by BJW Nashe
Hunter S. Thompson vs. the National Rifle Association? Should have been a slam dunk. Send the great gonzo journalist off to Washington, D.C., load him up with booze and drugs and press credentials, and let him raise hell over at the NRA headquarters. With any luck, Thompson would end up producing one of his classic takedown pieces: a savage investigative attack on the gun rights lobby by one of their own — a self-professed “gun freak” and card-carrying NRA member, who nonetheless had the guts to call out a scam when he saw one.
It’s a tantalizing prospect, to say the least. And no mere fantasy, because it actually happened. In the late 1960s, Thompson investigated and wrote about the NRA while on assignment for Esquire Magazine. Never prone to moderation, he went hog-wild with the story, eventually submitting a 140 page manuscript to his bewildered editors. Unfortunately, Esquire never published any of this material. It now sits in a box somewhere, presumably in the hands of Thompson’s literary executor Douglas Brinkley, who claims Hunter actually left behind a total of 250 pages of fear and loathing at the NRA, which he hopes to publish some time in the future. One has to wonder what the hold-up is. Surely by now all of Hunter Thompson’s writings — the “author’s cut” of all the published books, the multitude of articles, the unfinished books, the unpublished fiction — should be available in a handsome collected works format. The fact that this hasn’t been done is a blight upon the publishing industry.
God only knows what’s in the NRA manuscript. No doubt Thompson, a left-leaning libertarian type and radical free-thinker, did his best to provide his own unique perspective on gun rights and the pro-gun lobby. Thompson specialized in thinking “outside the box.” He lived his whole life “outside the box.” So it’s hard to believe that the NRA piece has no value. It was written at an important point in his career, as he was moving away from the more-or-less straightforward, hardboiled journalism that preceded Hell’s Angels, into the manic outrage and wild black humor that would make him an icon in subsequent books such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and The Great Shark Hunt.
With gun violence and the NRA such a volatile topic these days, many of us would love to see what Thompson had to say about the whole issue 45 years ago. But we cannot do so… yet. At least we have his letters from that time period, which provide ample indication of what he was thinking at the time. And the letters, thankfully published in two volumes so far — The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, and Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist — with a third volume on the way, give us a pretty good indication of what we are missing out on.
Thompson’s letters in general are valuable on a number of levels — personal, political, cultural, and literary. Now, with the passing of time, they also take on added historical value. Above all, the letters are vintage Thompson — uncut, unfiltered, and unfettered by any sense of editorial propriety or well-toned professionalism. In this sense, Thompson’s letters are more revealing and often more entertaining than anything else he wrote — much the same way that the letters of Gustave Flaubert and D.H. Lawrence, for example, are more provocative, free-wheeling, and ultimately more interesting than any of their more refined, published work. The NRA letters are no exception. They are a hilarious example of Thompson’s brash talents on full display at a crucial point in his development, when he was feverishly inspired and sending off sparks in many different directions.
We can begin early on in the Thompson-NRA saga, with a letter addressed to the organization’s Washington, D.C. headquarters on June 26, 1965. Thompson starts off by stating that he is enclosing a check for five dollars to renew his NRA membership. The comments that follow are revealing:
“Since I have no application form at hand, I’m not sure what benefits I’ll get from this, but I assume I’ll be put on a subscription list for the American Rifleman, and, beyond that, receive all other benefits of a regular member.
“I would like to go on record here — since we seem to be coming to very peculiar times in this country — that my application for membership is in no way indicative of any political views on my part. Nobody has ever called me a Conservative and as a matter of fact I am a writer for the Liberal press, but I’m concerned about the possible passage of illogical firearms laws and I’m glad to hear you people have taken what strikes me as a reasonable position on this question.
“That’s why I’d like to re-activate my membership. I assure you that if the NRA’s overall viewpoint ever seems unreasonable to me, I’ll terminate my membership at once. In the meantime, count on me for any help you feel I can give.”
Foreshadowing, perhaps? You don’t have to read too far between the lines to detect the roots of trouble forming early on in this particular relationship. Not that anyone at the NRA would have even given the letter much thought. They probably simply deposited the check and re-activated Thompson’s member file. But Thompson seems to be setting the stage here for some future showdown. On the one hand, he loves his guns dearly and probably feels that he needs guns in order to hang around with the drug smugglers and Hell’s Angels he likes to write about. Yet he has no interest in getting caught up in some far-right wing political agenda. Surely he knows this is precisely the direction preferred by the NRA, though, so his tone here is best considered as a form of mock-sincerity. We have reason to be amused. In any case, we have no doubt that in 1965 Thompson is an NRA member, but with serious reservations.
