[Uncle Billy]

If it's an inaccurate perception, the NRA has propagated it, the list of who's invited to be key speakers and the sponsored events at the annual conventions are definitely the choices of a right-wing organization. Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and Evangelical prayer breakfasts (for example) aren't likely to be sponsored by an organization in the middle, and anyone who reads the news gets enough snippets of such choices to come to a legit conclusion on where the NRA stands. The most powerful place to stand on gun rights is to not stand anywhere but on gun rights issues, but that's not been the NRA's politics. So it isn't an inaccurate perception that the NRA is a right-wing, radical right-wing even, organization. They endorse politicians in accordance with just their position on gun rights, but that's not as widely known as the public identity they create for themselves which clearly identifies them with Conservative politics and perspectives, most of which are well beyond gun rights and have no impact on them.

The annual convention is clearly meant only to be a money maker for the NRA, so it's constructed to appeal to Conservative Evangelicals, but the identity it tacks on the NRA has increasingly cost the NRA members, and worse as limited the number of those who would champion gun rights to those who also embrace the totality of Conservative politics. That excludes an increasing number of people who are Liberals and so won't join an effort that requires them to be (or identifies them as) supporters of other non-gun-related political issues they abhor, strongly enough to stay silent. What a voice we would have on gun rights if it came from the panorama of political perspectives instead of just a narrowly defined, increasingly unpopular corner.