The Political Efficacy of Lobbying and Money: Gun Control in the U. S. House, 1986

This paper sheds empirical light on the effectiveness of both sides of the gun lobby in affecting votes in the House on the McClure-Volkmer bill. It examines the impact of elite and grass roots lobbying, in addition to the influence of campaign contributions. The results show that, at least on this issue, the NRA's and Handgun Control's prevote campaign contributions affected member's subsequent votes, even when other variables, including ideology, member's prior position, and constituency characteristics, are held constant. Handgun Control's monetary contributions had a statistically marginal impact, but their lobbying effort, along with that of the police, was clearly successful, while NRA's was not. The paper suggests some reasons why contributions appear to have had an impact on congressional voting even for a salient issue.