In America, cartels are illegal. Technically, a cartel is defined as an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining product prices and restricting competition. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela to control a fair share of return against the oil corporations that had dominated oil markets since the end of WWII, meets the definition of a cartel.
In 1968, spurred by the assassinations of national leaders, including President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy (pictured giving speech), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (also pictured), the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act was passed, which prohibited convicted felons, drug users, and mentally ill individuals from buying guns.
Cartels also work in other ways to protect interests and market power, especially within illegal industries such as drug, gun, and sex trafficking. El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, described money laundering practices and gun trafficking during his 2018–19 court appearances for the tons of illegal non-taxable money accumulated during their illegal enterprises.
The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which seems to protect U.S. gun manufacturers’ and dealers’ market share, both legal and illegal, could be viewed as a cartel but it isn’t.
Concerned about the increase in drug trafficking from Mexican cartels, the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency (ATF) devised a plan in 2005 with an objective to stop the black-market sale and export of guns from the U.S. into Mexico. The purpose: to deny drug cartels the firearms considered the “tools of the trade.”
Those “tools” are AK-15, AK-47, and Barrett M82 assault weapons primarily produced by U.S. manufacturers and legally sold to the Mexican military. In 2005, these weapons were no longer banned for individual sales in the U.S. Some could say resistance to regulation and background checks aided the mission of the ATF, except that the NRA had effectively reduced its authority over dealers in past legislation.
However, it was the gun smugglers associated with the 78,000 U.S. licensed gun dealers through straw purchasers at gun shows and through theft and private sales that ATF “Operation Fast and Furious” hoped to secure.
After a series of high-profile, outlaw-style, “Tommy gun” murders across the nation by the likes of Al Capone, John Dillinger, and Bonnie and Clydein the 1930s, the first Federal gun control measures were enacted.
The “gunwalking program,” a tactic of the Arizona ATF field office, which used straw buyers and sales to gun traffickers (similar to the operations used by the U.S. black market smugglers) to track and trace the gun’s destination to cartels, where arrests could occur, was controversial and produced marginal results. Some traffickers were arrested in sting operations but no cartel was shut down and the drug trafficking continues today.
Gun manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar business in the U.S., owned and operated by middle-aged white men who maintain a low community profile. Ten companies produce eight million firearms per year for buyers in the U.S.
The first federal gun control action occurred in 1934 and was influenced by the Al Capone, John Dillinger, and Bonnie and Clyde-style “Tommy guns.” The government placed a high tax on the manufacture and sale of machine guns, required a national registry of sales, and prohibited sales to individuals convicted of crimes of violence.
In 1968, spurred by the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., President Lyndon Johnson proposed and passed the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, regulating firearms, prohibiting convicted felons, drug users, and mentally ill individuals from buying guns, and raising the age to purchase firearms from federally-licensed dealers to 21. (Without a background check, how could this be accomplished?)
Retired Civil War Union General Ambrose Burnside served as the National Rifle Association’s first president, which was founded in 1871 to promote marksmanship.
Ten years later, the NRA, which was founded in 1871 to promote marksmanship (after Civil War Union General Ambrose Burnside and its first president declared that only one in 10 soldiers could hit the “broadside of a barn”), changed its educational tactics. Original supporters of the federal gun control legislation of 1934 and 1968, the NRA now wanted to overturn the laws. Led by Texan Harlon Carter, a career professional with Border Control and Immigration who, early in his youth, murdered a 15-year-old, the NRA moved to be politically active in lobbying against any regulation in the gun business. Education and marksmanship, while verbally proclaimed as their mantra from 1980 on, was definitely a back-burner goal.
In 1986, the NRA legislative arm was successful in securing the Firearm Owners Act, which reduced the power of the ATF and forbid the federal government from creating a national registry of gun ownership. They then set about aligning with the Republican Party, reducing or eliminating bipartisan non-political actions of its founding mission 100 years earlier. The new lobbying efforts only legislative defeat in the last 40 years was the 1994 banning of assault rifles and high capacity magazines, which expired in 2004.
With only 5,000,000 members, one could question why the NRA changed its tactics to a premier lobbying group that opposed any regulation on gun controls. Why would they oppose banning of high capacity magazines and military assault weapons in private hands? The rapid rise of power is a quandary.
In 2005, in negotiation with one of the largest gun manufacturers, Smith & Wesson, President Bill Clinton granted them immunity from product liability lawsuits in exchange for agreeing to install safety devices, not to sell to unscrupulous dealers, to limit hard gun sales, and to make “smart gun” technology available within three years.
The gun lobby exploded. Enraged by the industry bigwigs for what was viewed as surrender (to what?), the NRA’s called for a boycott of Smith & Wesson. The corporation suffered a 40 percent loss in sales and eventually reneged on the Clinton deal.
Within a year, Smith & Wesson became a member of the NRA exclusive “Golden Ring of Freedom Club” for those contributing one million dollars or more to the NRA. With income nearing $500,000,000, the lobbying group had plenty to pass around.
Unlike the responses to the past cultural misdeeds of 1930s outlaw criminals and 1960s assassinations of national leaders, which supported the federal gun control acts of 1934 and 1968, the actions of the NRA to pass legislation restricting gun regulation has effectively paralyzed national elected leaders from addressing the mass shooting epidemic in U.S. today.
The question remains...what is the NRA’s goal in successfully opposing what some call common sense measures to promote gun use safety?
Could it be that life within the NRA isn’t at all what it seems to be?
