President of the NRA: Iowa father at heart of gun debate

Pete Brownell is a good-looking, soft-spoken father-of-three from Iowa, the type of man who exudes down-home Midwestern values and will pick his children up from school himself. The 49-year-old businessman and his wife, Helen – who worked as a teacher and is currently president of the school board in small-town Grinnell, Iowa – raise their family in a neat but unassuming five-bedroom home. They’re avid athletes and pillars of the community, donating to local causes and the highly-respected nearby Grinnell College.

But Brownell, though he has flown somewhat under the radar for years, has been attracting pretty negative attention in their home town of Grinnell in recent months. Because he’s not just the third-generation head of a family business; he’s the head of the world’s largest supplier of firearm accessories and gun parts.

And he’s also the president of the NRA.

While the pro-gun organization has a more recognizable representative in the form of chief executive Wayne LaPierre – the flamboyant, hardline face of the NRA who argues for unrestricted Second Amendment rights – the group’s president is a much lesser-known figure. LaPierre has been everywhere in the wake of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Florida, lashing out at ‘elites’ on the left and targeting specific politicians.

‘The elites don’t care one whit about America’s school system and the school children,’ LaPierre said last week. ‘Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.’

Brownell, however, has been far less visible, despite the fact that he, too, is an avid supporter of the Second Amendment and his company makes a fortune from selling gun parts and guns that include AR-15s – the type of weapon used by school shooter Nikolas Cruz in the Florida attack (as well in other mass shootings, such as at Sandy Hook and the Aurora, Colorado movie theater.)

The board of the NRA consists of 76 members, though the inner workings of the organization and its governing policies are shadowy; the bylaws aren’t published on their website. Brownell did not respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com, but he’s made his feelings about the Second Amendment known in previous interviews. And locals in Grinnell find it hard to reconcile the ‘good guy’ they know with a man whose company makes guns easily accessible, including customized assault rifles.

‘If you knew him and spent time with him, you’d say he’s a classic good guy,’ George Drake, president emeritus of Grinnell College, tells DailyMail.com. ‘He’s very affable, in most regards, upright – I find it hard to say upright [about someone] who sells AR-15s – but he is. And I think somehow, in his own mind, he divorces all that from other aspects of life. But a good father, a good husband, a good community man, all of those things fit Pete Brownell.’

And guns have dominated Brownell’s life since birth. His grandfather, Bob, started making and selling guns in the 1930s; the company’s website, Brownells.com – spearheaded in the 1990s by Pete Brownell – details the history of the family business.

‘In the 1920s and 1930s, Bob Brownell was a middle-America businessman who owned and managed a gas station and sandwich shop in his small hometown, Montezuma, Iowa,’ the company site states. ‘In his free time, Bob was a devoted shooter and outdoorsman who enjoyed repairing and customizing firearms. He stated by working on his own guns, but news of his talent spread quickly and he soon began accepting jobs from friends. By 1938, his gunsmithing hobby was making profits, so Bob added part-time gunsmith to his list of businesses.’

The business grew and expanded, and Brownells began offering catalogs; by 1951, Bob Brownell had closed down his gunsmithing shop to focus on providing supplies. Bob’s son, Frank – Pete’s father – joined the business in 1964, and in 1973 the company moved into its first purpose-build facility. They were a well-known and well-respected family in the area, providing employment and investment in rural Iowa.

Brownells, which operates a retail store in Grinnell, Iowa, was started by Pete Brownell’s grandfather, Bob – a gun enthusiast and gunsmith

‘Funeral vigils’ have been held outside the Brownells offices in Iowa, with another scheduled for this weekend; activists staged 26 Days of Action Against Gun Violence late last year, with each day representing a victim of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut

NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, pictured with his wife Susan, is a much more visible and vocal leader of the pro-gun organization

Pete Brownell, second from left, is an avid outdoorsman and hunter who is a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights

Pete Brownell, born in 1969, was a keen athlete, loved hunting and fishing and worked at the family business during high school and college. His second cousin, Rev. Bob Molsberry, grew up 20 miles away and talks to DailyMail.com about visiting the Brownells on weekends, describing a regular, churchgoing Iowa family. Brownell earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Iowa in 1991 before working in the construction industry as a marketing consultant in Florida and California. (At one point, he lived in Broward County, the very site of the February 14 high school shooting tragedy.)

