On Monday, investigative blog Popular Informationrevealed that the National Rifle Association's "School Shield" program — created in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and billed as the gun rights' movement's flagship effort to keep children safe from school shootings — is barely funded at all, contradicting the NRA's public commitment to the issue.
"Today, the NRA website says the School Shield program makes the NRA 'America’s Leading Charitable Organization Helping to Protect Our Children,'" reported Judd Legum. "According to the website, 'NRA School Shield® is committed to generating the funding necessary to sustain a consistent and accessible source of financial support made available to schools across America.'"
"NRA financial documents leaked to The Reload, a conservative publication that focuses on firearms issues, tell a very different story," said the report. "The documents reveal that in the first eight months of 2021, the NRA — which had total revenues of $282 million last year — spent just $13,900 on School Shield. The NRA estimated that less than $20,000 would be spent on the program for all of 2021. In other words, the NRA spent about 0.007% of its 2021 revenue on school safety issues."
To put that number into perspective, the report noted, NRA top executive Wayne LaPierre spent almost $300,000 on designer suits from Zegna in Beverly Hills between 2004 and 2017, including $39,000 on a single visit.
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Ackerman McQueen, the advertising agency that formerly helped produce the controversial NRATV streaming service, has alleged in a lawsuit that School Shield was a "shell program" to encourage donations to the NRA. Meanwhile, the little work done by School Shield has been to promote armed resource officers in schools, a tactic that data have shown does nothing to prevent mass shootings or make kids safer, but does increase arrest rates of school students over minor infractions and worsen criminal justice disparities among students of color and the disabled.
All of this comes amid years of allegations that NRA executives have misused nonprofit money, including potentially illegal campaign finance contributions through a network of shell companies and executives spending tens of millions on themselves and contracts that benefit their friends.
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