(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
The NRA is hemorrhaging cash - sadly, even if it dies its fatal legacy will live [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-22
The NRA
In 1871, William Conant Church and Captain George Wood Wingate founded the National Rifle Association ( NRA ) to teach Americans to shoot better. The NRA has discarded that limited and relatively sensible mission. It now vociferously opposes any attempt to mandate gun owners know how to own, store, and use guns responsibly. It promotes the commercial interests of gun makers. And it runs a carrot-and-stick campaign to align politicians with its lead-based crusade.
Thank God the same politically successful zealotry infecting this pro-gun group has not spread to AAA. If that venerable car organization had gone rogue and had as much success with craven politicians, the law would no longer require drivers to be trained, licensed, insured, or sober.
However, the NRA's future is cloudy. This hubristic organization — self-celebrated as “America’s Oldest Civil Rights Group” — faces the consequences of years of financial mismanagement, self-dealing, and bloody-minded absolutism. Its revenues have shrunk for four straight years to their worst level since 2008.
Decline
In a sure sign that this pretend grass-roots organization is losing its actual grass-roots support, its inflation-adjusted membership dues are down 59% since 2016. And its total revenues are down 52%.
Compounding the pain of this diminishing revenue stream is the increased resources the NRA must dedicate to its expanding legal jeopardy. As CREW r eported :
"Compounding the NRA’s dire financial situation is the organization’s persistent legal battles that continue to cost millions. The audit shows a nearly $12.4 million settlement payment, linked to a legal battle the NRA fought with its former PR firm. In all, the NRA spent nearly $43.8 million on administrative “legal, audit, and taxes,” which is down from the nearly $46.8 million it spent in 2021, but still far higher than the $4.3 million it spent on the same costs in 2017, when its overall revenue was more than $319 million. Put another way, legal expenses went from about 1 percent of the NRA’s overall spending in 2017 to about 20 percent in 2021 and 2022, while its total revenue dropped by nearly 42 percent over the same period."
Bankruptcy
Since 1991, CEO and EVP Wayne LaPierre has been the face of the NRA. He is well-known as a flint-hearted, expense glutton, most famous for his sociopathic lie , “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
His profligate lifestyle was presented in stark relief as the NRA tried to move its bankruptcy case from New York to Texas. Federal Judge (Northern District of Texas) Harlin Hale denied the request, ruling that the effort was made in bad faith.
The 11-day hearing revealed LaPierre's eye-watering compensation and exorbitant corporate spending on expensive suits, chartered jet flights, and a traveling "glam squad" for his wife.
In January 2021, the NRA declared bankruptcy . The organization was desperate to shield its dwindling assets after NY AG Letitia James (of Trump fraud fame) brought a civil lawsuit against it in August 2020. In the suit, James alleged fraud, financial misconduct, and misuse of charitable funds. She called for the NRA's dissolution due to chronic fraudulent management.
In September 2021, the NRA dodged an immediate death sentence as Manhattan Judge Joel M. Cohen rejected James’ request to shut down the NRA’s operations. However, LaPierre and his fellow grifters are still on the hook for misspending on personal trips, no-show contracts, and other questionable expenditures. Cohen said fines and remuneration were the appropriate remedies for their illegal avarice.
Hoist by their own petard
The NRA is a victim of its own success. Its apocalyptic advocacy of gun absolutism petrified the easily scared pants-pissers. In turn, cynical politicians perverted 2A to appeal to the conservative base. Now MAGAs know their Republican representative will be 100% behind promiscuous gun rights. The NRA no longer seems relevant
As Robert Maguire, a nonprofit analyst at CREW reports :
“We have a lot of mass shootings in this country, and we used to have this discussion, this wait-and-see what the NRA is going to say. But you don’t see them playing on the national stage the way they used to, and its repugnant statements after mass shootings are pretty much expected and just seem like an absurd afterthought.”
Unfortunately, even as the GOP becomes less reliant on the NRA, the nation has to suffer through political ads featuring Republican office aspirants shooting things.
The future
There is nothing to suggest that the NRA decline will slow America’s descent into gun anarchy. In 2023, Congress did pass the first gun legislation in 30 years. But the Supreme Court has expressed an enthusiasm for guns that would have caused even Antonin Scalia to shudder. Now liberal states, like New York, will be forced to accommodate untrained, unqualified, hair-triggered wannabe Rambos.
I will grant you most gun owners will not kill someone. But that will be cold comfort to the one million+ Americans dead by gunshot since 1990. Between 1968 and 2015, the number of American civilians killed by gun violence (1.5 million) was greater than the number of American troops killed in every war the US has fought (1.2 million).
That is an achievement no other developed country can come close to matching.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/22/2213229/-The-NRA-is-hemorrhaging-cash-sadly-even-if-it-dies-its-fatal-legacy-will-live?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