He returned to Iowa in 1996 and began working again with the family business, becoming vice president in 2000. In the meantime, he met and married California teacher Helen Redmond; they had a shared love of the outdoors and actually met hiking Mount Rainier. In a 1998 report in the Kansas paper the Salina Journal, a writer chronicled how he was present for Brownell’s proposal to Helen on a return trip to the mountain.

‘We had a New Year’s eve party … complete with champagne, and Pete Brownell, Grinnell, Iowa, a small guy who always was there to help me when I had trouble with my pack, surprised everyone and proposed to his girlfriend, Helen Redmond, Grinnell, Iowa. They had fallen in love one year ago while on Rainier,’ their fellow climber wrote.

While they may have a shared love of athletic pursuits, however, their politics may not be as aligned; records show that Redmond has donated to Democratic causes.

Redmond is ‘very, very liberal, and I would guess, if she were not married to him, would be a vociferous gun safety, anti- … sort of on the other side of this issue, let’s put it that way,’ Drake tells DailyMail.com.

Pete Brownell earned an MBA from the University of Iowa in 2001, became president of Brownells in 2008 and was named CEO in 2012. He served on the board of the NRA (and has been a member since birth, apparently) before becoming president in May 2017.

In 2015, Brownell was one of a group of NRA officials who flew to Russia to attend an annual gun conference; according to Time, one of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was sanctioned by the White House in 2014 in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Brownell has stumped for Republican candidates in Iowa and has repeatedly expressed conservative opinions. In one video interview last year, he seemed bolstered by the election of the President Donald J. Trump.

Pete Brownell lives with his wife and three children in this five-bedroom home in Grinnell, Iowa; they do not live an ostentatious lifestyle and are well-respected locally

Community and religious leaders in Grinnell held 26 Days of Action Against Gun Violence beginning in November, which also included a screening of the documentary Newtown

The debate about gun control has intensified nationally – and in Brownell’s Iowa town – following the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida

Parents wait for news after reports of the shooting in Parkland, Florida; 17 people were killed

Students and supporters protest against gun violence outside of the White House on February 19 following the mass shooting in Florida

NRA chief executive LaPierre and his wife Susan (pictured) are more likely to be seen at glitzy events than Brownell and his wife, Helen 

Describing the makeup of the NRA, he told program We Like Shooting: ‘There’s a big board of individuals that really dedicate all their life and energy toward making sure the Second Amendment is available to everybody in the United States.’

He added: ‘Without the NRA, your rights to own a firearm would have already been lost. We would not be looking at a Trump administration; we’d be looking at something a lot less favorable – we would be more of the way of Europe or Australia where guns were taken away by fiat measures.

‘The administrations of our past have tried, and the NRA was the firewall that stood between that and what we are going to be enjoying right now.’

In a previous interview, he lamented the fact that children were being taught ‘myths’ about guns.

‘Too many times, kids are taught these myths about, guns are bad,’ he says in one YouTube clip from six years ago. ‘They kept getting hammered with that when they’re growing up. So we’ll really try to say, here’s what the purpose of this tool is, here’s what’s really behind all the Second Amendment issues that you may be looking at and learning in your class.’

In the same clip, he brags about converting ‘liberal’ staff members at Grinnell College to gun culture, insisting that they’d combine trips to the Met with trips to the shooting range. 

And Brownell and his wife, who is firmly committed to educational issues, do socialize with members of the Grinnell College community, Drake tells DailyMail.com. It was one of these people who facilitated a meeting between Drake and Brownell a few months ago at the recently opened retail Brownells on I-80.

