The Dean of Gun Lobbyists
John Snyder’s Oral History
In November 2015, I recorded an oral history with John Snyder, who was then-retired as "the dean of Washington gun lobbyists." A pivotal figure in the gun rights movement, he passed away in 2017 at age 79. He started in 1966 with the National Rifle Association (NRA), then in 1975 co-founded and became the lobbyist for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), serving in that capacity until he retired in 2011.
The full 31-page oral history interview was recently published as a Working Paper by the University of Wyoming College of Law's Firearms Research Center: John Snyder: An Oral History of the Dean of Washington Gun Lobbyists. Below, I summarize some of our conversation at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, starting with the emergence of the gun control debate in the 1960s.
From Georgetown to the NRA
John Snyder entered the gun rights arena almost by accident. In 1966, at age 26, he was a Georgetown University graduate student in political science, preparing for his master's comprehensive exam and seeking part-time work so that he could focus on his studies. A classmate's tip led him to a "Boy Friday" job at The American Rifleman, the NRA's flagship magazine.
At the time, the NRA was a sleepy organization of 800,000 members, primarily target shooters, hunters, and collectors, with little appetite for political engagement. Snyder explained, "there was no pro-gun movement or pro-gun lobby" in 1966. Gun ownership was simply assumed to be a right of law-abiding Americans.
The landscape shifted after the 1966 University of Texas shooting and the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. Senator Thomas Dodd (D-Conn.) was Chairman of Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and had been criticizing violence on television and cinema. Franklin Orth, the NRA's Executive Vice President, told Snyder that "pressure was put on Dodd by Hollywood and a lot of the advertisers on Hollywood to get off the film kick. And somebody pointed him in the direction of the firearms kick."
Snyder's work at The American Rifleman under editor Ashley Halsey, Jr., placed him at the forefront of the NRA's nascent response. Halsey, a former Saturday Evening Post features editor, saw the need to counter anti-gun propaganda. He tasked Snyder with research, and Snyder began digging through Library of Congress archives for quotes from dictators on disarmament. He recalled:
These were English translations of all their writings and for like Stalin, there'd be 40 volumes. . . I went through those volumes piecemeal and found out things that these various dictators have had to say about disarming the people and so on. All of which has become common knowledge now but at that time it wasn't, because the research hadn't been done. I did the research which involved me sitting in the Library of Congress for hours going through all these filthy old books.
These findings informed editorials, some reprinted in the Congressional Record by pro-gun Democrats like Rep. Bob Sikes of Florida.
Yet the NRA remained divided. Many members and leaders, including Executive Director Louis Lucas, resisted lobbying, viewing it as unseemly. However, as Snyder repeatedly affirmed:
They were very patriotic, good, good people, but just totally unprepared for the political onslaught that was building at that time. . . The people who didn't want to get too involved in the public defense of the Second Amendment thought . . . the war would peter out. . . Because they had grown up in the old America, they couldn't conceive of anybody wanting to take guns take away. I mean, they just couldn't believe it!
As a reporter for The American Rifleman, Snyder investigated the Kenyon Ballew case and exposed law enforcement misconduct. On June 7, 1971, in Silver Spring, Maryland, the Montgomery County Police and the new federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) broke down the door of the wrong apartment, shot first, and severely injured Kenyon Ballew. Next, they fabricated a case, ultimately unsuccessful, purporting that Ballew had violated the National Firearms Act.
George Gordon Liddy
One day in June 1972, Snyder and a friend were heading out to lunch in Washington, D.C., near the then-headquarters of the NRA, at 1600 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. They ran into G. Gordon Liddy, whom Snyder knew from upstate New York, and as a White House aide who often came to the NRA building to shoot at the handgun range. They invited Liddy to "come to lunch." To which he replied, "'Guys I'd love to," but 'We've got to re-elect the president."
"THAT night was Watergate!" said Snyder.
Snyder recalled that he and the friend "both thought that was kind of strange" at the time for Liddy to say what he did, even in the context of Liddy's typical "hardcore" demeanor.
The Rise of a Movement and Birth of the CCRKBA
While still employed at NRA, Snyder made contacts with Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and became their gun policy expert, mentoring YAF's National Students Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Collaborating with another YAF figure, Alan Gottlieb, Snyder created the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. On January 1, 1975, he started with a single desk in a shared office.
In those early days, two congressmen were particularly helpful:
John Ashbrook was a member of Congress from Ohio, and he was a Republican. One of the last real, solid anti-communist types in the House. He at that time was a minority leader of the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee. He and I talked a lot. He just said he told the other Republicans that he thought I could be trusted, and I'd never let them down, and I'd always give 'em the straight scoop. He made sure I got invited to testify and so on.
There was a guy on the Democrat side who was the same way, Larry McDonald. . . Larry Patton McDonald. He was the nephew of General George Patton. His mother was George Patton's sister. So I developed the ability to deal with people in both parties, mainly through the efforts of these two congressmen.
Snyder provided legislators with data and talking points, which they shared with colleagues, and he gave lectures for congressional staff.
He also began a long-running holiday tradition of mailing pro-gun Christmas cards. The first one "just had Santa Claus getting ready to put a firearm in a box under the Christmas tree." Because the printer hand printed thousands, Snyder kept the cards, and mailed them widely the next Christmas, this time to every congressperson. It did not go over well with some. Rep. Jonathan Bingham (D-N.Y.) delivered a speech on the House floor expressing his outrage. CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite denounced the card. Snyder laughed in recollection of the free publicity.
Perspective over Half a Century
Snyder reflected on the transformations of lobbying over the previous half-century. In the 1960s, lobbying was not a recognized profession. By 2015, Washington hosted tens of thousands of lobbyists, with universities offering master's degrees in legislative affairs. Large firms now dominate, contracting with interest groups.
Corporate lobbying, Snyder observed, offered high salaries but lacked the heart of cause-driven work. His own efforts were fueled by a belief in the Second Amendment as a God-given right, not a government-granted privilege.
In 2015, Snyder described the Second Amendment as "tenuous" because many people felt "that no right, in and of itself, exists other than as something granted or conceived of by the government. . . [T]he right of individuals is always tenuous. Not only now. That always has been the case. You can go way back into ancient history," starting with Plato, the philosophical founder of dictatorship.
It should be noted that Snyder in February 2016 became the first national figure in the gun rights movement to endorse Donald Trump for President. Some considered the endorsement shocking, including because of Trump's erratic record on gun issues from interviews in previous years.
Fighting the Good Fight
John Snyder and I became friends starting in 1998, when he interviewed me for a newsletter article naming me "Gun Rights Defender of the Month." He was a good man, with a passion for human rights. It was a blessing to have known him.
The above post was previously published on the website of the University of Wyoming College of Law, Firearms Research Center.