The upheavals of the next three years galvanize Thompson and push him into a more radical direction. Guns for him are valuable, but only as toys to play around with. He never entertains fantasies about armed rebellion, unlike many of his contemporaries on the left. He knows his typewriter, rather than his guns, is the best tool he can use to impact society. And he uses the typewriter with considerable ferocity. By the late 1960s, Thompson is less concerned with practicing standard journalism than with waging guerrilla warfare using language and information. In 1968, with the Vietnam War raging, and the counterculture movement in full swing, Thompson’s reservations about the NRA have blossomed into all-out fear and loathing. In the middle of the summer, as Thompson partakes of various stimulants and hallucinogens at his new Owl Farm residence in Woody Creek, Colorado, his agent, Lynn Nesbit, proposes that he write an article on the NRA for Esquire, who have expressed interest in such a piece. On July 15, 1968, Hunter responds with a long letter that is typical of his brilliant style of the time:
“Dear Lynn…
“Thanks for the Esq/NRA possibility. It came just as I was about to resign my NRA membership with a vicious letter… it’s driven me to near suicidal depression. These swine should be… well, ah… this may sound funny, but… yes… I think they should be… KILLED!”
“Anyway, I like the idea of a chat with the NRA. I’m not sure what [Esquire managing editor Don] Erickson wants, but one aspect that interests me is what the NRA does with all that money.
Dues are $5 a year, and with 900,000 members, that adds up… and all you get for your $5 is 12 issues of the American Rifleman, one of the dullest and least informative screeds in the history of printing. Members are also offered the opportunity to buy NRA tie-clips and Zippo lighters at retail-plus. I once bought a set of glasses from them at some brutally inflated price, and the NRA emblem flaked off the first time I put the glasses in hot water.”
Are we having fun yet? Let’s see, Thompson thinks the swine in charge of the NRA should be killed, and he observes that his membership fees are good for little more than cheap promotional trinkets. Hunter probably never cared much for Bill O’Reilly’s “Factor Gear,” either. Anyway, in this same letter he next shifts gears in order to ruminate on how he might tackle the NRA assignment.
“Maybe a good angle would be something like ‘Why I Quit the NRA,’… by A. Gunn Freake. The thrust of the thing could be that the NRA is a hype, that they’re using their 900,000 members, rather than representing them. I own about a dozen guns, but as far as I’m concerned the NRA is blowing my gig. That waterhead president (Orth?) doesn’t speak for me. So, speaking as a badlands gun freak, I have to wonder what they’re doing with my $5. I don’t read their magazine, I don’t have access to ‘military ammo,’ I don’t get weapons at a discount… all I get is a lot of stupid grumbling about maintaining an armed militia, or something like that. They send me form letters that I’m supposed to sign, or rewrite, and forward to my congressman. Fuck them. ‘My congressman’ is a senile bag of pus and he agrees with the NRA, anyway.
“The question is, ‘Who does the NRA really represent?’ (& how many of those 900,000 members really support the wild-eyed bullshit that spews out of the NRA hq?)”
Perfectly valid questions, as relevant today as they were in 1968 — if not more so. Thompson then spends a couple of paragraphs criticizing the NRA for doing little to help keep American guns affordable. He is angry that most guns in the USA are purchased by mail order from overseas manufacturers, because they are cheaper than American weapons. Where’s the patriotism? Is the NRA not in favor of buying American-made products? One wonders what Lynn Nesbit is thinking as she reads this missive. Thompson abruptly pulls back to take in the big picture again:
“Somewhere in that factual outburst I lost my original point — which was, as I recall, that maybe the NRA is conning its own membership. Who really runs the NRA? What are their salaries? What are they doing for the people who chip in $5 a year?
“The answer to that last question, appearing in Esquire, might pique the interest of those people who finance the NRA by proxy, and without really giving a damn. The NRA’s big stick is its ability to flood the congressional mails with menacing letters, and pound various desks with a sign that says “900,000 Strong.” But how strong? Hell, one of those 900,000 is me — and as far as I’m concerned the NRA is a corrupt and devious lobby that doesn’t even understand my interests, much less represent them.
