PAGE NINE -- No. 36
by Alan Korwin,

Myth:
The NRA, the most powerful lobby in Washington, dictates its deadly policies to Congress, which is helpless to stand up against the massive power of the brutish heat-packing gun-toters.

Fact:
Since “the most powerful” anything is an editorial statement, presented in this context without any guidelines for comparison, regular readers should immediately spot this unethical media deception and refuse to accept it just on its face.

If “powerful” is measured by bills passed and taxes allocated, the military is top dog.

The NRA does indeed wield influence and sometimes succeed in getting bills passed or defeated in an effort to protect the right to keep arms and the right bear arms, rights which Americans have always had and exercised. It is almost a tragedy that such a basic human right needs a lobby in a free country, but it surely does. Like any lobby, NRA wins some and loses some for its members and the nation as a whole.

Applying a form of measurement to the media’s characterization—money spent on lobbying activities—the NRA doesn’t make the top ten. Reporters, as they often admit, are generally not real good with numbers, and lack a good understanding of economics, but continue to report anyway.

As common sense might suggest, the tiny gun industry, for all its zeal and ardent support, doesn’t come close to the spending and influence America’s major players have over Congress. In true power-politics style, the most powerful lobbies are outfits you never heard of.

The top 10 lobbies measured by money spent are dominated, as you might expect, by energy, drugs, telecom and business, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce holding the number one position by a slim margin over the American Medical Assoc. The only other industry in the top 10 is tobacco (Philip Morris) at number three. Pack reporters consistently fail to check the easily found statistics in their unbiased and honest rush to label NRA as the baddest boy on the block.

A bit more diversity slips into the next 20 top lobbyists, with automakers, realtors, Boeing and social-security lobbyists added to other business/power/telecom brokers, but still no gun lobby.

After that it’s a free for all, with IBM, chemical makers, railroads, seniors, banks, unions, broadcasters, Microsoft, insurance, agriculture, investment and even Fannie Mae, the tax-funded government mortgage operation, spending the big bucks to bend congressional policy, down to the top 50 lobbyists.

The gun lobby doesn’t show up until #78, after the forest industry, Walt Disney, and the Mississippi Band of Chocktaw Indians.

The Indians, called “Native Americans” by the “news” media, typically lobby to get gambling monopolies, and for other purposes. Though born in America, I am not a member of the Native American lobby.

It just sounds so powerful to denigrate the gun lobby as the powerful gun lobby, why let a little thing like facts stand in the way. No reporters have been indicted for the phony editorializing disguised as news, but they are lobbying hard for a federal shield law to protect them in the future.