At the 2026 National Rifle Association Annual Meeting I had a chance to talk to Dan Reid — made possible by Beretta Holding.
Reid is the managing director of state and local affairs with the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. A long-time NRA employee, Reid hails from California, a place he says helped shape his thirst for pro-Second Amendment advocacy.
NRA-ILA has been working overtime in both lobbying and litigation, and Reid gives us a glimpse into some of the things that he’s been involved in.
John Petrolino: You’re a California guy, let’s talk about that first and foremost.
Dan Reid: Born and raised. Yeah, I’ve been there my whole life and I’ve done a lot of work with NRA out in California, and actually, California is what motivated me to get in the Second Amendment fight.
JP: How long have you been with the NRA?
DR: About 14 years in my current stint. My journey to NRA started in law school, actually. So I took “con law.” It was pre-Heller and we spent about three minutes talking about the Second Amendment. I had spent weeks talking about the Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment, and at that time, I was getting into the shooting sports and into hunting. And I went, wait a minute, what am I going to do with my life? So I decided to cold call NRA and found out about ILA. I was actually more thinking litigation originally, and found out more about the lobbying path, and had an opportunity to do an internship and come back after I practiced for a couple years.
JP: Perfect. People who are tuning in that aren’t 100 percent familiar with the program, we have the National Rifle Association, which is the national organization. NRA is a 501(c)(4). And then there’s the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. What exactly is that? Break down that branch of the NRA and how it works.
DR: Yeah, that’s the political arm. ILA is responsible for all the policy, litigation, as well as we’re involved in the political space.
JP: Right now, you have X number of state directors that are working with you, and pretty much you have the whole entire country covered by a dedicated NRA state director. And one state director might cover multiple states, and many of them do, right? They liaise with you on state issues as well, right?
DR: Absolutely. Our directors are regionally based. Generally their states are contiguous and that allows us to have coverage of the whole country.
JP: ILA also does a tremendous amount of work on the national front and I know you’re directly involved in that as well. Why don’t we talk about some of the hot-button issues that are going on now nationally, things that NRA-ILA is into that you can talk about.
DR: There’s a lot of different fights on a lot of fronts. My particular focus is on the state level. So I have a counterpart who handles our federal team, and obviously our executive director is John Commerford, who oversees all of ILA. But on the state front, you know, we’re continuing to play offense in the states that we can, and we’re playing a lot of defense in blue states right now.
We’re coming off of Virginia. There’s been radical changes in Virginia after the 2025 elections. Governor Spanberger just sent back multiple bills with some very minor amendments, and she’s playing politics here. They’re having an election on Tuesday (April 21), dealing with redistricting, and we saw this as a punt. She campaigned as a moderate, and the session’s been anything but moderate. We’ve seen this radical anti-gun agenda go through. There are dozens of gun bills on her desk, and she had until last Monday (April 13) to make a decision. She signed two bills, and she sent the rest back, and they’re going back into their cleanup session the day after the election.
JP: I’m glad that you bring up Virginia, because there’s a lot of people that were having a lot of anxiety, rightfully so, about Virginia. How involved has NRA been in Virginia? I know that you’ve been involved, but talk to us about leading up to the election, and the election, you guys were almost full force in Virginia weren’t you?
DR: We’re headquartered, obviously, in Fairfax, Virginia. We were very involved in the elections. We’ve seen a lot of momentum from the Democrat side. And obviously that election didn’t go as anyone really wanted it to. We saw the Dems pick up 13 seats, and obviously the governor’s office. That changed it. We had a backstop in Governor Youngkin for four years, and now there’s a radical change in the executive office and in the attorney general’s office.
JP: That’s a big problem, obviously. Are there any other spots in the nation that you’ve got your eyes on and things that you’re…projects, I guess that you’re working?
DR: We had a successful session in New Mexico. They’ve been really working for a semi-auto ban there for a couple of sessions and we were able to hold that off. That’s kind of the new semi-auto language, the gas-operated. They try and make it as scary as possible, right? They’ve gone from “assault weapons” with a floating definition to now this gas-operated semi-automatic.
