Historical pedantry: American Rifle Association?

[Hemmers]

I contribute to Wikipedia - mostly UK shooting athletes and the NRA of the UK, etc. Recently I have had a little nose around at tidying up some bits to do with the NRA of America (mostly articles erroneously linking there when they should be pointing at NRA of UK/Australia/etc). In doing so I have noticed that in several non-English versions of Wikipedia, it is stated that the NRA of America was originally called the "American Rifle Association".

It is possible that this is true and most documents and articles simply state "The NRA was granted its charter in 1871..." as a convenient shorthand - in the same way the British "National Smallbore Rifle Association" (NSRA) counts 1901 as its founding year, even though technically that was the "Society of Working Men's Rifle Clubs" and we didn't get to "NSRA" until 1947 (after a merger and a period as the "Society of Miniature Rifle Clubs"). It's the same organisation, just renamed.

However, I can't find any source for this statement. The NRA article on the English-language Wikipedia does not make this claim nor does the NRA website (although again, a "Brief" history might skip over such details). I suspect its a lost-in-translation error that has been made in one article, and then other articles have perpetuated it (e.g. someone translating the German to Spanish or something and faithfully repeating the statement without citation).

Anyway, does anyone state-side know if this is true or have a source one way or the other?

Thanks,
Hemmers

EDIT: The French Wikipedia offers a citation, on page 70 of "US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11" :

A prominent member of the GAR, John A. Logan, helped to institute Memorial Day in 1867, and other Union generals established the American Rifle Association - later renamed the National Rifle Association (NRA) - in 1871. Presidents of the NRA included Ulysses grant.... continues

Of course this source is technically incomplete/incorrect since there is no American entity called the "National Rifle Association" - it's legally registered in New York (for the time being!) as the National Rifle Association of America, which again comes back to that thorny issue of historical shorthand and abbreviations. I'd be interested to know where the author might have got the idea of the ARA in the first place though.

[Frank in Fairfield]

https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/

President Ulysses Grant was also upset with the shooting abilities of the Northern forces during the civil war and was steadfast behind the founding of the NRA…

7AA62608-2843-4EC9-8390-B018F96247B6.jpeg (45.4 KiB) Viewed 1279 times

[Tim S]

https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/

I think Hemmers has already found that article; he linked to it in his post.

[Frank in Fairfield]

OK
I didn’t read the article.