LONDON - The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) of the United States has been aggressively pushing gun manufacturers' interests and is starting to eclipse its bigger rival, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the Guardian has said.

The NSSF is a business trade group representing 10,000 gunmakers, dealers and other firearm firms, whose range of activities is broad but always geared to zealously and single-mindedly preserving and extending the power of the gun industry, it said on Tuesday.

The group has been lobbying the US Congress to pass bills blocking financial institutions from using environmental, social and governance criteria in making investment and loan decisions to protect gun companies' bottom lines, it said.

Meanwhile, gun manufacturers are relying on this same group to mount legal challenges to several state laws that limit the gun industry's highly prized and unique protection from contentious liability laws enacted by Congress in 2005, it added.

"The NSSF functions as the gun industry's voice, with a singular focus on expanding the market for all types of firearms, including assault weapons and short-barreled rifles, and is eclipsing the NRA's lobbying power on Capitol Hill," the Guardian quoted Kristen Rand, a lawyer with gun control advocacy and research group the Violence Policy Center, as saying.

Overall, the American gun industry has mushroomed in recent years, the Guardian said, noting that gun sales surged during the pandemic, as almost 60 million guns were bought by Americans between 2020 and 2022.