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    How Wayne LaPierre Spent the NRA’s Money: Guns and Goodies

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    Evidence showed that the National Rifle Association’s leader lived well on donated money as he fought regulations on firearms.The case brought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against the National Rifle Association aimed to show how it used donations from gun owners across the country to pay for luxuries and exotic travel for its executives.Its leader, Wayne LaPierre, was the face of obdurate resistance to regulations on firearms. He argued for untrammeled Second Amendment rights and the self-reliance afforded by firepower. Behind the scenes, however, Mr. LaPierre had a taste for the good life, spending the group’s money on luxuries like Bahamian vacations.But such trips were far from the most lavish or outlandish expenditures. Here are some of the most notable instances of misspending for which he was found liable Friday, according to evidence and testimony.CLOTHES: Between 2004 and 2017, Mr. LaPierre spent nearly $275,000 on suits from a luxury Beverly Hills boutique, Zegna. Mr. LaPierre said he bought them on the recommendation of an N.R.A. contractor who “hated my clothing.” Mr. LaPierre had argued that the suits were just “costumes I wore on TV,” albeit extremely expensive ones.ITALIAN FOOD: Mr. LaPierre testified that he didn’t drink and didn’t smoke, but he certainly knew how to pay a tab: Over 15 days in June 2016, the N.R.A. spent $5,398.18 at Landini Brothers Restaurant, commonly referred to as Landini’s by the defendants, an Italian restaurant in Alexandria, Va. Despite that, Mr. LaPierre seemingly didn’t have a great time. “I hated that cigar bar,” he said.TRAVEL: Mr. LaPierre spent nearly $250,000 on flights around the world, including Italy, Budapest, the Bahamas and the Biggest Little City in World: Reno, Nev. His N.R.A.-paid vacations also sounded lush. He spent $107,620 for a vacation to the Bahamas in 2016, where he stayed on a superyacht that had a personal chef and personal watercraft.GIFTS: Mr. LaPierre was generous, billing the organization for a number of pricey gifts, including a $1,260 handbag and $860 in candlesticks from Bergdorf Goodman. There was also fitness gear, including about $400 in Fitbits for friends and family.INSECT CONTROL: After noticing that his security staff was getting eaten alive, Mr. LaPierre spent $810 on a mosquito control package for his home in 2017. “Security people would be out there all night,” he said. More

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      Wayne LaPierre: Dapper as Charged

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      His financial misdeeds may have led to conviction, but his extravagant sartorial tastes proved little help to the former N.R.A. chief’s case. You’d think Wayne LaPierre would have read the playbook. After decades in the spotlight, the former chief executive of the National Rifle Association could have been expected to know that, for public figures, conspicuous consumption is always a bad look.This is seldom truer than when sartorial choices come into play. And among the dominant motifs in the reporting and online chatter about Mr. LaPierre’s civil corruption trial were his fashion habits and the unpardonable fact that the face of an organization purporting to speak for the country’s heartland had billed it hundreds of thousands of dollars for suits, many from a luxury boutique in Beverly Hills.Haven’t we been here before? Wasn’t Sarah Palin rudely schooled on the matter back in 2008, when, even as she campaigned alongside Senator John McCain as a champion of blue-collar workers, it was revealed by Politico that staffers shopping for Ms. Palin spent more than $150,000 on clothes and accessories from high-end retailers like Neiman Marcus — in a single month.Long after details evaporated as to why exactly Paul Manafort, who served as chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had been sentenced to jail for seven years (tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy, to remind), plenty of folks can recall in vivid detail how eagerly the press publicly depantsed the former lobbyist for his unseemly taste in finery.“The poor slob should have known that flagging a taste for expensive clothes always gets you in trouble,” said Amy Fine Collins, a fashion expert as keeper of the International Best Dressed List and an editor at large at Airmail.“Superiority in dress is inherently seen as elitist,’’ Ms. Collins said. “And we know how American feels about elites.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawsuit Against NRA Goes to Jury After Final Arguments

