A former Iowa law enforcement officer, Kayne Robinson served as president of the National Rifle Association from 2003 to 2005. From 1998 to 2003 he served as the organization’s first vice president under the presidency of Charlton Heston. According to former NRA Board Member Russell Howard, Heston threatened to resign from the NRA if Robinson was not appointed as his vice president. Robinson is also Chairman of the Board of the NRA’s Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. The Center is a 52-square-mile piece of land that is notable for a memorial cabin in honor of former NRA Board Member and virulent racist/misogynist/homophobe Jeff Cooper. As Executive Director of the NRA’s General Operations Division, Robinson draws a salary of over $1 million per year.

Robert K. Brown, born in 1932, served in the U.S. Army from 1954 through 1957 and again between 1964 and 1985, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Brown is the editor, publisher, and founder of Soldier of Fortune magazine, which has been in circulation since 1975. The magazine includes reporting on overseas conflicts and famously featured a classified section where purported mercenaries offered their services. The nature of the classified ads led then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) to call for an investigation in the 1970s to determine whether the magazine published content that violated the “The Neutrality Act,” a federal law which prohibits United States citizens from performing mercenary work in foreign countries. Brown denied the allegations, purportedly saying, “Some State Department official stated something to the effect that Mr. Brown was staying within the bounds of the law, but not the spirit of it. Well, that’s tough shit.” Soldier of Fortune magazine has also been used by advertisers to sell Nazi memorabilia. Brown has been married in the past and is estranged from his children.

Todd J. Rathner is a lobbyist for the NRA (in the Arizona state legislature) and the NFA Freedom Alliance, which advocates for the “rights” of Americans to own particularly dangerous weapons, including machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and silencers/suppressors. Rathner also owns an African safari hunting company. Packages offered by the T. Jeffrey Safari Company allow hunters to kill lions, baboons, zebras, and monkeys. In addition to being a pro-gun lobbyist, Rathner also lobbies on knife rights. On his Twitter page, Rather describes himself as follows: “Jewish Redneck, Love guns, hunting and hunting for guns. Uber Conservative.” On his Facebook page, he brags that he is “Making the world safe for guns and knives, one law at a time.” Rathner’s lobbying activity has focused primarily on expanding the ability of individuals to carry guns in public. “Any law that allows law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm in more places makes the community safer,” he says. Rathner has helped push for laws in Arizona that allow residents to: a) Carry loaded handguns in public (openly or concealed) without a permit or screening of any kind; b) Bring guns to work and keep them in their vehicles in company parking lots, and c) Enter establishments that serve alcohol with loaded firearms (permit holders only). He sits on the NRA Board of Directors.

Hornady Ammunition president Steve Hornday is the son of Joyce Hornady, the founder of the company. Joyce began manufacturing ammunition because he was dissatisfied with the quality of surplus ammunition following World War II. Steve Hornady joined his father’s business in 1970. Presently, Hornady Ammunition manufactures “FMJ” armor piercing bullets for sale on the civilian market.

Having served in the United States House of Representatives from 2004 to 2012, Boren was a third generation Member of Congress. His father, David Boren, is the current president of the University of Oklahoma and a former U.S. Senator and Governor of Oklahoma. Boren’s grandfather also represented Oklahoma in the U.S. House of Representatives. Known as a conservative Democrat, Boren served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives prior to becoming a Member of Congress. The only Democratic member of the NRA Board, Boren voted against the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009” and was one of only three Democrats to vote to repeal the legislation in 2011. Commenting on the bill, Boren said, “They can break my arms. They can do whatever they want to. They’ll never get my vote—ever. They’ll have to walk across my dead body if they want my vote on this issue.” In June 2011, Boren announced that he would retire from Congress at the end of his term. Following his term in Congress, he worked on business development for the Chickasaw Nation. He is exploring a run for governor in Oklahoma in 2018.

Peter “Jay” Printz served as a sheriff in Montana until 1999 and was the lead plaintiff in the 1997 lawsuit, Printz v. United States. The NRA-backed litigation attempted to void the “Brady Law,” which mandated background checks on gun purchases. The purpose of the law was to prevent prohibited purchasers—including convicted felons, domestic abusers, and fugitives from justice—from acquiring firearms. The NRA stoked paranoid fears about the “Brady Law,” falsely claiming it would lead to door-to-door gun confiscation. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in Printz said that the federal government could not compel local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks, but left the Brady Law largely intact. Printz has served on the NRA Board of Directors since 1998.