“When I say ‘me,’ I’m speaking, very loosely, for A. Gunn Freake — a man who quit the NRA because he decided that it wasn’t what it claimed to be, and that its “spokesmen” were either dangerously stupid or consciously sold out — to somebody…”
Thompson goes on to argue in favor of infiltrating the NRA as a disgruntled insider and exposing their fraudulence, rather than serving up criticism from the outside. “… A full frontal attack on the NRA won’t make the nut. They’re geared for frontal attacks; they wave the flag, sound the rape-warnings and quote the Constitution… I don’t see much sense in mounting another reasoned, liberal and humanistic attack on the NRA. That’s playing on their terms.” Hunter’s tactics are sound. Instead of engaging in a purely political debate with the gun lobbyists, or simply providing an “opposing viewpoint,” he wants to show how corrupt and dishonest they are, to illustrate firsthand how they only represent a narrow set of interests, which aren’t even aligned with their members.
Thompson winds up his letter to Nesbit by comparing the “NRA footmen” to the “Oil croakers” he has encountered on previous assignments. These folks, he says, are all “born under the same rock.” He tosses off some praise for his “special hair-trigger .44 Magnum,” pointing out that it’s nearing dawn as he writes, and he needs to sign off because “two acid freaks are scheduled to arrive in a few hours, to build a new deck/porch on the house.”
Presumably, Nesbit spends some time digesting all of this and communicating with Esquire. The NRA project next appears in an October 16, 1968 letter from Thompson to Don Erickson, Managing Editor of the magazine:
“Don…
“Lynn Nesbit tells me we have a tentative agreement on a piece on the NRA. I’ll call you in a day or so, to hear what you’re thinking, but in the meantime I thought I’d sketch out a plot, of sorts. To wit:
“I thought I’d go to Washington and ask the boss-shooters exactly what they are doing for us members. There are 900,000 of us out here, chipping in $5 a year — for what? My own suspicion is that the NRA is a harmless swindle, a massive con job, a rich and well-publicized lobby that isn’t doing a fucking thing either for or against anybody except a handful of people on the NRA payroll.
“Maybe I’m wrong… so I thought I’d ask the folks in Washington to put me onto a really successful gun club, preferably in Southern Calif. One of those patriotic groups that gets govt. ammo and other ‘special advantages.’ I’d like to drop in on one of the shoot-outs and see for myself why all us gun freaks in Woody Creek are missing out by not hooking up with the NRA…
“My point, I think, is that the real gun freaks dump on the NRA. They’d sooner join an Elks’ Club than a formal shooting group. I doubt if Eldridge Cleaver, for instance, was a member of the NRA. But again, maybe I’m wrong — maybe there are benefits I’ve been missing. If so, I want them. I want to know exactly what the NRA can do for me. I want to know what they do with all the money — who gets it, and why.
“Well… I think you see the drift, I’d like to spend about 3-4 days at the NRA Hq. in Washington, then another 2-3 days at one of their model gun clubs — none of which exists out here in Marlboro country; all the gun freaks I know view the NRA as a tool of the federal govt. This raises several questions… which I’ve already mentioned.
“So I think you see where I’m looking. If you have questions of your own, keep them in mind and I’ll call in a few days. I’d like to get started on this thing soon.”
So Thompson went to work on the story, in his typically frenzied, hell-bent-for-leather, go-for-broke style. Several months later, on April 15, 1969, in a letter to Jim Silberman at Random House, Thompson writes:
“Actually, I’ve been writing like a bastard for the past six months. Tomorrow I’m sending Esquire 101 pages of an article titled ‘My Gun Problem… and Theirs,’ with another 20-30 pages to finish it off. This may be the seed of that evil book you bastards have been trying to lure me into doing for two years… it’s horrifying to think I’ve done 101 finished pages after only a week of actual experience and interviews.”