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      The case, brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, accused leaders of the National Rifle Association of corruption and misspending.Lawyers for New York State concluded their case against the National Rifle Association on Thursday, bringing an end to a closely watched civil showdown that accused leaders of the nation’s most prominent gun rights group of financial misconduct and corruption.Over the last six weeks, lawyers for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, have outlined a case that paints the N.R.A. as a mismanaged organization with little fealty to its mission of defending the Second Amendment or to the gun owners who prize that right. Monica Connell, representing the attorney general’s office, began her closing arguments on Thursday by comparing the defendants to children who grabbed cookies from a jar and were “caught with crumbs on their face and on their shirt.”Central to the case has been the state’s depiction of the group’s former longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, as a lavish spender who used N.R.A. funds to pay for private jets, luxury vacations, and the occasional spin on a superyacht. “This case is about corruption: Misuse of funds spent on jets, black cars, five-star hotels, hundreds of thousands of dollars of suits, million-dollar deals to insiders, payments to loyal board members and pervasive violations of internal controls,” Ms. Connell said to the nearly full courtroom in Manhattan.The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Friday.Mr. LaPierre, 74, stepped down just before the New York trial commenced, ending more than three decades as the head of the organization. He had nonetheless testified in the case, conceding to pricey trips and other perks. He also spent many days in the front row the courtroom, as government lawyers — and even his own — described his sometimes troubled leadership of the group.Along with Mr. LaPierre, the defendants included John Frazer, the N.R.A.’s general counsel; Woody Phillips, a former finance chief; and the N.R.A. itself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Decline of the N.R.A.

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      The group once seemed like an unstoppable force in American politics. What went wrong?A decade ago, the National Rifle Association seemed like an unstoppable force in American politics. A shooter had killed 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Democrats and Republicans in Congress appeared ready to pass new restrictions on guns. The N.R.A. called on its members to contact their representatives and voice their opposition, and the bills died.Today, the N.R.A. has shed hundreds of thousands of members and large sums of money. It is standing trial for fraud and self-dealing in New York. “The N.R.A. is little more than a shell of itself after hemorrhaging hundreds of millions in legal fees,” Joshua Powell, a former top N.R.A. official who settled with the state before the trial, told The Times. The organization’s fall is not a death knell for Second Amendment advocates, but it is a blow.Today’s newsletter will explain what went wrong with the group.Loss of trustThe N.R.A.’s troubles began with a feud with its advertising agency, Ackerman McQueen.The agency was effectively the public face of the N.R.A. for decades, spearheading the group’s online channel NRATV and campaigns like “I am the N.R.A.” But the relationship between the company and its client deteriorated. They disagreed about political messaging. At one point, N.R.A. leadership accused Ackerman McQueen of trying to oust the group’s leader, Wayne LaPierre.Wayne LaPierreHaiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe N.R.A. and Ackerman McQueen fought out their differences in court and settled in 2022.But the infighting drew government officials’ attention. After an investigation, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, filed a lawsuit in 2020. She has cited exorbitant spending by the N.R.A.’s leaders, particularly LaPierre’s use of the nonprofit’s funds to cover millions of dollars in expensive clothes, travel and other luxuries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Secret History of Gun Rights

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      Shannon Lin, Lynsea Garrison and Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicHow did the National Rifle Association, America’s most influential gun-rights group, amass its power?A New York Times investigation has revealed the secret history of how a fusty club of sportsmen became a lobbying juggernaut that would compel elected officials’ allegiance, derail legislation behind the scenes, and redefine the legal landscape.Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The Times, sets out the story of the N.R.A.’s transformation — and the unseen role that members of Congress played in designing the group’s strategies.On today’s episodeMike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.National Rifle Association members take their seats for the Leadership Forum at the NRA Convention in the Indianapolis Convention Center.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesBackground readingOver decades, a small group of legislators led by a prominent Democrat pushed the gun lobby to help transform the law, the courts and views on the Second Amendment.The potential Republican 2024 presidential candidates showed strong support for gun owners’ rights — a core issue for the party’s base, but one that can be a tougher sell in a general election.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Mike McIntire More

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      Trump’s Judges: More Religious Ties and More N.R.A. Memberships

