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The tapes also show that the NRA was shaken by the negative press following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which targeted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and other federal agencies. A week before that bombing, the NRA put out a fundraising letter calling the ATF "jackbooted government thugs," and after the bombing, LaPierre had defended this rhetoric.

In the ensuing firestorm, former Republican President George H.W. Bush publicly resigned as an NRA member in protest. This led to an exodus of some half a million members — a number that has never been reported prior to now.

"What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing," says PR adviser McQueen. "When we lost control of a situation and the result was a half a million members, the president of the United States bailing out on us and a firestorm of negative media that if you went back and looked at, it was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in opposition to us and our point of view."

"And I think this will be worse," responds Baker.