On-Topic The NRA in Disarray

[KaraBulut]

Quote of the day is from Letitia James: "The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."

 

[smokeshadow]

They hope to re-structure and reincorporate in Texas

NRA Files for Bankruptcy (New Civil Rights Movement; January 15, 2021)

Sorry, rareboy, didn't see your post until after I posted this

 

[Kulindahr]

The best comment I've seen on this was on Quora:

I cannot overemphasize what a mess Letitia James, NY AG has made of this. You have a big fish in your barrel, what does she do, she tries to drown it. Someone needs to start talking some sense into Democrats. You want to split the country even more? You want to make it so Texas never becomes blue? Then go for it Letitia, you have done it again.

Look at the ‘optics’. Black woman ‘persecuting’ white men. You can do the white privilege argument all you want, you can hate the 2nd amendment, you can be anti this or anti that, but if you don’t all play by the same rules, you do nothing positive.

Did anyone in James office even think what would have been the obvious move by the NRA? To simply leave town, never come back, never have a convention in NY or NYC, lose the revenue, lose the oversight lose any chance at getting the NRA to reform and change? Hello, anyone there in the NY AG office?

Or are you hell bent on dividing the country further because THE NRA IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY. Knock knock Letitia, we just almost had a revolution with probably 90% NRA members attacking the US capitol and your solution is to drive the NRA out of New York which they have been in for 150 years!

And as I responded:

Henry Greenfield makes a good point: doing this was an idiot move by Letitia James, New York Attorney General — she’s guaranteed that the NRA board would double down and keep La Pierre in charge; they didn’t just leave him in charge, they gave him more authority.

Many, maybe most, NRA members have known for years that La Pierre is corrupt, as was Ackeman-McGueen, the ad agency that ran the place for years and turned La Pierre from a mediocre manager to a firebrand figurehead rolling in money and luxury while making decisions based not on defending the Second Amendment but on keeping the cash flowing. Now, thanks to a self-righteous ideologue wielding the power of government for a personal crusade, the NRA will be more rabid and less responsive to its members than before.

If someone was trying to divide the country and make armed resistance more likely, it would be hard to have come up with a better plan. It’s just too bad that she’ll be sheltered from the consequences of her self-righteousness.

As for the NRA, bankruptcy should shield it from some of the stupidity of this ideologue, and in Texas is will be safe from more of that stupidity.

Another Democrat doing her best to divide the country.

 

[seven2go]

Quote of the day is from Letitia James: "The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt."

Totally and it's about fucking time it bit them in the ass.

 

[rareboy]

Welp.

The bankruptcy gambit didn't work.

Now let's see if they can literally be driven into bankruptcy.

Judge dismisses NRA bankruptcy filing (The Hill; May 11, 2021)

 

[DantheManFL]

How can I help?

 

[rareboy]

This brings us closer to seeing the NRA disbanded by the New York State.

 

[Kulindahr]

Welp.

The bankruptcy gambit didn't work.

Now let's see if they can literally be driven into bankruptcy.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/552948-judge-dismisses-nra-bankruptcy-filing?

Totally expected given the way it was done. The court didn't say they couldn't qualify for bankruptcy, they said the reasons for filing were bad.

Drive the premier gun safety organization in the whole world into bankruptcy? Why would you want to bankrupt the organization that has the top award-winning gun safety programs in the country?

That's just ideological vendetta stuff. If you want to do something practical, find a way to help get rid of Wayne La Pierre and his cronies who spent the last thirty years turning the NRA into a fund-raising organization to turn themselves into millionaires!

 

[KaraBulut]

...That's just ideological vendetta stuff. If you want to do something practical, find a way to help get rid of Wayne La Pierre and his cronies who spent the last thirty years turning the NRA into a fund-raising organization to turn themselves into millionaires!

Maybe a decade ago, that would have worked. NRA cannot be fixed. The place is full of rot.

The management and board sat by and allowed LaPierre to do things like spend $274,000 in NRA money in one shopping spree at a Beverly Hills clothing store. They took bribes in exchange for awarding multi-million dollar contracts to friends.

They need to be put out of business and the rot sent to prison for fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion. They all need to be banned for life from being involved in "charities".

This has become a common theme. Start a charity and use it to line your own pockets. In this case, these crooks took over a charity, repurposed it into a tool for the gun lobby and then stuffed their pockets with as much cash and they could.

 

[rareboy]

^Agreed.

It needs to be burned to the ground to allow a new organization with gun safety as their core objective to be created.

 

[Kulindahr]

^Agreed.

It needs to be burned to the ground to allow a new organization with gun safety as their core objective to be created.

Gun safety is their core objective -- it just doesn't get as much press. After all, no media outlet is going to run a story about a dozen high school shooting teams that completed a range safety course with flying colors, or that a thousand policemen completed a tactical training course.

 

[TX-Beau]

Until there is some kind of internal NRA revolt that expels the whore and all the cronies, you have no leg to stand on.

 

[ClubLevelVegan]

That's just ideological vendetta stuff. If you want to do something practical, find a way to help get rid of Wayne La Pierre and his cronies who spent the last thirty years turning the NRA into a fund-raising organization to turn themselves into millionaires!

I would argue that the more practical thing to do would be to support the smaller organizations in order to build them up who actually practice what they preach about Gun Safety and all that, plenty of them out there. NRA is not worth trying to fix when it's been so deeply routed in its nonsense for a very long time.

