Interest groups use techniques such as litigation to achieve their objectives. The technique they choose is based on their resources, characteristics and goals. Litigation is the process of taking legal action. This means prosecution and law suits. A group would use this because it does not require a large influence or number of people. Another technique is campaign contribution or the collection of funds to support a candidate, political party, or policy. This is used by large groups with a lot of money who can directly influence candidates. The third is Grassroots Lobbying and mass mobilization this is in a sense advertising and promoting. They use the people rather than going directly to legislation, the interest group lobbies then goes by word of mouth. Interest groups with a lot of people but not as much money use this technique.
The NRA, national rifle association, for instance, uses mainly campaign contributions. They raise money to support candidates and policies that support loose gun laws. According to statistics, by the Washington Post, the NRA has a significant influence over congress. They donated over $650,000 to supporters in 2012 and 80% of senators funded by the NRA won the seat. The NRA has donated over $4.6 million since 1990. The NRA uses campaign contributions rather than the other two techniques because they have a vast amount of money and it gains them favor with specific politicians. They also use grass roots but in our economy it is more important to get political support than citizen support. Litigation is unnecessary for the NRA because they have a lot of support.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/nra-congress/
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