'The NRA today is in a dismal state' as cash dries up and they plunge 'deep into the red'

According to its most recent tax returns, the National Rifle Association is in severe decline as revenue is collapsing, membership drives are coming up dry and the organization "tightens its belt" by cutting back on staffing.

As the Daily Beast is reporting, the gun rights organization has been buffeted by financial scandals and membership losses which has resulted in a precipitous drop in donations.

As the Beast's Roger Sollenberger wrote, "The NRA’s most recent tax return, filed in November of this year for 2022, reveals dramatic declines along almost every conceivable metric: revenue, assets, member dues, lobbying, and political spending—with conversely sharp increases in legal costs and deficits."

Adding that the NRA is clearly "in a dismal state," the report notes that despite taking in $211 million last year, the organization still ended "deep into the red, leading to a $22 million deficit."

According to the report, what is crippling the organization is a drop in dues collected, down to $83 million, which is the lowest since 2008 and a "nearly 59 percent drop from 2016, adjusted for inflation."

Add to that are the NRA's soaring legal fees that totaled $44 million last year — accounting for 20 percent of every dollar collected.

According to Robert Maguire, a nonprofit analyst at CREW, "The NRA is the definition of an embattled organization. 2016 wasn’t that long ago, and at that time the NRA was, if not the most powerful organization in D.C., certainly one of them.”

“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,” he added. “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.”

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