Wayne Robert LaPierre Jr. is an American gun rights lobbyist who was the CEO and executive vice president of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), a position he held between 1991 and 2024.
LaPierre in 2017
LaPierre supported regulation on bump stocks (pictured here on a WASR-10 rifle)
Gun politics in the United States
Gun politics is defined in the United States by two primary opposing ideologies concerning the private ownership of firearms. Those who advocate for gun control support increasingly restrictive regulation of gun ownership; those who advocate for gun rights oppose increased restriction, or support the liberalization of gun ownership. These groups typically disagree on the interpretation of the text, history and tradition of the laws and judicial opinions concerning gun ownership in the United States and the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. American gun politics involves these groups' further disagreement concerning the role of firearms in public safety, the studied effects of ownership of firearms on public health and safety, and the role of guns in national and state crime.
Calamity Jane, notable pioneer frontierswoman and scout, aged 43
Gun politics date to Colonial America. (Lexington Minuteman, representing John Parker, by Henry Hudson Kitson stands at the town green of Lexington, Massachusetts.)
Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment
Political cartoon by Frederick Burr Opper published in Puck magazine shortly after the assassination of James A. Garfield
