Revealed: top official did special favors on guns for NRA at interior department
Powerful gun lobby group has used connections in Trump administration to influence decisions, messages show
In the fall of 2017, a National Rifle Association lobbyist named Benjamin Cassidy left his job at the influential gun group. His next stop: a top position at the US interior department, which oversees hundreds of millions of acres of federal land across the country.
Once in office, it didn’t take Cassidy long to use his new government gig to provide his longtime NRA colleagues with special access to the powerful federal agency, as revealed by previously unreleased communications obtained by the Guardian.
The messages underscore the potent influence that industry lobbyists and conservative organizations enjoy at a government agency where many key leaders are former lobbyists and conservative activists themselves. The NRA has made the most of this dynamic during the Trump presidency, leveraging its connections to shape policy outcomes and personnel decisions at the interior department.
In 2017, for instance, Susan LaPierre, a prominent NRA member and the wife of NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, was appointed by the head of the interior department to the board of the National Parks Foundation, a congressionally chartered organization that supports park programs.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/23/revealed-e-mails-show-that-nra-shaped-gun-policy-at-interior-department
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Target shooting in the Sonoran Desert national monument in Arizona is controversial – it has damaged archeological artifacts, destroyed saguaro cacti, and harmed other natural and cultural resources.
Recce replied with an NRA plan to leave more of the monument open to target shooting.
In the weeks that followed, Cassidy kept Recce updated on the progress of that target-shooting plan and others, including a proposal to restrict target shooting on public lands in Utah, which the NRA opposed.
