LEADERSHIP WAR LOOMING AT NRA : POWER STRUGGLE COMES AT TIME OF CRISIS.

Byline: Katharine Q. Seelye The New York Times

A fierce battle is under way for control of the National Rifle Association, with a hard-line dissident faction threatening to oust the current leadership.

The power struggle comes at a time when the NRA, long one of the most influential lobbies in Washington, has lost membership, retains a negative public image of extremism and appears stymied in Congress because of all-but-certain opposition from President Clinton, who has staked out a number of high-profile anti-gun positions.

The dissident faction, led by Neal Knox, the first vice president, who has consolidated his power through the board of directors, is trying to topple Wayne LaPierre Jr., the executive vice president since 1991. Also on the firing line are the association's president, Marion Hammer, and its chief lobbyist, Tanya Metaksa.

Knox's rocky history within the organization includes his ouster as chief lobbyist in 1982 and his expulsion from the board in 1984 on charges of extremism. He reasserted himself over the years and has built his influence so that today he stands next in line to become president of the NRA in 16 months.

But LaPierre's supporters say Knox is not as interested in that volunteer, figurehead post as much as he wants LaPierre's job and its $190,000 annual salary.

Knox is expected to attempt his ``coup,'' as LaPierre calls it, at the board's meeting Feb. 8 in Virginia. The vehicle is a vote that would change the lobby's bylaws and reduce the number of votes needed to oust an officer from three-fourths to a simple majority of the 76-member board. The move is viewed seriously because Knox has fortified the board over the years with his allies.

There is no open campaign under way. Indeed, Knox, who has been closely allied in the past with all of the people he would now oust, is extremely circumspect about his intentions.

But his behind-the-scenes efforts have baffled and angered the current leaders, who maintain that Knox has caused serious turmoil within the NRA and made it harder for the leaders to focus on their primary goal of promoting and protecting what they say is the public's right to bear arms. The group has dropped its attempt to repeal the ban on assault weapons until Clinton is out of office.

Hammer, the current president, said: ``In terms of whether or not there is a crisis, or whether or not this is just an internal struggle, it is both. You can destroy an organization from within, just as effectively as your external enemies can destroy you, if you are otherwise occupied fighting among yourselves.''

From the perspective of Handgun Control Inc., the gun-control lobby that is the rifle association's chief organized foe on Capitol Hill, the internal struggle is a manifestation of the gun lobby's larger problems.

``This is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,'' said Robert Walker, the chief lobbyist for Handgun Control. ``This is an organization in a political and financial tailspin. Any time you have an organization in real crisis, there will be turmoil at the leadership level.''

Although LaPierre, 47, is perhaps best known to the public for describing federal agents as ``jack-booted government thugs,'' his leadership has been marked by a generally smooth political style and an expansion of anti-crime and gun-safety efforts.

LaPierre emerged as a voice of moderation, relatively speaking, after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which highlighted links between some NRA members, including Metaksa, and various armed paramilitary groups.

Walker said LaPierre was ``far more temperate in his remarks; he presents a much softer image'' than Knox, but there was no discernible policy difference between them.

In an interview at the NRA's headquarters in Fairfax, Va., LaPierre suggested that Knox would marginalize the association into a smaller band of militia-type gun devotees whose style would alienate supporters on Capitol Hill and ultimately destroy the gun lobby.

``We don't want to be about training for war in the woods or extremism of rhetoric,'' LaPierre said. ``They represent the fringe, people who won't increase the NRA's clout but will diminish its clout. I don't intend to stand by and let the NRA be turned into the John Birch Society and made irrelevant. It must stay positioned in the mainstream if it's going to survive.''

In a telephone interview, Knox, 61, who has been a member of the NRA for more than 40 years, was vague about his intentions.

``If it turns out there's a vacancy, I'm probably willing to take it, but only with great reluctance,'' he said.

He also said that he supported the change in the bylaws, but added that he had no policy differences with LaPierre, whom he had supported for executive vice president.

Knox hinted that LaPierre had mismanaged the organization but did not accuse him outright of fiscal mismanagement. Nor did he fault him for the association's drop in membership, from a high of 3.5 million in 1995 to 2.8 million today.

(LaPierre said the membership dropped because of a dues increase; others cite the NRA's negative image after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when former President Bush and other longtime members quit, citing what they called the group's extremist rhetoric.)

``Thanks to some very diligent fund-raising miracles that Wayne has pulled off, we have been operating on a balanced budget,'' Knox said, acknowledging that the NRA has been operating in the black for three years.

But later he said, ``The assets of the board have been sorely depleted,'' adding, ``We ought to be run in a businesslike manner, and I don't believe it has been.''

In denying that he was staging a coup to replace LaPierre, Knox said, ``It is not a coup attempt when a board of directors has a responsibility to be sure that its organization is properly managed, and I don't think it is.'' He offered no further specifics on what was wrong.

Knox said he would be ``more parsimonious'' than LaPierre had been with the NRA's checkbook, citing only the group's ``overexuberant membership drive.''

Wilson Phillips, the group's treasurer, said the NRA was ``secure financially.'' He said the group has $45 million in the bank, but had $80 million in 1991, ``and everyone would like to see that cash put back.''

The cash was invested in major projects, including a new headquarters and a computer system that can reach 10,000 voters in a congressional district over a weekend.

Sue King, a board member and erstwhile member of Knox's inner circle, said Knox was deliberately vague about allegations of financial problems because, as an officer himself, he was equally responsible.

``Neal can't afford to complain,'' she said. ``So many of his indictments of Wayne would be indictments of himself. Many of our financial problems resulted from actions mandated by the board - for Wayne to go out and spend $5 million here or $4 million there. It happened on Neal's watch.''

Knox acknowledged that he has long been accused of being an extremist, but contended that his remarks have been taken out of context. His bedrock value, he said, is that being armed means being free. ``If Jews had had guns, we wouldn't have seen what happened,'' he said.

He also said the 1968 gun control act was based on a 1938 Nazi law, indirectly equating gun-control advocates with Hitler.

Through his columns in ``Shotgun News,'' Knox has suggested that the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was timed by ``anti-gunners'' to win gun-control votes in the Senate. ``Is it possible,'' he wrote in 1994, referring to the King assassination and various mass killings, ``that some of those incidents could have been created for the purpose of disarming the people of the free world?''

He has also suggested that the United States erred in Somalia in 1993 by trying to disarm the Somalis; rather, he said, it should have armed Somali mothers with AK-47s.

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Photo

Photo: Former NRA board member David Edmondson, holding a rifle while sitting in the living room of his Dallas home, is among a dissident faction at odds with the association's leadership.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service