 

[KaraBulut]

Gun safety is their core objective -- it just doesn't get as much press...

Those days have passed.

The NRA has 76 people on their Board of Directors. A few years back, some of those Directors tried to cleanup the rot. Those Directors were forced out and after they were forced out, they went public with the details of the corruption.

What the NRA has been doing is using a charity for money-laundering. They have kept the old charity that does do safety programs- it spends about $40 million per year on those programs. Meanwhile, they also operate a PAC that put $54.4 million into the 2016 election cycle to fund politicians who help them sell guns on behalf of the gun lobby. It's going to come out that the PAC accepted dark money and illegal donations and then laundered it into PAC donations. Meanwhile, a lot of money from the "charity" found its way into the bank accounts of NRA insiders and their friends and family.

What they're doing is a lot like the mafia running a business. Sure, the business may make concrete and haul away trash but the business is still there to fund the crime syndicate. When you shut down the crime syndicate, the front business has to be shut down, too.

 

[Sausy]

Under LaPierre, whatever good it accomplished or even may still do on the side for responsible gun use and ownership, has been thrown away as like KB says, serving as a racket. Massively corrupted and corrupting towards the political process.

 

[KaraBulut]

...The NRA has 76 people on their Board of Directors. A few years back, some of those Directors tried to cleanup the rot. Those Directors were forced out and after they were forced out, they went public with the details of the corruption.

Background information from 2019:

NRA ousts president Oliver North after alleged extortion scheme against chief executive [WaPo]

National Rifle Association President Oliver North has been ousted after an alleged extortion scheme within the group’s highest-ranking officials came to light on Friday. In a statement, North told the organization he was “informed” he would not be nominated for reelection. North’s term ends Monday.

The NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, wrote a letter to the board Thursday accusing North of plotting to remove him from the group by threatening to release to the board “damaging” information about LaPierre. He claimed North, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel perhaps best known for his role in the Iran-contra affair, was pressuring him to resign over alleged financial transgressions.

N.R.A. President to Step Down as New York Attorney General Investigates [NY Times]

Oliver L. North announced on Saturday that he would not serve a second term as the National Rifle Association’s president, deciding to step down as the organization grappled with a bitter dispute over its future and its worst leadership crisis in decades.

He made the announcement as the N.R.A. faced a challenge from the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who had opened an investigation into the gun group’s tax-exempt status.

On Friday, Ms. James’s office sent letters instructing the N.R.A. and affiliated entities, including its charitable foundation, to preserve relevant financial records. Some of the N.R.A.’s related businesses also received subpoenas, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. Both the attorney general’s office and a lawyer for the N.R.A. confirmed the investigation.

Oliver North says NRA is smearing him to avoid scrutiny [AP News]

Oliver North, the retired Marine who was pushed out as president of the National Rifle Association in a dispute within the gun-rights group, said in court documents filed Thursday that he was thwarted when he tried to raise alarm bells about alleged misspending and denied that he tried to oust the organization’s longtime top executive.

The documents detail concerns North said he raised over several months and the efforts he said he took to try to have NRA spending audited and reviewed by an outside, independent entity. He said the red flags began to emerge this past spring when he heard that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre had received tens of thousands of dollars in clothing, private jet travel and other perks from the group’s longtime marketing firm, Ackerman McQueen; he also has questioned money being paid to the law firm that has represented NRA in its fight against that firm.

 

[rareboy]

To think that the core business of the NRA over the last 15 years has been gun safety is just disingenuous.

Their business is to sell guns. To everyone. And lots of them. Including assault weapons.

And if gun safety was the core objective...the stats form the US tell the rest of the world that they suck at this work too.

Charge them. Jail them. Bankrupt them and destroy them. And let a real gun safety organization that will advocate for sensible gun laws take over the training programs.

 

[Kulindahr]

To think that the core business of the NRA over the last 15 years has been gun safety is just disingenuous.

Their business is to sell guns. To everyone. And lots of them. Including assault weapons.

And if gun safety was the core objective...the stats form the US tell the rest of the world that they suck at this work too.

Charge them. Jail them. Bankrupt them and destroy them. And let a real gun safety organization that will advocate for sensible gun laws take over the training programs.

It's impossible for the NRA to be in the business of selling assault weapons, since there are no new ones available for purchase in the U.S., and the last sale anyone made had a price over $10,000.

Nor do they sell any other guns; they're not a vendor at all, nor do actual vendors benefit much from associating with the NRA -- the NRA is too good at killing sales and forcing gun vendors and companies to do as they're told. The NRA also has pursued policies which drive the price of guns up, so they're hardly in favor of selling guns "to everyone".

As for gun safety, the stats sow that they are in fact effective: those who take NRA safety courses and pass them are far, far less likely to be involved in accidents involving guns. Looking at national stats is fallacious.

You've bought into media memes that have little relation to reality.

 

[Kulindahr]

An article that clears up all the hype and gets to the core of things:

The National Rifle Association: A Case Study in How Not to Operate a Non-Profit (The Truth About Guns; May 17, 2021)

It's by a professor who teaches law on the subject of not-for-profits. Akey paragraph:

I began to use the NRA as a case study when serious allegations about its mismanagement emerged in 2019. The gun group’s wobbly finances and other woes make it the epitome of a poorly run nonprofit, because it violates four key legal and management principles.

 

[Kulindahr]

^
That's one of the more irrational things ever posted on this board. The NRA got awards for making children safer!