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      A new study also found that judges appointed by the former president were more likely to vote for claims of religious freedom — unless they came from Muslims.When Donald J. Trump was running for president in 2016, he vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Three justices and six years later, he made good on that promise.Mr. Trump also made a more general pledge during that campaign, about religion. At a Republican debate, a moderator asked whether he would “commit to voters tonight that religious liberty will be an absolute litmus test for anyone you appoint, not just to the Supreme Court, but to all courts.”Mr. Trump said he would, and a new study has found that he largely delivered on that assurance, too. Mr. Trump’s appointees to the lower federal courts, the study found, voted in favor of claims of religious liberty more often than not only Democratic appointees and but also judges named by other Republican presidents.There was an exception: Muslim plaintiffs fared worse before Trump appointees than before other judges.“There seems to be a very big difference on how these cases come out, depending on the specific religion in question,” said Stephen J. Choi, a law professor at New York University, who conducted the study with Mitu Gulati of the University of Virginia and Eric A. Posner of the University of Chicago.Another part of the study explored what was distinctive about Mr. Trump’s appointees to the lower courts, considering 807 judges named by seven presidents as of late 2020.The study found, for instance, that judges named by Mr. Trump had “stronger or more numerous religious affiliations” with churches and other houses of worship, with religious schools, and with groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty, which have won a series of major Supreme Court cases for conservative Christians.Trump appointees were also much more likely to be members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, than other Republican appointees: 56 percent versus 22 percent.For appeals court nominations in the Trump administration, the study found that membership in the group was “virtually required,” with a rate of more than 88 percent, compared with 44 percent for other Republican appointees.Mr. Trump made another pledge at another 2016 debate about the judges he would appoint. “They’ll respect the Second Amendment and what it stands for, what it represents,” he said.The new study did not try to measure how Mr. Trump’s appointees voted in gun rights cases. But it did find that more than 9 percent of Trump appointees were members of the National Rifle Association, compared with less than 2 percent of other Republican appointees and less than 1 percent of Democratic appointees.“In light of the polarizing nature of gun rights and the N.R.A.’s association with extreme views on gun ownership,” the study’s authors wrote, “jurists who seek a reputation for impartiality would normally want to avoid membership in the N.R.A.”The study did document how Mr. Trump’s appointees voted in cases on claims of religious liberty, examining some 1,600 votes in more than 500 cases in the federal appeals courts from 2000 to 2022.Trump appointees voted in favor of plaintiffs claiming that their right to free exercise of religion had been violated about 45 percent of the time, compared with 36 percent for other Republican appointees and 33 percent of Democratic appointees. The gap grew for cases that involved only Christians, to more than 56 percent, compared with 42 percent for other Republican appointees and 29 percent for Democratic ones.And the numbers flipped when it came to Muslims, with Trump appointees at 19 percent, compared with 34 percent for other Republican appointees and 48 percent for Democratic ones.“The pattern that emerges,” the study said, “is consistent with conventional wisdom: Democrats tend to protect minority religions, and Republicans tend to protect Christianity (and possibly Judaism).”The study considered a common critique of Trump appointees: that they are less qualified than other judges. It found that the evidence did not support the charge, at least on average and at least as measured by the prestige of the law schools the judges attended, whether they had served as law clerks and ratings from the American Bar Association.“We find little evidence that Trump judges break the historical pattern of judicial appointments,” the study’s authors wrote. “Women and minorities are less well represented among Trump judges than among Democratic judges, but that reflects a historical partisan difference; Trump judges do not differ much from Republican judges in this respect.”“A few more Trump judges received top A.B.A. ratings, but not quite as many Trump judges attended top-10 law schools,” the study said. “Our view is that the data do not support the view that Trump’s judges were less qualified than judges appointed by other presidents.”But the study’s main finding, on religion, was that Mr. Trump was true to his word.“Trump is not known to be personally religious,” the study’s authors wrote, “but he appears to have believed that he could obtain votes by promising to appoint religious judges, and he kept his promise.” More

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      Republican 2024 Hopefuls Flock to N.R.A. Meeting in the Wake of Mass Shootings

