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The Sugar lobby and the Cuba lobby are disproporionately powerful because they can deliver a swing state with significant electoral votes (or at least create that impression and keep it from being challenged). Their success has nothing to do with their willingness to compromise or lack of it. They are successful because they negotiate from a position of power.
The NRA has a more difficult task as getting gun owners to act cohesively is a task that makes herding cats look tame by comparison. As long as there is even a perception that the NRA cannot deliver one or more large swing states or that gun owners can be easily mollified by vague platitudes about your support for the Second Amendment (despite a lifetime of opposition to it), the NRA will be dealing from a weaker, albeit still strong, position.
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