, an assistant to President Ronald Reagan during Reagan’s tenure. Brady was shot and permanently disabled after an assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan in 1981. Brady’s wife, Sarah Brady would then go on to lead the organization from 1989 to 2012. Originally, the Brady Campaign was known as the National Council to Control Handguns when it was formed in 1974, until then being renamed the Handgun Control, Inc. from 1980 to 2000. The Brady Campaign has stated that its mission is to “create a safer America for all of that will to a dramatic reduction in gun deaths and injuries”. The Brady Campaign has had several changes in its leadership since the start of the interest group. Mark Borinsky founded the organization and served as its president from 1974 to 1976. In 1978, Nelson Shields was appointed as the president of the organization until his retirement in 1989. Sarah Brady, went on to become president in 1989, eight years after the permanent disabilization of her husband and would serve until 2012. Richard Aborn would serve from 1992 to 1996, former Maryland Congressman Michael D. Barnes served as the president from 2000 to 2006, former Indiana mayor Paul Helmke would serve from 2006 to 2011, and Dan Gross would go on to serve as president of the organization from February 2012 to September