Prior founding the lobbying firm Ice Miller Strategies, Hill served as the staff director and senior counsel to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. Hill is also the Director of Federal Affairs for the Fifty Caliber Institute. While the Fifty Caliber Institute claims that the .50 caliber sniper rifle is “helping to make our streets and nation safer,” the gun has been criticized by many—including members of law enforcement—as a weapon too dangerous for civilian use. John C. Killorin, a former special agent in charge of the Atlanta field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), called the .50 caliber sniper rifle “a devastatingly powerful weapon against which most troops, most law enforcement, no civilians, have any means of defense.” Additionally, in 2005, U.S. Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) and 28 cosponsors introduced legislation that would have placed stricter regulations on .50 caliber sniper rifles by placing them in the same federal regulatory class as machine guns. The 50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Reduction Act found that “the intended use of these long-range firearms…is the taking of human life and the destruction of materiel, including armored vehicles and such components of the national critical infrastructure as radars and microwave transmission devices, in addition 50 caliber sniper weapons pose a significant threat to civil aviation in that they are capable of destroying or disabling jet aircraft … The virtually unrestricted availability of these firearms and ammunition, given the uses intended in their design and manufacture, present a serious and substantial threat to the national security.”

John Bolton is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School and worked in private practice as a lawyer before becoming active in politics. As a prominent Neoconservative, Bolton worked in the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush in the Justice and State Departments. Bolton was George W. Bush’s Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001 to 2005, before being appointed to the position of Ambassador to the United Nations. His nomination was filibustered by Senate Democrats, forcing Bush to make a recess appointment. Democrats, as well as many Republicans, were opposed to Bolton because of his belief that, “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.” Bolton served as ambassador until December 2006, just before his recess appointment would have expired. He now serves as a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and is a frequent guest on Fox News.

James W. Porter II, a resident of Birmingham, Alabama, is the son of Irvine C. Porter, who served as the NRA President from 1959-1960. Porter received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama in 1971, and a law degree from the Cumberland School of Law. While in law school, Porter spent a summer working for John Wilson, who served as outside legal counsel for the NRA in Washington, D.C. Wilson also represented John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman during the Watergate hearings in the U.S. Congress. In 2009, Porter was elected as first vice president of the NRA Board of Directors. He had previously served as second vice president and president of the NRA Foundation Board of Trustees.

Actor Charlton Heston rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s for his roles in films like “The Ten Commandments,” “El Cid” and “Planet of the Apes.” He was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in “Ben-Hur” in 1959. Heston was an early supporter of the civil rights movement in America who picketed restaurants and movie theaters that practiced segregation. On August 28, 1963 he would join Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the March on Washington. During a roundtable discussion conducted that day in a television studio, Heston discussed his involvement in the movement saying, “Like many Americans this summer, I could no longer pay only lip service to a cause that is so urgently right, and in a time that is so urgently now.” After the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy by a gunman, Heston championed the Gun Control Act of 1968, a landmark federal law regulating firearms. Appearing on ABC’s “The Joey Bishop Show,” Heston said about the Act: “This bill is no mystery. Let’s be clear about it. Its purpose is simple and direct. It is not to deprive the sportsman of his hunting gun, the marksman of his target rifle, nor would it deny to any responsible citizen his constitutional right to own a firearm. It is to prevent the murder of Americans.” Heston opposed the Vietnam War and considered running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, but by the 1980s his political affiliation changed with his endorsement of Republican Ronald Reagan for president. By 1997, he had joined the “Culture War,” delivering a fiery speech at the Free Congress Foundation that argued that American society persecuted whites. One year later, he was elected president of the National Rifle Association. During his tenure as NRA president, Heston was best known for a speech where he raised a musket over his head and said that then-presidential candidate Al Gore could have his gun when he pried it “from [Heston’s] cold, dead hands.” He was besieged by medical problems later in life, including alcoholism and Alzheimer’s disease, and passed away in 2008.