According to a report at The Daily Beast, longtime top NRA lawyer Steve Hart has been suspended by the board of directors as the guns rights organization undergoes more turmoil during their annual convention.
The news of Hart's suspension follows NRA president Oliver North announcing he is stepping aside and not running for re-election after losing an internal battle with executive director Wayne LaPierre over accusation of misspent money.
The Beast reports, "Hart represented the board for years, and his suspension came before North announced that he is stepping away from his leadership role at the organization after only six months on the job."
"The lawyer’s ouster represents the departure of another senior, long-time NRA insider with detailed knowledge of the organization’s troubles. And it comes as internal turmoil and sniping rocks the gun-rights group," the report continues.
Additionally, the NRA board has accused North of double-dipping when it comes to salary, while LaPierre has been accused by North of misappropriating funds for his personal use -- which La Pierre has denied.
NRA President Oliver North said on Saturday he will not serve a second term and is stepping down after a bitter power struggle with executive director Wayne LaPierre.
According to USA Today, "North's surprise move came after LaPierre charged that North, a controversial figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, was trying to drive him out of the organization. North, 75, was finishing out his first year as president this week. NRA presidents normally serve two consecutive terms in the unpaid position."
According to a report at the Wall Street Journal, longtime NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre has sent a letter to the organization's board of directors charging that he is the victim of an attempted coup by the current president Oliver North.
According to the report, "LaPierre has told the group’s board he is being extorted and pressured to resign by the organization’s president, Oliver North, over allegations of financial improprieties, in an extraordinary battle roiling one of the nation’s most powerful nonprofit political groups."
The report notes that LaPierre instructed the board that he will not step down from his position at the NRA after being the face of the organization for years.
The WSJ reports, "Mr. North previously had sent a longer letter to the board’s executive committee detailing new allegations of financial improprieties involving more than $200,000 of wardrobe purchases by Mr. LaPierre that were charged to a vendor, according to the people. One of those people described Mr. LaPierre’s letter as an 'angry reaction' to Mr. North’s longer letter," adding, "The behind-the-scenes brawl is taking place amid the gun-rights group’s big annual meeting, at which President Trump spoke Friday."
In an appearance before the NRA's national convention, President Donald Trump quickly shifted from homilies about God and country to ripping into the employees of the Justice Department and the FBI, claiming they tried to stage a "coup" but that he defeated them without a gun.
Without referring to the Mueller report or government officials by name, the president turned his gun speech into something more like his rallies before adoring fans.
"Every day of my administration, we are taking power out of Washington, D.C., and returning it to the American people where it belongs," Trump said to applause. "You see it now, better than ever. With all of the resignations of bad apples. They are bad apples. They tried for a coup, didn't work out so well."
"And I didn't need a gun for that one, did I?" the president smirked before launching into a diatribe against the government.
"All of this was taking place at the highest levels in Washington, D.C." he insisted. "You've been watching, you've been seeing. You've been looking at things that you wouldn't have believed possible in our country. Corruption at the highest level. A disgrace. Spying, surveillance. Trying for an overthrow. And we caught them --we caught them."
"Who would have thought in our country?" he added to more applause.
The executive director of Texas Gun Rights said Bonnen should apologize for how he characterized McNutt's lobbying efforts for "constitutional carry" legislation that has since been declared dead in the lower chamber.
Weeks after getting in a confrontation with Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen at a closed-door Republican dinner, gun rights activist Chris McNutt asked for an apology for what he said amounted to having his name “dragged through the mud.”
“They’ve painted this narrative of this outraged gun activist,” McNutt told The Texas Tribune after a press conference he had Tuesday afternoon inside the JW Marriott hotel in downtown Austin. “It just makes me looks like a complete nut job.”
During Tuesday’s news conference, McNutt accused Bonnen, R-Angleton, of lying when he told Lubbock radio host Chad Hasty that the gun rights activist “flashed his gun” when he visited lawmakers’ local district offices. McNutt said he was unarmed during such visits.
Rather than comment on claims McNutt made this afternoon, a spokeswoman for Bonnen said that “it appears someone has forgotten the law of holes.”
“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging,” Bonnen spokeswoman Cait Meisenheimer said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.
Bonnen previously accused the gun rights activist of using intimidation tactics to get a bill McNutt supports through the legislature. McNutt, the executive director of Texas Gun Rights, blames Bonnen for inaction on “constitutional carry” legislation that would allow Texans to carry guns without a permit.
