Guns, Money and Minnesotans in Congress in Three Charts
WASHINGTON - Aided by DFL U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, the U.S. Senate began consideration Thursday of a bill that would expand the background check system for gun buyers, perhaps the most significant gun control legislation to be considered by Congress in more than a decade.
Much ink is spilled in Washington trying to describe the political power of the National Rifle Association, which announced its opposition to the bill on Wednesday night, and the wider gun rights movement. But the story can actually be told in three charts, courtesy of data released by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit which promotes government transparency.
First off, how powerful is the NRA and the gun rights movement? Well, if viewed strictly through the lens of campaign contributions, the gun control movement would appear to be, ahem, outgunned by a 10 to one ratio.
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The Sunlight Foundation's numbers include contributions from major organizations, such as the NRA on the gun rights side and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on the gun control side. It also contains donations from individuals that Sunlight considers to be ideological donors whose giving is at least somewhat motivated by their stance on guns.
Having shown the gun rights movement's pocketbook power, it's worth looking into how much individual Minnesota members of Congress get from pro-gun donors.
Since Sunlight's data ends with the 2012 campaign, I've included the numbers for Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack, who was defeated last November, but have otherwise limited the chart to current members of Congress.
No surprises, pro-gun donors are particularly generous with Republican members of Congress although two of Minnesota's Democratic House members, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz, have been endorsed by the NRA and have gotten contributions from that group and other pro-gun supporters.
What's interesting though is how heavily tilted the contributions are to Republicans. Cravaack, who served a single term in Congress, received more in those two years from pro-gun donors than Walz has even though Walz was first elected in 2006. Similarly, Democrat Collin Peterson has served in Congress since 1991, yet Republican Erik Paulsen, first elected in 2008, has nearly outpaced Peterson's lifetime donations from pro-gun groups in a mere two terms.
Lastly, although I've mentioned that the data includes individual donors and other groups, the political debate around guns centers around the NRA itself. Just how important is that organization? As it turns out, very.
By itself, the NRA accounts for 60 percent of the pro-gun campaign contributions to Minnesota candidates between 1989 and today. The pro-hunting group Safari Club International is a very distant second to the NRA, while Gun Owners of America, described as an even more militant gun rights group than the NRA, is an even more distant third.
As for the gun control groups, their giving to Minnesota members of Congress is so insignificant that it's not worth publishing a separate chart. The groups last made donations during the 2008 election cycle. Current U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum, both Democrats, have received a few contributions from gun control groups, totaling $6,000 between the pair.
The two biggest Minnesota recipients of gun control money in Congress no longer serve. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone received $12,900 from gun control groups before his death in 2002 while former U.S. Rep. Bill Luther's campaign received $19,000 before he was defeated by Republican John Kline in 2002.