The Go SAFE Act, as we’ve seen iterations in Colorado, but we were able to stop that there.
Rhode Island’s got an aggressive agenda there where they’re coming off of their semi-auto ban last session, and now they’re coming back and looking at including a possession ban. We’ve seen a new theme of this convertible pistols language, where they’re going after very common semi-automatic handguns.
We’re seeing that a lot of the agenda we see nationally, we see it play out. You mentioned I was from California. That’s generally the petri dish where we see all these bad ideas float out of California — your home state of New Jersey — and they try and push them inwards, right? So we’re continuing to see attacks on the industry this “responsible conduct,” type language … where with floating definitions to essentially create opportunities for litigation and price people out of the Second Amendment. To make business so expensive to operate — the liabilities so great — that it’s going to cut off consumer access.
JP: One of the other big, hot topics that everyone’s talking about is permitless or constitutional carry. So now we’re sitting here. What are we hovering at…
DR: 29.
JP: Twenty-nine states right now. It looks like we might have maybe one other viable, maybe two viable options that are states that will go into this willingly I like to say. The willing participants. What is your feel about the permitless carry scenario and going forward the next couple of years?
DR: Well, obviously, elections matter, right? Elections have consequences. We’ve been targeting North Carolina, and obviously there’s been a change there in the governor’s office, but we’re continuing to push forward. We’re continuing to work on North Carolina and identify other targets.
Right now, you mentioned we’re sitting at 29 states. We are seeing in my time with NRA, when I look back to (when we) started you had … Alaska, you had Vermont, and to see the momentum that’s happened over the last 10 plus years has been outstanding. Constitutional carry has been a success story, right? Law-abiding citizens are just that, law-abiding.
JP: If you look at just the evolution of carry across the board, we in modern history, you had pretty much Vermont. That was it, right? You had Vermont where you could carry a gun. And then we sparked off the carry movement. And now we can, essentially on paper, carry in all 50 states. I think that’s confirmed. I think we have civilian carriers in all 50, but I came from one of those Bruen-affected states where we did not get permits to carry in New Jersey until 2022. And then, of course, shortly thereafter we had our Bruen-response laws.
DR: We’re still seeing the Bruen-response laws. The anti-gun activists are trying to test: what does Bruen mean? Right? And we saw post-Heller … a lot of litigation of, what does this actually mean? And we’re seeing the same thing with Bruen.
The New Jerseys of the world, the New Yorks, the Californias are going to continue to push. They’ll say, ‘Okay, we’ll issue a permit, but you can’t carry anywhere.’ Right? They’ll make it so burdensome. All the encumbrances on the process — to make it expensive — all of them.
JP: Dan, I really appreciate your time. What is your message? Overall, NRA-ILA. Your message to NRA members, to gun owners at large, to the American public. What do you want to get out there to people?
DR: Get involved. Join NRA. We’re out in all 50 states. We’re actively involved in the conversation in these state capitals. We’re identifying ways to shore up the Second Amendment, to push the Second Amendment forward, and defend against (attacks on) the Second Amendment. And we have not only a comprehensive policy shop that is covering both Capitol Hill and state capitals across the country, but we have a comprehensive litigation program, and we’re utilizing that.
We’re involved in so much litigation right now. Our director of litigation, Joe Greenlee, is incredible. And whether we’re there directly — our cases — or we’re getting involved with amicus briefs or whatnot, we are out there. We’re pushing forward. The leadership at NRA is outstanding right now and we need you. The reason…what makes NRA powerful and the gun rights movement is people being involved, voting in elections and just contacting their legislators. It’s because of the gun owners.
JP: Well, Dan, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
DR: Thank you for having me.
JP: Absolutely and thank you for your service to the country through NRA, because I think what you guys do is a very important thing. So thanks for coming on.
DR: Freedom is a precious thing.