'What you see in John Kerry,'' Wayne LaPierre, the association's executive vice president said in an interview this week, ''is a politician that spent his life voting against the Second Amendment. What I see is the same thing I saw in Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. It's an elitist arrogance.''

It is no accident, N.R.A. officials said, that this year's convention is being held in Pittsburgh. Two-thirds of the attendees are expected to come from within a 100-mile radius that spans three battleground states: Pennsylvania, which voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and Ohio and West Virginia, which voted for Mr. Bush.

''These are states where the N.R.A. can make a difference,'' said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
