The big myth about the NRA

Plus: A Truman Capote reading list for 'Feud' fans |

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By Made by History / Produced by Olivia B. Waxman The mass shooting during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade on Wednesday once again spotlighted how such tragedies have become a regular part of American life—and the stakes of the debate over gun legislation. For decades, a key factor in that debate has been the National Rifle Association, which developed into a political powerhouse in the 1990s and used that power to discourage tougher restrictions. But as Kate Birkbeck highlights in Made by History, many people get a key element of the organization’s history wrong. As that story goes, the NRA was a fairly moderate organization focused on sport and target shooting before the “Cincinnati Coup” in 1977 ushered in hardliners committed to protecting a sacrosanct constitutional right to bear arms. In reality, however, there has been much more continuity in the NRA’s mission than is popularly understood. Read more about it here.

HISTORY ON TIME.COM How Mardi Gras Traditions Helped New Orleans' LGBTQ Communities Thrive By Lily Lucas Hodges / Made by History The celebrations created space for people to subvert gender norms, as New Orleans' LGBTQ communities built new traditions of their own. Read More » The 9 Best Books About Truman Capote and The Swans to Read After Watching Feud By Olivia B. Waxman Everything to read by and about Truman Capote and the socialites he befriended, as shown in 'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans' Read More » Americans Had Imaginary Girlfriends Long Before AI Companions By Sarah Keyes / Made by History Long before AI-generated sweethearts, the dead maidens of the 19th century gave Americans someone to pine for—but their impact went beyond just romance. Read More » Column: How Wall Street Funded Slavery By David Montero David Montero explores the myth that the wealth generated from slavery vanished after the Civil War. Read More » The U.S. Only Pretends to Want ‘Freedom of the Seas’ By Made by History / Grace Easterly Too often, U.S. support for open navigation has devolved into military conflict. Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1957: Martin Luther King, Jr. Boris Chaliapin The Feb. 18, 1957, cover of TIME “Across the South—in Atlanta, Mobile, Birmingham, Tallahassee, Miami, New Orleans—Negro leaders look toward Montgomery, Ala., the cradle of the Confederacy, for advice and counsel on how to gain the desegregation that the U.S. Supreme Court has guaranteed them. The man whose word they seek is not a judge, or a lawyer, or a political strategist or a flaming orator. He is a scholarly, 28-year-old Negro Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in little more than a year has risen from nowhere to become one of the nation's remarkable leaders of men.” Read More » This week in 1981: Margaret Thatcher TIME The Feb. 16, 1981, cover of TIME “Americans will be scrutinizing Thatcher with particular attention when she visits Washington later this month, because she is considered the political pioneer in the application of the frugal, budget-cutting policies that the new Reagan Administration itself would like to try out on the U.S. economy. It is no accident that she and Reagan are often regarded as ideological soul mates. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Bill Brock, who went to Britain for a look at the Thatcher campaign in 1979, was so impressed that he brought video tapes of Tory broadcasts back to the U.S. as models for his G.O.P. campaign strategists…Understandably, Thatcher expects to get on well with Reagan when she arrives at the White House as the first NATO leader to call on the new President. Says she: ‘We share the view that democracy works best when government doesn't take over too much.” Read More » This week in 1982: Steve Jobs ALAN MAGEE The Feb. 15, 1982, cover of TIME “Some of these successful new capitalists are tinkering innovators in blue jeans, while others are button-down bankers with M.B.A.s. Some are immigrants or the sons of blue-collar workers, while others are from old established families. Most are still little known outside their own fields. Frederick W. Smith, 37, is just another guy named, well, Smith. Yet his company, Federal Express Corp., has become a $600 million firm by delivering packages that "absolutely, positively have to be there overnight," as its ads claim. Nolan K. Bushnell, 39, invented Pong, the first video game, in 1972. He then sold his company, Atari, to Warner Communications in 1976 for $28 million. Steven Jobs, 26, the co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically singlehanded created the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth $149 million.” Read More »

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