They were fighting it then, I've read many membership magazine issues from the 1960s, but lost so comprehensively starting in the next year with the Gun Control Act of 1968 and through the high point of gun control in the 1970s that the leadership decided to surrender this issue and retreat to hunting and target shooting and move their headquarters from D.C. to Colorado.

In the 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati this leadership was ousted and people with a focus that included even having the right to hunt and target shoot with guns replaced them. Fast forward another ten years and the nationwide sweep of "shall issue" and better concealed carry regimes started in Florida with help from the NRA. Now 42 states and ~75% of the population, for all but Illinois done legislatively.