An exposé "of rampant, decades-long incompetence at the National Rifle Association, as told by a former member of its senior leadership, ... [which] reveals for the first time the rise and fall of the most powerful political organization in America--how the NRA became feared as the Death Star of Washington lobbies and so militant and extreme as 'to create and fuel the toxicity of the gun debate until it became outright explosive'"--Publisher marketing....

"The National Rifle Association is unique in American life. Few other civic organizations are as old or as large. None is as controversial. It is largely due to the NRA that the U.S. gun policy differs so extremely--some would say so tragically--from that of every other developed nation. But, as Frank Smyth shows, the NRA has evolved from an organization concerned above all with marksmanship--and which supported most government efforts around gun...