NEWTOWN, Conn. -- An influential gun-rights advocacy group sits just 3 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School but remains largely unknown to people who live here even as it has become increasingly vocal about gun rights.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group of gun manufacturers, has raised its voice in Washington, spending more than four times as much on lobbying in 2012 as it spent in 2008, records show.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says the foundation has "repeatedly rejected" proposals that the Brady Campaign says would keep guns away from criminals.

Yet the foundation, with 47 employees and a $25 million annual budget, has almost no presence in Newtown and has remained quiet since the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at the Sandy Hook school on Friday.

Anthony Paravalos, owner of Anthony's Shoe Service around the corner from the foundation, was surprised to hear about it.

"I've been here 25 years, and I never noticed a gun group," he said.

The group's headquarters are off South Main Street, tucked behind a Walgreens store, with a small sign that says "NSSF."

"I haven't heard of them," said Andy Sachs, whose real estate office is next to Paravalos' shop. He is an elected member of the Newtown Police Commission, which oversees the town police department.

Cindi Kromberg, who was getting her hair done Tuesday at Shear Image near the foundation, also hadn't heard of the group but wasn't surprised that it's in Connecticut, home to gunmaker Colt.

Kromberg isn't sure how she feels about the foundation and gunmakers, but she has become passionate about gun control.

"Assault weapons and weapons like this kid had, they've got to stop," she said, referring to Adam Lanza, who killed people using a semiautomatic rifle. "They're weapons of war. They're not for hunting or self-protection."

The foundation says on its tax return that it "protects the firearms industry" in Washington, D.C., and "guards against attacks in state capitals throughout the country." Those efforts have steadily increased. So far this year, the foundation has spent $500,000 lobbying Congress and federal officials. By contrast, it spent $120,000 every year from 2001 through 2008.

This year the foundation endorsed a measure to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating ammunition as a potentially toxic substance and another bill that would allow people to carry firearms at water projects run by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The foundation is much smaller than the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), whose political action committee has spent $16 million so far this year, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Jonathan Lowy, legal action director at the Brady Campaign, said the foundation and the NRA work together and are funded by some of the same gun manufacturers.

In 1999, amid concern that criminals were buying guns from licensed sellers, the foundation staff drafted a letter that it planned to send to gun dealers encouraging them to delay selling a gun for two or three days if police made such a request, the Brady Campaign says. But the foundation "never actually got around to sending any version of the letters it drafted," the Brady Campaign said in a 2003 report.

"They have been protecting the bottom line," Lowy says.

The foundation has not commented since Friday except on its website. An initial two-sentence statement expressing sympathy for the families of victims was replaced with a longer statement saying the group has been "deeply shaken and saddened by the horrible events" of Friday.

"We had family, friends and acquaintances that were affected," the statement said. "We are weighed down by their heartbreaking stories and the sorrow that has blanketed our community."

Although the foundation's employees live in the Newtown area, its board members live in places such as Phoenix; Fort Lauderdale; Portland, Ore.; Baton Rouge, La.; Grand Island, Neb.; and Smyrna, Ga., according to records of campaign contributions.

On Tuesday, the parking lot surrounding the foundation's two-story 21,000-square-foot building was monitored by a security guard, who would not let visitors in. A phone message left for the foundation seeking comment was not returned.

USA Today