https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/us/wayne-lapierre-the-gun-man-sticking-to-his-cause.html
Once so bookish that he was known for his copious note-taking and so clumsy with a gun that colleagues laughed at his shooting, Mr. LaPierre, 64, helped invent the modern N.R.A. and transformed himself along with it into a right-wing folk hero and a reliable source of polarizing statements.
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As a teenager growing up in Roanoke, Va., Mr. LaPierre had no apparent interest in hunting or guns, but a deep interest in politics, recalled Tom Lisk, a childhood neighbor who later worked for the rifle association.
He volunteered for the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern, a Democrat (back then Democrats were the dominant party in Virginia); earned a master’s degree in government and politics from Boston College; and then worked for a Virginia state delegate and gun rights advocate, Vic Thomas. Mr. LaPierre essentially fell into his job at the N.R.A. through Mr. Thomas, and he began working as a state lobbyist covering New York and New England.
He earned a reputation as being more shy and studious than ideological, accumulating stacks of yellow legal pads filled with detailed notes. Later, he recruited Mr. Lisk by telling him that the rifle association was “a great place to learn politics, learn about lobbying.” Being passionate about firearms was not a job requirement, Mr. Lisk said; he remembers Mr. LaPierre as more of a hockey fan.
John Aquilino, a former N.R.A. director of public education, said, “Wayne is not a gunny, he’s not ex-military, he’s not a hunter, he’s not a trapper.” What interested the young lobbyist was strategy.
He was deliberate and courteous, even to opponents, once surprising Naomi Paiss, a gun control advocate about to debate him on television, by warmly congratulating her on her approaching wedding. His fantasy, he told Mr. Aquilino, was to retire from the N.R.A. and open an ice cream shop in Maine. Instead he spent decades expanding the organization — founded in 1871 by Civil War commanders dismayed by their troops’ poor marksmanship — into a universe of its own.
The association’s skilled lobbying arm, the direct-mail hailstorms that help influence elections, the women’s council, the television network, the sports stars and celebrities (including the rock musician Ted Nugent and the actor Tom Selleck) who sit on its board are all, to some degree, the handiwork of Mr. LaPierre. Outreach to minorities has also been a LaPierre priority, said Roy Innis, the national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, who serves on the N.R.A. board.
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Years ago, Mr. LaPierre hoped to strike out as a consultant, Mr. Lisk said, an idea he abandoned when he realized how completely he had become identified with the gun issue.
Along the way Mr. LaPierre’s language has steadily grown more operatic, filled with warnings about government agents who were “jackbooted thugs” (1995), “an Islamic ex-con with two aliases and no job” (2002) and a “U.N.-declared official day of hate” (2011).
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Former colleagues say he speaks that way because that is what his job demands; Mr. LaPierre learned early on the dangers of appearing to back down. After his “jackbooted thugs” remark, he apologized, only to face his members’ ire, according to Richard Feldman, a former lobbyist for the association who now runs a rival gun rights group.
In small settings, people who know him say, he is mild-mannered and thoughtful.
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Gun control advocates say the gap between the public and private leader is dictated by simple demographic reality. Because gun ownership has been declining for decades, “the N.R.A. knows it has to motivate a shrinking base,” said Josh Sugarmann, the executive director of the Violence Policy Center. “They have to reach out to the fringes.”
The more besieged N.R.A. members feel, the more committed they are, with regular jumps in membership after mass shootings, as was the case after Newtown.
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So. Not really a gun enthusiast. Not a tough guy. A clever salesman who sort of fell into gun lobbying, realized he was too identified with it to allow for other career choices, and very cynically ratcheted up the rhetoric to keep and build NRA membership.
In other words, he's a fraud, and a dangerous one.
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