But the author of a constitutional carry bill said he stopped pushing for the legislation in the Capitol after McNutt showed up in lawmakers' neighborhoods — including Bonnen’s — to lobby for the legislation. Before he could go to the House speaker’s residence, however, McNutt approached Texas Department of Public Safety officers who, Meisenheimer said, had insisted on monitoring Bonnen’s home after learning that McNutt visited the residences of two lawmakers the day before.
Weeks after appearing in Bonnen's neighborhood while the speaker was in Austin, McNutt was seated close to the House leader at a fundraising dinner. Bonnen approached McNutt, chided him for his previous actions and eventually left the dinner, skipping out on a speech the speaker was scheduled to give.
During Tuesday’s press conference, however, McNutt refuted claims that he was ever on the speaker’s property. He said he canvassed “multiple other neighborhoods” in two other legislators' districts to “turn up the pressure on the speaker of the House.”
“When I was in the speaker’s neighborhood canvassing, I saw DPS troopers posted outside of his house, so I actually approached them,” he said. “I wasn’t intercepted, detained, arrested or anything. I told them what I was doing and they offered to place the fliers that I had on the speaker’s door for me.”
Joining McNutt on Tuesday was Jesse Binnall, a Virginia attorney who represents Texas Gun Rights. Without offering specifics, Binnall said his office was investigating whether “Bonnen’s intimidation tactics involved the misappropriation of state resources.”
McNutt presented recently released body cam footage from the DPS that he obtained from the agency through an open records request. According to the department’s account of the events, which was sent to The Texas Tribune, McNutt identified himself to officers outside Bonnen’s residence while wearing a “blue Texas Gun Rights shirt and blue jeans.”
“I stated I would be more than happy to drop off the flyer at the residence and he handed me the flyer, and gave me one as well as a business card,” said DPS trooper James Johnson. “McNutt stated he was from the Dallas area and flew down here, rented a car and was going to visit Representative Bonnen and his people.
“McNutt did not make any threatening statements towards Representative Bonnen's people or myself. I did not observe McNutt wearing any type of firearm at that time. After a brief conversation McNutt drove out of the neighborhood without incident.”
McNutt and Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, didn’t place any blame Tuesday for the constitutional bill’s failure on its author, state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford.
“The speaker intended to kill this bill the moment he appointed an anti-gun Democratic to chair the committee he assigned the bill to,” McNutt said, referencing state Rep. Poncho Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.
Nevárez disputed that assertion in a text message to the Tribune later Tuesday.
“He’s full of shit. And he’s wrong on this,” Nevárez said.
A report by a collaboration of The Trace and The New Yorker reveals the intricate way in which hundreds of millions of dollars have allegedly been siphoned off to top executives and vendors at the National Rifle Association (NRA).
The story was published on Wednesday and written by reporter Mike Spies, who viewed internal documents and tax filings and found that public relations firm Ackerman McQueen, which helps manage the NRA's image, was paid $40 million in 2017. Ackerman McQueen has worked with the group since the 1970s.
"The NRA and Ackerman McQueen have become so intertwined that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins," Spies wrote. He continued:
Top officials and staff move freely between the two organizations; Oliver North, the former Iran-Contra operative, who now serves as the NRA’s president, is paid roughly $1 million a year through Ackerman, according to two NRA sources. But this relationship, which in many ways has built the contemporary NRA, seems also to be largely responsible for the NRA’s dire financial state. According to interviews and to documents that I obtained — federal tax forms, charity records, contracts, corporate filings, and internal communications — a small group of NRA executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, through gratuitous payments, sweetheart deals, and opaque financial arrangements. Memos created by a senior NRA employee describe a workplace distinguished by secrecy, self-dealing, and greed, whose leaders have encouraged disastrous business ventures and questionable partnerships, and have marginalized those who object. “Management has subordinated its judgment to the vendors,” the documents allege. “Trust in the top has eroded.'
Reportedly, some of the NRA's payments that may constitute a conflict of interest pass through financial channels that intentionally obscure the recipients.
Law experts say this alone could threaten the NRA’s tax-exempt nonprofit status.
On Thursday, gun control activist Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action said that Everytown, the parent organization of Moms Demand Action, had filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service.
— (@)
"Based on this new article, @Everytown - the parent org of @MomsDemand - just filed a complaint about the @NRA’s tax-exempt status with the IRS, and is calling for federal and state investigations into the NRA’s operation as a charity," Watts said in a tweet.
