The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a business trade group representing 10,000 gun makers, dealers and other firearm firms is emerging as a rising force in the U.S. and starting to eclipse in some respects the might of the powerful but scandal-plagued National Rifle Association, the Guardian reports. Activities of the NSSF, the gun industry’s conservative and aggressive lobbying group, are always geared to zealously and single-mindedly preserving and extending the power of the gun industry. It has been lobbying Congress to pass bills that would block financial institutions from using environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in making investment and loan decisions, to protect gun companies’ bottom lines.
Meanwhile, gun manufacturers are relying on this same group to mount legal challenges to several state laws that limit the gun industry’s highly prized and unique protection from contentious liability laws enacted by Congress in 2005. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the NSSF used its lobbying muscle to help prod his administration to move regulation of gun exports from the State Department to the Commerce Department, a shift that seems to have yielded financial dividends for gun exporters under Commerce's pro-business approach. In the past few years, as the 5-million member NRA has been battered by financial woes, internal rifts and legal threats from the New York attorney general and private interests, NSSF has expanded its legal and lobbying spending to fight gun-control efforts nationwide, while boosting gun rights and industry sales.
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