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      The current and potential 2024 presidential candidates are expected to show support for gun owners’ rights — a core issue for the party’s base, but one that can be a tougher sell in a general election.INDIANAPOLIS — In 2018, prominent Republicans affirmed their strong support for gun owners’ rights at the annual gathering of the National Rifle Association, three months after a gunman had murdered 17 people in Parkland, Fla.In 2022, they descended on the N.R.A.’s event a few days after a gunman had killed 21 in Uvalde, Texas.And on Friday, some of the most talked about current and potential Republican presidential candidates will address the N.R.A.’s convention in Indianapolis, even as Nashville and Louisville are still mourning the latest massacres in the nation’s gun violence epidemic.The pattern — a devastating mass shooting, followed by Republican displays of fealty to a group that rejects even many modest efforts to curb gun violence — underscores a central and deepening tension in the broader American culture wars.Despite a relentless drumbeat of gun violence that has outraged the public, galvanized a youth movement and spurred Democrats and some Republicans to action, conservative activists and organizations like the N.R.A. still often demand unwavering and virtually unlimited allegiance to the rights of gun owners, complicating any effort by candidates to meet the alarmed mood of the nation without alienating the base.“I would hope that presidential candidates would acknowledge that there is tremendous fear in the country of mass shootings,” former Representative Susan W. Brooks, an Indiana Republican, said in urging the candidates to press for bipartisan negotiations on confronting the issue. That is something she pursued in Congress, though there is now little appetite for that among Republicans in Washington.“They’re happening at much greater frequency than they used to,” she added of the shootings. “They are impacting, I think, our children and the next generation.”Expected speakers on Friday, according to the N.R.A.’s lobbying arm, include former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Kristi Noem of South Dakota, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, author and “anti-woke” activist.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently signed a bill allowing Florida residents to carry concealed guns without a permit; Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations; and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina are scheduled to send video messages.“They are all going because there’s a competitive presidential primary,” said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster. “In states like Iowa and New Hampshire, which are really the only states that matter on the calendar for the time being, most Republican primary voters are gun owners and strong supporters of the N.R.A.”The N.R.A. meeting was on the books well before the most recent shootings, though according to the latest schedule, the violence did not appear to prompt high-profile skipping of the event, in contrast to the actions of some Republicans who did so after the Uvalde shooting.Some of those current and would-be candidates are also expected in Nashville this weekend for a Republican donor retreat — a site that has left some in the grieving city on edge.Following the mass shootings at a bank this week in Louisville, Ky., and at a Nashville school last month, presidential hopefuls, expressing varying degrees of outrage, have emphasized mental health issues and school security, seemed to focus on the gender identity of the Nashville shooter, or managed to keep largely quiet on the matter of combating gun violence.But the issue, which inspires great zeal among many Republican primary voters — as evidenced by how many Republicans featured guns in their primary ad campaigns last year — gets far more complex in general elections, especially for any candidate who would theoretically be inclined to endorse even narrow changes to the nation’s gun laws.Voters rarely cite guns as their most important issue in general elections. But public sentiment is clear: A recent Morning Consult poll found that 67 percent of voters support stricter gun control laws, including nearly half of Republicans surveyed. And Democrats have used Republican inaction on the issue as part of their broader argument that the G.O.P. is outside the American mainstream.“One of the challenges that Republicans face in suburban areas across the country is they are being viewed, in light of Trump, in light of abortion, and to some extent on guns,” Mr. Blizzard said, “as being a little bit too extreme on their positions.”He stressed that the gun issue had not been as politically potent in general elections as strong feelings about Mr. Trump or abortion rights, and that the defense of Second Amendment rights “is part of the Republican Party’s DNA.”The political impact of mass shootings has not been lost on Republican leaders, however. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said as much last year as the Senate approved bipartisan legislation intended to curb gun violence. Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he hoped “it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need.”In a briefing with the news media on Thursday organized by the Democratic National Committee, Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat who has been heavily involved in efforts to combat gun violence, said that Republicans were courting electoral disaster with their approach to guns.He noted that in Nashville, it was young people who were especially involved in protesting for stricter gun control, including amid the expulsions of two Black lawmakers who led a gun control protest on the state House floor. (The lawmakers have since been reinstated.)“As the Republican Party continues to give the middle finger to kids,” he said, “they are just asking for an electoral tidal wave. I don’t want that. I want Republicans to join with the rest of us and work to build a bipartisan majority behind common-sense gun laws. But it appears that they’re not ready for that.”Representatives for the N.R.A. and the Republican National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.For now, much of the activity is happening through executive actions, at the federal and state levels. Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, a Republican whose wife lost a close friend in the Nashville shooting, signed an executive order this week focused on toughening background checks, and he urged state lawmakers to take broader action, though that may face a difficult road.And in Michigan on Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signed anti-gun-violence measures into law following a recent shooting at Michigan State University. Minnesota Democrats are moving to do the same.Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tenn., who said he is not affiliated with a political party but has contributed to both Republicans and to Democrats including Mr. Biden, has been a vocal advocate for stricter gun measures. He said he was encouraged by Mr. Lee’s actions.“To see him change his views on it — frankly, I do have hope that perhaps we’re reaching a tipping point,” said Mr. Kelly, who said he is himself a gun owner. “People have just had enough.” More

