Opinion
Washington, D.C. –-(Ammoland.com)- Former chief lobbyist and principal political strategist for the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, has started a new Washington, D.C. based consulting firm.
The firm, Capitol 6 Advisors, will be offering a wide range of services to corporations, political campaigns and other groups. Some of these services will include long-range strategic public policy, public affairs consulting, crisis management, and brand positioning services. The firm will target clients with complex problems. The company refers to Cox as “Washington’s top problem solver.”
“My entire career has been a policymaking and electoral laboratory, needing to solve complex problems,” Cox said. “So, we’ll be doing long-range strategic public affairs, crisis management, brand-positioning services, helping campaigns, causes, nonprofits, corporations deal with major problems. That’s what I’ve done for decades.”
The company chose its name to symbolize their commitment to protecting their client base and “fixing” their problems.
“In military terminology ‘got your six’ is about the commitment to protect a comrade from harm that comes from outside their field of vision,” Cox said. “Similarly, the mission of Capitol 6 is to protect our clients and solve their most complicated problems – from brand strategy to unanticipated reputational and economic harm and also active mitigation of that harm when it occurs.”
Cox graduated from Rhodes College with a degree in history. Before starting to work for the NRA, he started his career as a congressional aide U.S. Rep. John S. Tanner (D-TN). His focus was on managing issues relating to the judicial system and criminal justice reform.
Cox spent nearly 25 years at the NRA-ILA. In 1995 he joined the gun-rights group. He served as the deputy director of the ILA Federal Affairs Division.
Later in 2002, He became the Executive Director of the NRA-ILA. He also served as Chairman of the NRA Political Victory Fund (PAC), President of the NRA Freedom Action Foundation and Chairman of NRA Country.
Cox claimed to have “left the 2nd Amendment far more secure than when I started at the NRA” and said he was “proud” of his accomplishments at the gun advocacy group. The lobbyist cited the election of Donald Trump and changes to federal gun laws such as lobbying Congress to let the “assault weapons ban” expire although critics point to the banning of bump stocks and the rise of red flag laws across the country as failures of the NRA-ILA under Cox’s leadership.
On June 20 2019, The NRA place Cox on administrative leave for allegedly taking part in what NRA employee, Wayne LaPierre called a “failed coup d’état attempt” by his bosses NRA President Oliver North, NRA Board member Dan Boren, and PR firm Ackerman McQueen against NRA Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. Cox resigned from the NRA-ILA six days later on June 26. 2019.
Cox denied being a part of a plot to take over the embattled gun-rights group calling the charges “offensive and patently false.”. The NRA’s evidence against Cox were vague text messages between him and Boren. Although the text exchanges were not a smoking gun, they did show all three men talked with each other.
Capitol 6 Advisors has not listed any clients at the time of this writing.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot-News Podcast which can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement, including 3%’ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on leftist deplatforming methods and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, on Facebook at realjohncrump, or www.crumpy.com.