Thompson probably didn’t need more than “a week of actual experience and interviews” to understand the nature of the NRA scam. The organization has never been a complex mystery. So Thompson, the anti-establishment “gun freak,” was not having much trouble getting his thoughts down on paper. The story fit in well with Thompson’s overarching cultural critique. His problems with the NRA were similar to his problems with the American establishment in general. Greed and hypocrisy and corruption were the most easily identifiable characteristics. Politics, guns, drugs, literature — it was all part of the same tragedy, which he referred to as “the death of the American Dream.” He viewed the NRA as just another gang of vultures feasting on the carcass of the dream. This kind of visionary thinking was not easy to sum up in a tidy piece of magazine journalism. In a May 25, 1969 letter to Selma Shapiro at Random House, Thompson writes:
“It’s no longer possible for me to write a short, concise article. The thing on the National Rifle Association for Esquire eventually came to 140 pages, after many cuts. I sent it to Erickson, but god only knows what he’ll do with it. I think he was expecting about 35 pages. The space and freedom of book-writing has completely spoiled me for articles. I’d rather write 300 pages than 30…”
Writer’s block was not a problem here — not when the writer was fueled by booze and speed, watching America come apart at the seams after a decade of war, assassinations, protests, and orgies. Esquire published plenty of great material during this time period. But they weren’t necessarily on board with Thompson’s expanded use of “space and freedom.” That would come a bit later on, with Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone. For now, Thompson had to haggle with editors. In summer of 1969, a year after his initial discussions over the project with his agent, Esquire sent him a detailed memo on his manuscript. Thompson responded on August 4, once again writing to Don Erickson:
“Dear Don…
“I’m still pondering the NRA piece — actually just got back to it after… well, no point in details.
“Anyway, I see your point about the failed, fussy-ending. That’s an extension of My gun problem, which I never really solved, in print or otherwise. I’ll get that done. I’m assuming, by the way, that I can cut and chop this xerox copy of yours…
“Esquire editor Robert] Sherrill’s memo is something else again. I think the man has spent too much time in P.J. Clarke’s. He may have a point or two, but in the main he sounds like somebody from the Greenwich Tweed/Sport and Ralley Club — the owner of a Morgan, two Singers and a Stutz — trying to explain away the Southern California Hotrod Cult. He is talking about a gun-world that I knew for 20 years in Kentucky — and still know when I go back there, despite the twisted reality of a gun-culture flourishing in a land where gun-freaks have killed all the game except a few coons and rabbits. There are still a few deer, I guess, but… well, that ain’t the point, is it?
“Sherrill’s rude assumption that I ‘buy only handguns’ clashes badly with his notion of me slaughtering deer and draping their ‘pitiful, beautiful heads’ on my ‘shithouse wall.’ When in fact I gave up hunting about three years ago, despite (or maybe because of) the deer and elk who (which?) graze in my backyard about six months out of the year. If I wanted to shoot the buggers, however, I sure as hell wouldn’t do it with a handgun; I have four excellent rifles for that sort of thing, along with four shotguns that I use for 90% of my shooting these days — most of it at clay pigeons. Beyond that, Sherrill’s idea of the .44 Magnum is straight out of Dick Tracy; compared to the Luger he seems to revere, the S & W .44 Magnum is a goddamned esthetic marvel. It is at least 100% more accurate, about 300% as efficient, and as a piece of machinery it compares to the Luger like a Jaguar XKE compares to the basic Volkswagon. Sherrill’s disdain for the M16 (‘a gun that sprays bullets like a water hose’) ignores the fact that the original Luger was designed to hold a 29-shot drum clip (like a submachine gun) and came with a cheap, heavy-wire shoulder stock — for street-fighting purposes, like the M-1 carbine, the M16, or a semi-automatic water hose.
“But to hell with all that, too. I use letters, now and then, as drafts for later things — test runs, of a sort — and I suspect that’s what I’m doing now. My essential point is that Sherrill’s views amount to the same kind of archaic counterpoint to everything I meant and still mean to say…
“… I’m not optimistic about incorporating that atavistic bullshit of Sherrill’s. Maybe he should come out of his martini-shelter and write his views in the form of a box — exposing me in BF [boldface] print as a vicious asshole, a demented werewolf of some kind, loping naked across these high mesas on sunny afternoons, fouling the air with my rank breath, clutching a .44 Magnum and with only one thought in my head — slay these stinking beasts, fetch up a feast for the maggots, make the world safe for green-headed flies.
“And in fact why not a main feature on the Gun Madness, as it were?”
With this kind of reasoned analysis going on, who can doubt that Thompson’s NRA piece was fantastic? We cannot be sure exactly what Robert Sherrill’s criticisms were, but they definitely struck a nerve with Thompson. It’s strange that here in Thompson’s letter about potential revisions to his piece, NRA corruption is absent from the discussion altogether. Instead, we are deep into heavy gun talk. This indicates that Thompson had come on very strong with the gun-freak angle. He was determined to take on the NRA on his own terms. He probably argued that they weren’t true gun people; they were lightweights, political operatives, and con men. In any case, Thompson’s writing on firearms is detailed and vivid. If he hadn’t become so famous as an outlaw journalist, he could have always gotten a job writing ad copy for gun manufacturers. Of course, he might have been a bit difficult to control at times.
