I'm not saying the NRA has clean hands, only that I haven't seen them do anything that would alienate minorities and I'm wondering if someone can provide similar specific examples.
The NRA has thrown in with conservatives across the board. Whether it makes sense to you or not, most minorities (including especially black americans) feel that the economic and voting rights and educational access policies of the modern american conservative are strongly adverse to their interests. You don't have to agree, but that's the thinking. The NRA doesn't have to do
anything related to guns to hack off those people... they just have to be one-sided in their support of conservatism broadly.
A specific example comes from my state (Georgia). 4 years ago, the candidates for governor were Deal, a republican, and Carter, a Democrat. Carter, as a member of the state legislature, had sponsored the so-called "guns everywhere" bill that dramatically reduced the number of statutory "no gun" areas (and given that private signs don't have the force of law in GA, that really does make it easy to carry a gun most places without fear of a criminal conviction). Both he and Deal had "A" ratings from the NRA.
However, when Carter ran against Deal, the NRA endorsed Deal and ran ads in his favor - against a pro-gun Democrat. Deal won - not by a huge margin, but pretty decisively. Then, just after the election, Deal
vetoed a college/university "campus carry" bill that the legislature had passed (he signed a revised/reduced version a year later under lots of political pressure and with evident discomfort). That's right, the NRA's GOP guy vetoed a pro-gun/carry bill right after they helped win him the election against a pro-gun Democrat.
Fast forward 4 years, and the Democrats don't nominate a moderate, pro-gun Democrat. They nominate Stacey Abrams, an unapologetic leftist (not liberal - real leftist) who advocates mandatory confiscation/return of "assault weapons," a mag cap limit, etc. And she came very, very close to pulling off the upset.
So, thanks to the NRA, the historically gun-moderate Democratic party in my state is now about as rabidly anti-gun as the NY and CA branches of the party. Because there's no sense trying to appease the NRA from their perspective - the NRA is just for the GOP, not for pro-gun-rights candidates specifically.
If you cannot tell, this
royally irritates me.