Why don’t gun lobby groups like the NRA disavow armed extremism?

For decades, the gun lobby has not only enabled access to guns by anti-government and white supremacist extremists through its advocacy against common-sense gun laws, but has also worked to harness their fixation on guns to shore up its own political power; in doing so, the gun lobby has amplified extreme-right politics to new and broader audiences. The gun lobby’s rhetorical, political, and sometimes organizational overlap with the extreme right—from the militia movement of the 1990s to the “boogaloo bois” of today—has yielded dangerous and, at times, catastrophic results.