Also recently, the anti-gun sentiment in the Grinnell area has been increasing. There have been protests outside of the Grinnell site, and in November locals launched 26 Days of Action Against Gun Violence – one day for each victim of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The effort included marches and a screening of the documentary Newtown, and families of some of the victims traveled to Iowa for the event.

Local organizers reached out to Brownell for comment with the offer of having a conversation, as neighbors, about the issues. Most went unanswered.

Brownell’s cousin, Bob Molsberry – who now lives in Iowa City – also joined the movement, and he has previously written to Iowa media about his disagreeing views regarding gun control. He tells DailyMail.com he contacted Brownell before publishing his writings. 

‘I called him up at work and told him I was proposing to publish this letter and that I had some real misgivings about the NRA and his role in it, and he was cordial and said, “You know, everybody’s got different opinions” – thanked me for passing it by him in advance,’ Molsberry tells DailyMail.com.

He tried to meet up with Brownell when he traveled to Grinnell for the 26 Days of Action, but that never materialized.

Brownell did have the meet with Drake – before the businessman had to leave to pick his children up from school – during which the former university president felt that the local reaction was weighing heavily upon the father-of-three. 

LaPierre speaks during the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on February 22; he accused ‘opportunists’ of exploiting ‘tragedy for political gain’

Pete Brownell, left, poses with his father, Frank, who headed the Brownells family company before him

Grinnell College president emeritus George Drake, left, and Brownell’s second cousin, Bob Molsberry, right, describe Brownell as a regular Iowan and father

‘I think he’s having trouble with the kind of pressure they’re getting locally now,’ Drake tells DailyMail.com. ‘I think they give more money locally than any other … he and his family, I don’t know how much comes from the company, how much comes from the family, but they give money all over town – big supporters of the hospitals.

‘It’s very hard for this community to be anti-Brownell, because it’s dependent on Brownell money. Not dependent, but really, really wants it and uses it effectively. The College has gotten gifts from Brownell,’ he says. (Interestingly, a group of outraged alumni, who realized the school accepted money from the president of the NRA, recently prompted the institution to revise its policy on accepting donations, now allowing Grinnell to decline an offer if it’s deemed morally problematic.)

Overall, though, Drake says the Brownell family has ‘handled the local politics and PR very, very well. But I know from what people have said he’s been very shaken by the fact there are now strong anti-gun safety groups in town … I think he’s having trouble handling the local pressure that he’s getting; for the first time in his life, he’s confronting things locally that obviously are upsetting to him.

‘He’s a man with a conscience, I think.’

Meanwhile, however – just days before the Parkland shooting – Brownells introduced a new line of AR15/M16 ‘Retro’ rifles, replicating the original M16s used in Vietnam by the United States military.

And as the debate over gun control rages and Brownells continues to produce rifles and gun parts, it’s likely that the company’s head – and the NRA president – will continue picking up his children from school, attempting to keep a low profile and indulging his love of outdoor sports.

According to the Brownells website, he is an ‘active member of many organizations that support wildlife preservation and habitat development, including Safari Club International, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and the Grand National Quail Club. He serves in leadership capacity with Pheasants Forever in Iowa and contributes to the Pheasants Forever Strategic Leadership Group.’

He’ll continue to train for marathons and triathlons, and he’ll continue his ‘nice guy’ lifestyle in small-town Iowa.

But people like his neighbors and his own cousin will also continue speaking out. There’s another vigil being planned outside the Brownells retail store for this upcoming weekend.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Molsberry says of Brownell’s position as president of the NRA. ‘It’s an absolutely mystery to me. I can’t reconcile it. I can’t see how the guy I know can be part of what I see coming out of the NRA – their videos, their stance, their money … It disgusts me that you can actually do that. 

‘I’m not saying that about Pete; I’m saying that about the NRA and the business of gun sales and so on.’