Once Powerful Nra Losing Members, Influence Moderate Members Drop Out As Militants Gain Power Within Group

Emory Motter bought his first car, a 1936 Chevrolet Standard, by selling muskrat and skunk pelts and rabbits shot on his family’s farm near Emmitsberg.

But some years back, Motter gave up his guns. He had started to associate them more with criminals than with the deer he startles in his back yard in western Maryland.

People like Motter are a big reason the National Rifle Association, long one of the nation’s most powerful interest groups, is faltering.

Fewer and fewer people hunt these days: It’s not a sport that appeals to busy urbanites or most young people or women. In addition, as America’s farms have evolved into suburbs, land to hunt on has become scarce and distant.

Hunting trends in Washington and Idaho reflect the national decline.

The percentage of the population that hunts in both states has fallen steadily over the past 15 years.

And as the number of NRA members who hunt has dropped, so has their moderating effect on the organization. A smaller, more radical NRA, hospitable even to anti-government militia members, has emerged. And that’s intimidated even old NRA friends like Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, both of whom reneged in the last Congress on pledges to repeal or block gun laws offensive to NRA.

It’s a vicious cycle: “As the NRA has become more and more militant, more and more moderates are saying they’re no longer represented by the NRA and dropping out,” said David Edmondson of Dallas, a former NRA board member defeated for re-election in 1990 and now a vocal critic.

He and NRA leaders both blame changing times and attitudes.

“You had to hunt in the old days,” Edmondson said. “Then it became recreational. Then a lot of people decided it was the wrong thing to do if you didn’t need the meat.”

“Right now, the majority of America’s youngsters thinks guns are evil, period,” NRA President Marion Hammer conceded in an interview last year.

The NRA is not only losing membership and influence over Washington lawmakers. It’s also losing support from police, particularly from big city forces. In urbanizing states like California and Florida, and in suburbs, many NRA endorsements proved a mixed blessing in the last election.

That’s quite a comeuppance for the leading bankrollers of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Also for NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who had vowed to “clean President Clinton’s clock in the 1996 election.”

The NRA first backed Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as a clock-cleaner. But Gramm collapsed after New Hampshire, and Pat Buchanan rode off with the pro-gun vote. Then the NRA got locked in a snit over assault rifles with Dole. In the end, the NRA backed no one against “the most anti-gun president in American history.”

There’s little for the NRA to crow about in the new Congress, either. The Senate is a bit more pro-gun, more because of retirements than victories. On the other hand, none of the 10 lawmakers on the gun lobby’s list of “Must Go” incumbents lost last November.

There are declines, too, inside the NRA’s vast new headquarters, clad in reflective blue glass in a Virginia suburb of Washington.

A massive $90 million recruiting campaign that pumped up NRA membership to 3.5 million peaked in 1995. Since then, at least 500,000 members have dropped out, NRA officials concede.

Dwindling numbers of hunters is one reason. After holding at 14 million for many years while the overall population rose, the American hunting population plummeted by as much as 700,000 between 1991 and 1996, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studies.

Washington and Idaho contributed to that decline.

In 1980, nearly 350,000 people - or 9 percent of the population - purchased resident hunting licenses in Washington, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In 1995, that number dwindled to about 150,000 - a 58 percent drop.

Statistics from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game show a similar slide. In 1987, nearly 172,000 Idahoans purchased hunting licenses. In 1996, that number dropped to under 160,000.

“We’re just reflective of the nationwide trend,” said Madonna Luers of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s greater urbanization and lack of access.”

To offset these trends, the NRA recruits target shooters. Their numbers include more women and are growing apace with the population, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group based in Newtown, Conn.

The NRA’s chief spokesman, Bill Powers, wary of reporters after years of stories that he considers unfair, declined to make top NRA officials available for interviews. They’ve concluded communication with NRA members is more important, Powers said, than talking to the media.

But he does point out that the fortunes of many non-profit groups are cyclical - good when donors perceive a threat in the White House or Congress, bad when there’s no fear to motivate their giving.

In a split government where Congress and White House stymie one another’s threats, Powers said, many non-profits, including environmental and abortion-related groups, find it tough to raise money.

None of this means the NRA has ceased to be a big and demanding multimillion-dollar campaign contributor in Washington.

Rather, says Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based organization that advocates gun control, the NRA “has gone from omnipotent to powerful.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Decline in U.S. hunters

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Frank Greve Knight-Ridder Newspapers Staff writer Adam Lynn contributed to this report.