Paul Winters has been coming to the Knob Creek Gun Shoot since 1992 to blast away at targets with machine gun rounds.
"This is Disneyland with guns," Winters said of the two-day event held twice a year in the hills of Kentucky near the hamlet of West Point.
"This is a place to come compete and have fun with your buddies," he said.
The Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show was started in 1965 by Biff Sumner and a few friends who were having a cookout and firing off weapons for fun.
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS Machine guns are for rent at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
It has evolved into the biggest private machine gun shoot in the world, attracting thousands of automatic weapons enthusiasts from around the United States and abroad.
General admission is $15 a day for adults and $5 for children under 12.
Hearing and eye protection is strongly recommended.
The rapid fire thumping of automatic gunfire is never far away as machine guns riddle abandoned cars, old appliances and other targets with bullet holes at the Knob Creek Gun Range.
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS An explosion goes off as a man fires a machine gun on the main firing line at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
Machine gun owners can reserve spots on the main firing line, but there is a waiting list of up to 10 years.
Visitors who don't own a weapon can rent a machine gun -- cash only -- if they sign a waiver and are over 18 years old.
"You can shoot anything that goes bang if you got enough money for rental," said Winters.
There are shooting competitions featuring sub-machine guns, shotguns and pistols.
- 'Night shoot' -
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS A father and his two sons speak with a vendor at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show
At the Military Gun Show that accompanies the shoot, vendors sell everything from guns to ammunition. An extensive amount of German World War II memorabilia is also on offer.
Each day ends with a "night shoot" with thousands of tracers bouncing off their targets into the night sky and setting off fireworks attached to barrels of fuel.
Kenny Sumner is the current owner and manager of the Knob Creek Gun Range.
"It is in the United States because we have that luxury of being able to own guns, especially machine guns," Sumner said.
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS A boy walks through the main firing line during a break in the shooting at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
"There is a little paperwork that you have to go through -- background checks on the full auto stuff," he added.
"But Title 1 guns, you just fill out your paperwork, they do a background check, if you pass the background check you can have a gun."
Title 1 weapons are ordinary firearms such as rifles, pistols and shotguns.
Winters said gun enthusiasts from other countries come to Knob Creek "just to play."
"Because they don't have those abilities," he said. "They don't have those rights."
The next machine gun shoot takes place in October.
Paul Winters has been coming to the Knob Creek Gun Shoot since 1992 to blast away at targets with machine gun rounds.
"This is Disneyland with guns," Winters said of the two-day event held twice a year in the hills of Kentucky near the hamlet of West Point.
"This is a place to come compete and have fun with your buddies," he said.
The Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show was started in 1965 by Biff Sumner and a few friends who were having a cookout and firing off weapons for fun.
It has evolved into the biggest private machine gun shoot in the world, attracting thousands of automatic weapons enthusiasts from around the United States and abroad.
General admission is $15 a day for adults and $5 for children under 12.
Hearing and eye protection is strongly recommended.
The rapid fire thumping of automatic gunfire is never far away as machine guns riddle abandoned cars, old appliances and other targets with bullet holes at the Knob Creek Gun Range.
Machine gun owners can reserve spots on the main firing line, but there is a waiting list of up to 10 years.
Visitors who don't own a weapon can rent a machine gun -- cash only -- if they sign a waiver and are over 18 years old.
"You can shoot anything that goes bang if you got enough money for rental," said Winters.
There are shooting competitions featuring sub-machine guns, shotguns and pistols.
'Night shoot'
At the Military Gun Show that accompanies the shoot, vendors sell everything from guns to ammunition. An extensive amount of German World War II memorabilia is also on offer.
Each day ends with a "night shoot" with thousands of tracers bouncing off their targets into the night sky and setting off fireworks attached to barrels of fuel.
Kenny Sumner is the current owner and manager of the Knob Creek Gun Range.
"It is in the United States because we have that luxury of being able to own guns, especially machine guns," Sumner said.
"There is a little paperwork that you have to go through -- background checks on the full auto stuff," he added.
"But Title 1 guns, you just fill out your paperwork, they do a background check, if you pass the background check you can have a gun."
Title 1 weapons are ordinary firearms such as rifles, pistols and shotguns.
Winters said gun enthusiasts from other countries come to Knob Creek "just to play."
"Because they don't have those abilities," he said. "They don't have those rights."
