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~Neal Knox Bio~ |
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~Neal Knox Bio~ |
Neal Knox has been one of the leading voices for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for more than 30 years. A profile on him in the October 26, 1993 Wall Street Journal said “Mr. Knox is likely to have a greater impact on the rapidly escalating fight over gun control than any other individual in America.”
Neal has been a shooter, hunter, handloader, and avid reader of firearms publications and books all his adult life. In 1962 he became a journalist so he could write about guns. He worked as a reporter and editor for Texas daily newspapers and soon began writing firearms and hunting articles for magazines. In 1966 he published a two-part extensively footnoted article in Guns & Ammo Magazine on the failure of gun laws to reduce crime and the misuse of crime statistics by “gun control” advocates, the first scholarly paper on that issue. That year Knox was selected as Founding Editor of Gun Week in Sidney, Ohio, and was soon lobbying and testifying before Congress. In 1968 Knox became Editor and Publisher of two technical firearms magazines, Handloader and Rifle.
In 1978 he sold his magazine interests and moved his family to Washington, D.C. to become Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, NRA's political and lobbying arm. Since 1984 he has published the “Hard Corps Report” newsletter and is Executive Director of the Firearms Coalition. He served for ten years as a member of the NRA Board of Directors, for six years as an NRA Foundation trustee, and three years as an NRA Vice President..
Knox has testified as a “firearms expert” in both civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts, and was a co-developer and co-patenter of Pyrodex, a safer black powder substitute. He has hunted on four continents, competed in Italy, Australia and Scotland, and owns an extensive collection of “interesting firearms.” He has participated in most types of firearms competition, winning his class in regional trap and skeet shoots, an NRA Regional two-man team 1,000-yard rifle competition (with Jim Carmichel of Outdoor Life), and in 1974 won the National Bench Rest Shooters Association National Heavy Varmint Rifle Championship. He has competed in the National Long Range Championships at Camp Perry, Ohio, and regularly shoots skeet and sporting clays.
Knox's writings on firearms technical and legislative issues have appeared regularly in Shotgun News, Handgunner's Digest, Guns & Ammo, The American Rifleman and The American Hunter and other publications, including the Speer Reloading Manual. He has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs, including “Nightline,” “CBS 60 Minutes,” “ABC Good Morning America,” and National Public Radio, where he was chosen to present the Second Amendment essay during NPR's Bicentennial Celebration series on the Bill of Rights. He was featured as “NRA's Top Gun” on “ABC Day 1” on July 4, 1994. Knox has been a guest speaker for many local and national groups, including the White House Fellows, and has been listed in Marquis' Who's Who in America since 1977.
An instrument-rated multi-engine private pilot, he is past president of a Washington, D.C. area flying club. Knox and his wife of over 40 years, Jay, who also received her first gun at age 9 -- from her single working mother, with training from her Pecos, Texas, Sheriff uncle. They have four children and 11 grandchildren, and live in the farm country of Northern Virginia. Both are Benefactor Members of NRA.
