Steven Rosenfeld: How the NRA Went From Best Friend

of the Nation's Police to harsh enemy of law enforcement. As it became more unwilling to compromise over even minor gun controls, the NRA is now on the bad side of the police. For years, the National Rifle Association cultivated a reputation as an unbeatable political powerhouse, a legacy that was challenged on Thursday, with the introduction of major new gun control legislation in the US Senate, banning more than 100 military style guns, but the NRA's tough reputation unwinds, if one delves into the history behind its harshest rhetoric, which began in the 1970s and escalated as former allies, notably America's police, rejected its increasingly militant demands. What today's NRA would like to forget, is how its unbending extremism led to a losing streak in Congress two decades ago, a period whose gun politics echo today, but gun controls nevertheless passed. Perhaps the best way to understand how the NRA is not the all powerful lobby it seeks to portray itself, as is to look at how the organization went from being a "best friend" of the nation's police, to a political enemy of law enforcement, from federal agents at the top of the ladder, to local police chiefs and police unions below. As it became more outspoken and unwilling to compromise over insignificant gun controls, it became the group it remains today, vainly claiming to be the last line against impending government tyranny. "Once you go down that road, how do you walk that rhetoric back?" said Robert Spitzer, a gun rights historian and SUNY Cortland's political science department chairman. "Obama wants to turn the idea of absolutism into a dirty word," NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre said in a speech to Nevada hunters on Tuesday, responding to Monday's inaugural address, in which the president chastised groups like the NRA for their unending hyperbole and vitriol. "He wants to put every private, personal firearms transaction right under the thumb of the federal government, and anyone who says that's excessive, President Obama says that's an absolutist." In the heat of today's political fights, where excessive emotion, exaggerated threats and hyperbole are routine, it's easily forgotten that the NRA once stood with government. For much of its 143 year history, the NRA's survival depended on a cozy relationship with the government. It relied on state subsidies at its founding, and then federal subsidies for marksmanship contests for generations. The US military provided free guns, or sold them at cost to NRA members for decades. Thousands of soldiers helped run annual shooting contests. Local police departments turned to the NRA for training.