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      For First Time in at Least 25 Years, No Democrat Has Top Grade From N.R.A.

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      The Democratic break from the National Rifle Association is complete: For the first time in at least 25 years, not a single Democrat running for Congress anywhere in the country received an A in the group’s candidate ratings, which were once a powerful influence in U.S. elections.A New York Times analysis of the N.R.A.’s letter grades for more than 900 general election candidates, the last of which were published this week, identified the milestone. It is the culmination of a yearslong trend of eroding support for the hard-line views of the organization, which retains strong allegiance from Republican candidates but has lost any semblance of bipartisan support.Of the more than 450 Democrats who will be on House or Senate ballots in November, only one, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, received even a B. Three received C’s, 23 received D’s and 370 — 81 percent of the total — received F’s. (The rest received a “?” rating, meaning they had no public record on gun policy or had made contradictory statements.)The numbers were even starker among the roughly 200 Democrats running for re-election, 98 percent of whom received F’s.There were more defections from the party line among Republicans, though they were still in the single digits: One, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, received an F, and seven, including four incumbents, received D’s. Notably, 24 percent of Republican candidates received a “?” rating, a mark the N.R.A. says “often indicates indifference, if not outright hostility,” to gun rights.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.That amount has increased sharply among Republicans; it was 11 percent a decade ago. By contrast, “?” grades among Democrats declined over the same period to 13 percent from 33 percent. Many Democrats used to avoid going on the record about guns out of fear of the N.R.A.’s well-funded backlash.All told, of 926 major-party candidates on House and Senate ballots this year, 36 percent received A’s and 40 percent received F’s, making 2022 the third election in a row in which the N.R.A. assigned more F’s than A’s.While Republicans have always supported the N.R.A. in larger numbers, it was not long ago that the group also had meaningful Democratic backing: In 2012, 70 Democrats running for the House or Senate received A’s. That is now unheard-of. The last Democratic incumbent with an A rating was Collin Peterson of Minnesota in 2020, when he lost re-election.Most incumbents received the same grade this year as the last time they ran, which is typical. Only 14 saw their grades change, seven in each direction.Almost all of those incumbents were Republican: the seven who were upgraded and six of the seven who were downgraded. (The one Democrat was Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia, who went from a C to an F; as recently as 2018, he had received an A and an N.R.A. endorsement.) The downgraded Republicans — Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Marco Rubio of Florida and Todd Young of Indiana, and Representatives Steve Chabot of Ohio, Tony Gonzales of Texas and David Joyce of Ohio — all went from A’s to B’s.Mr. Rubio’s new grade reflected his decision to endorse limited gun restrictions after the Parkland, Fla., shooting in 2018. (Since senators receive ratings only when they run for re-election, this is the first year in which he has been graded since 2016.)The other Republicans who were downgraded voted for the bipartisan gun bill that passed in June. It was the first time in nearly three decades that Congress — long held in check by N.R.A. lobbying — passed any significant restriction on guns. More

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      Chris Jacobs Drops Re-Election Bid After Bucking His Party on Guns

