Torshin and Butina are both passionate defenders of gun owners rights. Both are lifetime members of the NRA (the only two Russians he knew to be lifetime members, Torshin once tweeted). The two attended the NRAs annual meeting in 2014 as a special guests of then-NRA president David Keene.
We are a young organization. We are three years old. And we invited David Keene. He made a speech at our annual meeting. And so its like an answer from one side, Butina told Townhall. The next side is the life member of our organization. He is our Russian senator. His name is Senator Alexander Torshin. He is a life member of NRA too, and hes usually a participant of such events, and every annual meeting of NRA. But now the situation between (our) two countries is very difficult. And we have to go here together with Senator Torshin. He is a great gun lover, he supports our organization and hes a friend of the NRA. ... Despite his ties to Russia, Torshin is still welcome in conservative circles. In May 2016, he returned to the NRAs annual convention and shared a dinner table with Donald Trump Jr., according to the same Bloomberg report.