The next letter to Don Erickson, dated December 9, 1969, strikes a note of mild frustration, a tacit acknowledgement that the NRA piece is probably not going to be published:
“Dear Don…
“Astounding to hear from you. I sort of assumed the gun piece had died on the vine — or the cutting-room floor as it were. I’m a trifle paranoid about the politics end of the writing business; I can’t handle it. At almost the same time that I was fuming out here with Sherrill’s memo I was putting the finishing touches on a piece that ultimately got me black-balled with Playboy. They asked for a profile of J.C. Killy and cursed me savagely for the thing I gave them. That episode, along with the Gun Piece hassle, left me wondering if it was possible for me to communicate any longer with anyone east of the Rockies.
“I still wonder, for that matter… but if you’re still interested in the gun piece, I’ll send a new version. Since my last effort I went hunting for the first time in four years and — with the help of a little mescaline — got locked into a trauma that found me spending 48 hours alone in the badlands, chasing antelope by day and scribbling crazily all night in the back of my Volvo wagon, by Coleman-lantern light… wondering what the fuck I was doing out there.
“On top of that a man came out the other day and tried to sell me a machine-gun. He wanted $200 so he could pay a speed-freak to break a man’s arm in town. I couldn’t afford the gun, but it was wonderful fun to shoot. Which reminds me of the enc. clip from the current Rolling Stone; things are even worse than I said in the original article; every dope-freak I’ve talked to in the past year is on a violence trip. Maybe Woodstock is the wave of the future, but I doubt it. Haight St. was peaceful when I lived there, but that was 3 yrs. ago.
“Actually, I haven’t written anything in about 2 months, due to a sudden, total involvement in local politics. We launched a Takeover Bid that came within 6 votes of installing a 29-yr-old bike racer as Mayor of Aspen. I promised to run for Sheriff if he won, and I may still do it. Freak Power is out in the open here. One man, one vote… Beware the rising tide.
“OK for now. I’ll get back on the piece and send a new version ASAP.”
We don’t know if Thompson did in fact send in a new version. We do know that Esquire never published any of the NRA/gun madness writings. Any kind of anti-establishment attack on the NRA from a heavily armed man who associated with dope-freaks who were themselves becoming weapons enthusiasts — well, it’s bound to make people nervous, especially editors of prominent national magazines. Working through Thompson’s NRA manuscript, the editors at Esquire probably felt like they were sitting on a pile of linguistic dynamite.
It’s worth noting that Thompson was correct in many of his opinions. His Jean-Claude Killy article would become a famous piece of New Journalism. Woodstock was not the wave of the future. The counterculture movement was becoming more violently revolutionary. Gun madness in
America was worsening. His own decision to get directly involved in politics, rather than drop out and join “the revolution,” also shows considerable foresight. Thompson’s campaign running for Sheriff of Aspen became national news in 1970, and even though he narrowly lost that race, his efforts set a new kind of template for future grassroots political campaigns. Thompson stressed that even for the most freakish among us, change is best achieved through the democratic process, not simply by becoming more and more militant.
And the NRA, of course, went on to become an even bigger, more corrupt scam than it was back in the 1960s. The NRA now gladly takes money not only from members, but from gun manufacturers as well. The money is used to buy political influence across the country. Gun rights is only one piece of the puzzle. The NRA now supports and finances only those candidates who tow the far-right party line on a whole host of issues — from labor rights to health care, taxes, voting rights, and the environment. It’s hard to believe that American gun owners, many of whom are avid outdoors people, care more for oil industry profits than for the environment they live and hunt in. Yet the NRA supports politicians who are more concerned about oil profits. And the NRA supports politicians who refuse to pass laws requiring background checks for all gun purchases, even though up to 70% of NRA members support such laws.
More than ever before, recent events — including several tragic gun massacres — have exposed the NRA, shining a bright light on the fact that the organization does not work primarily to serve the interests of responsible American gun owners. They use fear tactics to take money from American gun owners, and gun dealers, which they use to advance a narrow political agenda. They run a protection racket which helps them and their friends get rich.
Hunter Thompson probably understood this. Now if only we could have the pleasure of reading what he wrote about it at length 45 years ago.