The Truth about Lobbying
How much money does the gun lobby spend to "own Congress" and the myth of NRA "blood money."
The popular narrative from prohibitionists is that the lack of legislative support for various gun control schemes is due to aggressive lobbying. The story goes that “blood money” from the National Rifle Association and other gun lobby efforts along with the firearm industry has a stranglehold on elected officials who are just pining to do “the right thing” but are being drowned out by all the cash.
How much money is actually spent by the NRA on lobbying? How does this compare to lobbying efforts from elsewhere?
Video overview of the real data on lobbying in the United States:
Statista is a German online platform specializing in data gathering and visualization in German, English, Spanish, and French. The company provides statistics and survey results presented in charts and tables. Its main target groups are business customers, lecturers, and researchers, offering subscriptions to a database of companies in the same manner as Bloomberg L.P.
Statista’s data partners include the Federal Statistical Office, the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, the OECD, and the German Institute for Economic Research. Other partners include the Financial Times and Fortune. Financial Times Germany named them among the winners of the start-up competition, Enable to Start.
Major U.S. Political Lobbying
The big three in major U.S. political lobbying are Pharmaceuticals/Health Products ($357 million per year), Electronics Manufacturing ($180 million per year), and Insurance ($153 million per year.)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/257364/top-lobbying-industries-in-the-us
Critical note: Statista felt compelled to add the following footnote to this chart:
The NRA and lobbying
One of the most famous lobbying organizations in the United States is the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lobbies lawmakers in favor of gun rights. However, despite this, it only spent around 2.2 million U.S. dollars on lobbying expenditures in 2020.
Apparently, they received so many inquiries as to why the NRA wasn’t included in that chart above they included the answer right underneath: the NRA spends a marginal fraction on lobbying compared to the actual big spenders.
Watch: The real reason why the gun lobby is effective.
Gun Lobby Money
The NRA typically spends a few million dollars per year on lobbying. From 1998-2022, the most the NRA spent on lobbying in a single year was just over $5 million. Most years it’s between 1.5-2.5 million.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation also lobbies. In 2023, according to federal records, the NSSF spent the most in lobbying in its 60-year history: $5.4 million on federal lobbying, slightly more than the NRA’s all-time annual record amount.
Anti-Gun Lobbying
Firearm prohibitionists claim there is some large grassroots movement to push for legislative restrictions. It turns out that many anti-gun organizations are astroturfing fronts funded as tax deductions by a small group of very wealthy donors. These “organizations” provide no services with all funding received as contributions.
As an example, “March for Our Lives” bills itself as a grassroots movement of young people working to restrict gun ownership under the guise of safety. In reality, this is a front group funded by a few dozen donors. According to public tax documents for March for Our Lives, the group is funded almost entirely by large tax-deductible donations in excess of $100,000 with less than 1% of all donations from people donating less than $5,000. Nearly 100% of “March for Our Lives” income is Contributions serving as a tax deduction for donors and no Program Services are offered. Contrast this to the NRA’s public tax records where nearly half of the income is from Program Services and about a third is from Contributions.
Oracle Lobby Money
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology company known primarily for its proprietary, multi-model database management system. Oracle has outspent the NRA on lobbying every year; not the Information Technology industry as a whole, just Oracle by itself. Oracle spends between $4.8-$12.4 million per year on lobbying. Oracle outspent the NRA and the NSSF every year for the past decade, and often by three times as much.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043138/lobbying-expenses-of-oracle/
Lobby Money Breakdown
Pharmaceutical companies spend the most on lobbying, much more than any other industry or sector. Pharmaceutical companies spend more on lobbying than second and third place (Electronics Manufacturing and Insurance) combined. Novo Nordisk, the maker of the obesity drug Ozempic, has spent $10 million per year just to lobby for that one drug with their primary effort pushing for the passage of the proposed Treat and Reduce Obesity Act which would emphasize regular prescription by doctors to patients for Ozempic. That doesn't count the $100 million Novo Nordisk has spent in advertising this drug to the general public.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, appointed to the current Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, has declared that “obesity cannot be treated with exercise and good diet” and is pushing for more pharmaceutical interventions. This push is for drug interventions such as Ozempic. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Stanford had been a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk.
Watch: More info on Pharmaceutical lobbying
Compare this to NRA lobby expenditure. One news outlet in Alabama decried all the “NRA money pouring into Alabama”. They included this chart of Alabama elected officials documenting all the NRA “blood money” in their state:
Per this news outlet complaining about NRA influence, these amounts were the TOTAL NRA contributions from 1998-2016 to these elected officials, not annual contributions. According to their own chart, the largest NRA lobby recipient in Alabama (Robert Aderholt) was averaging about $2,430 per year from the NRA.
Contrast this to the total campaign donations to these same elected officials in a single campaign.
The biggest NRA lobby recipient in Alabama (Robert Aderholt) received $1,433,640 in campaign contributions from all sources, of which an average of $2,430 per year came from the NRA. That makes the NRA contributions 0.169% of the total. Gary Palmer averaged $222 per year from the NRA against $1,201,854 of contributions, or 0.018%.
Even if Robert Aderholt had received all of those 1998-2016 NRA contributions all at once during that single 2015-2016 campaign, that would still be only 3% of his campaign total ($43,749:$1,433,640 = 3.05%)
I’m not a lobbyist, but I’m guessing you need to spend more than 3% (or 0.169% or 0.018%…) of an elected official’s total campaign contributions to have meaningful leverage over their voting sufficient to turn their vote. I’m also guessing industries lobbying with $357 million, $180 million, and $153 million each have much more sway than a group lobbying with less than $5 million.
Consider this the next time anyone complains about NRA lobbying while ignoring (or receiving) lobby money from Pharmaceutical, Electronics Manufacturing, or Insurance companies.
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Broke it down Barney rubble style for the slow kids in the back.