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      In the wake of deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Representative Chris Jacobs of New York, a congressman serving his first full term in the House, stunned fellow Republicans by embracing a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Speaking from his suburban Buffalo district a week ago, about 10 miles from the grocery store where 10 Black residents were slaughtered, Mr. Jacobs framed his risky break from bedrock Republican orthodoxy as bigger than politics: “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something,” he said.It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him.On Friday, facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.“We have a problem in our country in terms of both our major parties. If you stray from a party position, you are annihilated,” Mr. Jacobs said. “For the Republicans, it became pretty apparent to me over the last week that that issue is gun control. Any gun control.” Citing the thousands of gun permits he had issued as Erie County clerk, Mr. Jacobs emphasized that he was a supporter of the Second Amendment, and said he wanted to avoid the brutal intraparty fight that would have been inevitable had he stayed in the race. But he warned Republicans that their “absolute position” on guns would hurt the party in the long run and urged more senior lawmakers to step forward.“Look, if you’re not going to take a stand on something like this, I don’t know what you’re going to take a stand on,” Mr. Jacobs added, citing the pain of families in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere.The episode, which played out as President Biden pleaded with lawmakers in Washington to pass a raft of new laws to address gun violence, may be a portent for proponents of gun control, who had welcomed Mr. Jacobs’s evolution on the issue as a sign that the nation’s latest mass tragedies might break a decades-old logjam in Washington.It also serves as a crisp encapsulation of just how little deviation on gun policy Republican Party officials and activists are willing to tolerate from their lawmakers, despite broad support for gun safety measures by Americans.Mr. Jacobs’s decision to go against his party on gun control drew an immediate and vitriolic response: Local gun rights groups posted his cellphone number on the internet, and local and state party leaders began pulling their support, one by one.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Just last week, Mr. Jacobs, who is the scion of one of Buffalo’s richest families and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020, had been an easy favorite to win re-election, even after a court-appointed mapmaker redrew his Western New York district to include some of the state’s reddest rural counties, areas he does not currently represent.Now, his choice to not seek re-election has set off a scramble among Republicans in Western New York to fill his seat, including Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer and the party’s nominee for governor in 2010, who said Friday that he would run. Mr. Paladino, who has had to apologize for making insensitive and racist remarks, immediately gained the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the powerful Republican congresswoman from New York’s North Country. After a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, Mr. Jacobs backed a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesParty leaders and allies who spoke to Mr. Jacobs in recent days said he clearly understood the political ramifications of his decision to support powerful gun control measures — but he nonetheless refused to back away from it.Mr. Jacobs, 55, announced his support for a federal ban on assault weapons last week without having first consulted many of his political advisers, according to a person familiar with his decision who was not authorized to discuss it.After making his remarks, he conducted a poll that suggested he might have still had a path to re-election, though not an easy one.“His heart is in a good place, but he’s wrong in his thinking as far as we are concerned,” Ralph C. Lorigo, the longtime chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party, said before Friday’s announcement. “This quick jump that all of the sudden it’s the gun that kills people as opposed to the person is certainly not 100 percent true.”Mr. Lorigo said he had vouched for Mr. Jacobs earlier this year when other conservatives doubted him. But this past Monday, he demanded the congressman come to his office and made clear he would encourage a primary challenge.“He understood that this was potentially political suicide,” Mr. Lorigo said.Even before he made his decision not to run again, several Republicans were already lining up to face off against Mr. Jacobs, angered at both his comments and the way in which he had surprised fellow members of his party, including some who had already endorsed him.In addition to Mr. Paladino, other potential Republican challengers included Mike Sigler, a Tompkins County legislator; Marc Cenedella, a conservative businessman; and State Senator George Borrello.“We deserved the courtesy of a heads up,” said Mr. Borrello, a second-term Republican from Irving, N.Y., south of Buffalo.Mr. Borrello added that Mr. Jacobs’s actions were particularly galling considering the congressman had “actively and aggressively” sought out the support of pro-gun groups like the N.R.A. and the 1791 Society.“And those people rightfully feel betrayed,” he said.The most formidable threat to Mr. Jacobs, though, may have come from Nicholas A. Langworthy, a longtime Erie County Republican leader who currently serves as the chairman of the state’s Republican Party.Mr. Langworthy, who has yet to formally announce whether he will seek the seat, had been a supporter of Mr. Jacobs, helping him secure former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, but he began circulating petitions to get on the ballot himself in recent days and told associates that he would consider challenging Mr. Jacobs.Mr. Langworthy declined to comment on Friday.Gun control advocates and Democrats denounced the reaction to the congressman’s remarks, saying it showed the intolerance of Republicans’ hard-line approach to gun rights.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More