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"FacebookPinterestNRA Capitol Full.jpgGetty Images\n\nMere hours after we woke up to the horrendous, terrifying news of the Aurora shooting, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the airwaves to criticize the candidates for their relative silence on gun policy. \"Soothing words are nice,\" he said, \"but maybe it's time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they're gonna do about it.\" Hizzoner, a longtime supporter of gun control initiatives, re-upped his comments on Morning Joe on Monday. We all know he's got a point. But we also know that the prospects of congressional action on gun safety\u2014and by extension the chances that the candidates will call on Congress to do something\u2014are about zero, because the NRA has a chokehold on our elected legislators. How do they do it?\n\nIt's pretty simple, actually: the NRA employs a rating system based on each member's voting history. Here's how it works. Before most votes having anything to do with gun rights, and even some that actually don't, the NRA will announce that they will be \"scoring\" the vote, meaning that they will take this vote into account when assembling a letter grade to assign to each candidate. (Some sample grades are here.) In part because House members have to run for reelection every two years, the NRA grades have become a vital part of how candidates portray themselves to voters\u2014and conservative and swing-district members will do everything they can to keep a good rating.\n\nI asked a Democratic legislative staffer for a first-person description of the NRA's power on the Hill. Here's the response I got, on the condition that I not provide any further identifying information. It's pretty breathtaking.\n\nWe do absolutely anything they ask and we NEVER cross them\u2014which includes asking permission to cosponsor any bills endorsed by the Humane Society (the answer is usually no) and complying with their demand to oppose the DISCLOSE Act, neither of which have anything to do with guns. They've completely shut down the debate over gun control. It's really incredible. I'm not sure when we decided that a Democrat in a marginal district who loses his A rating from the NRA automatically loses reelection. Because it's not like we do everything other partisan organizations like the Chamber [of Commerce] or NAM [National Association of Manufacturers] tell us to...Pandering to the NRA is the probably worst part of my job. I can justify the rest of it\u2014not just to keep the seat, but because I believe most of the positions he takes are consistent with what his constituents want. But sucking up to the NRA when something like Colorado happens is hard to stomach.\n\nProgressives are trying to do some myth-busting on this front, propagating statistics about how ineffective the NRA's political spending is and holding an event today at the Center for American Progress called \"After Aurora: Dispelling the Myth of NRA Power.\" Mark Glaze, the director of the Bloomberg-affiliated Mayors Against Illegal Guns and a participant in Tuesday's panel, acknowledges that the prospects for legislative action are dim. But he told me yesterday that Bloomberg and MAIG plan to keep pushing on the idea that the NRA is, in essence, a paper tiger. \"In the past four electoral cycles,\" Glaze said, \"the NRA's real as opposed to perceived influence has been virtually nil. And we're going to get Democratic and Republican donors who care about this issue to ask the candidates what they're going to do about it.\"\n\n The answer, it's probably safe to assume, is going to be \"not much.\" The White House has already passed on using Aurora as a rallying cry for something like renewing the assault weapons ban, preferring instead to focus on enforcing \"existing law.\" Romney certainly won't move if President Obama doesn't. And the argument that the NRA doesn't do a good job of beating its enemies may not do much to sway timid members. As the Democratic staffer explains, the obsession with good grades is less about losing than it is about the credential that the rating offers.\n\nIt's less about the fear that they'll try to take you down and more about opportunism\u2014it's one of the only clear cut ways to demonstrate you're a conservative or moderate Democrat. The A rating is a badge of honor and a defense against charges that you're some crazy liberal who votes with Nancy Pelosi 85 percent of the time. And if you're in a rural district the NRA endorsement probably matters a lot more than a suburban swing district. So members in that situation will do whatever it takes to get the A.\n\n Read more on Death Race 2012\n\nThe Obama Campaign Should Study This Video Closely\n\nRomney Officially Hates Athletes and Hard Work, We Assume\n\nHunger Reads: Michele Bachmann and the Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood, Bruce Springstein on the Recession and the Politics of the Dark Knight Rises\n\nToday's Political Firestorm: Bush Is Going to Skip the Republican Convention\n\nFollow Reid Cherlin on Twitter for more updates from the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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