The next machine gun shoot takes place in October.
Thirty-three Republicans and all but one Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives agreed to pass additional restrictions on gun ownership as part of a renewed Violence Against Women Act earlier this month. This move came on the heels of the February passage of two gun control bills: the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act, all of which were opposed by the NRA.
As the first gun control legislation to pass either the House or Senate since the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, the recent bills mark a historic shift in American politics.
We have studied contemporary American gun culture for the past four years, tracing the foundation of the emerging gun control movement. Our research offers insight into the ways that gun violence prevention groups have promoted cultural shifts around guns, and why so many legislators are now willing to broach this contentious issue.
For the past 25 years, gun control has been the untouchable “third rail” of American politics. Even in the face of multiple mass shootings – Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando and Las Vegas, to name a few – very few politicians have declared themselves in favor of gun control. On the other hand, many successful politicians have positioned themselves as “pro-gun.”
By avoiding associating themselves with gun control, politicians have skirted a divisive issue. But they have also perpetuated the notion that gun regulations are not feasible or palatable to American citizens.
Background check bills failed in the 2013 Democrat-led Senate. They failed again in the 2016 Republican-led Senate. That seems surprising given that national polls report that, for the last six years, nine in 10 Americans have supported background check requirements on gun purchases. The failure of these bills provoked a sense of resignation from many Americans weary of the violence, who feared that if the Sandy Hook shooting hadn’t prompted legislative action, nothing would.
As consumer culture scholars, we find two things particularly notable about the passage of the House bills. First, the gun control movement’s seeds, planted as far back as 1974, have now begun to sprout. Second, passage of the bills is remarkable evidence of this social movement, irrespective of any Senate action or inaction.
The emerging movement
March 24, 2018 ‘March for Our Lives’ rally in Washington in support of gun control.
American gun violence has provoked routine public condemnation and support for stronger gun laws. Yet, gun policy experts like Duke University political scientist Kristin Goss have described gun control as America’s “missing movement.” As of 2006, groups of concerned citizens had not gathered the financial resources, strategic framing and incremental policy changes needed to galvanize into a full-fledged movement.
Research on government anti-smoking campaigns has shown that changing the culture requires influencing change at multiple levels, including legislation, business and organization policies and individual behavior.
In recent years, groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and Sandy Hook Promise have worked mostly independently, but in ways that reinforced each other, on issues related to gun violence prevention. For instance, some groups encouraged voters and state legislators to institute universal background checks and businesses to adopt preventive policies, such as Dick’s Sporting Goods’ decision to stop selling “assault-style” rifles, while others focused on convincing gun owners to store their guns in a locked safe. The groups often used statistics and research data in their efforts.
These gun violence prevention groups have sought incremental policy changes, while also explicitly supporting Americans’ constitutional rights. This measured, middle-ground approach appears to have laid the necessary scaffolding for the full-fledged movement sparked by the Parkland shooting in February of 2018.
What changed after Parkland
Our research indicates that a critical change happened after Parkland. Parkland survivors galvanized both citizens previously involved in gun violence prevention and a broader range of Americans not with statistics and data, but by employing two powerful and complementary narratives.
The first involves hero-kids taking on the infamous gun lobby – a David-and-Goliath story easy to rally behind. The second challenged parents, and young adults who grew up in an age of lockdown drills, to be heroes themselves by voting pro-gun candidates out of office.
The second narrative involves parental duty to protect children. This has been successful for many social movements, and the pro-gun movement is no exception.
A movement’s success can manifest in different forms. Legislation is one such form. Changes in public opinion, individual behaviors or organizational policies, or, more broadly, shifts in the way we talk about social issues are others. This latter form of change is significant. When a contentious issue shifts from a taboo, fringe or radical topic into the mainstream, public attention moves from a question of “whether” to a question of “how” to address the issue.
The activism in the wake of Parkland appears to have made a difference. Many candidates for the federal elections in 2018 made “common sense gun control” part of their platform. Notably, many of these candidates, like U.S. Reps. Jason Crow and Jennifer Wexton, were elected.
These election results suggest the movement’s efforts in laying the groundwork for cultural change and shifting the social discourse has enabled many Americans to disentangle “gun control” from “anti gun,” and to simultaneously support both the right to bear arms and reasonable restrictions on that right. The movement’s success in doing so has made supporting gun control possible for today’s politicians.
Sometimes NRA lobbying is not the only reason Republicans have to fear defying gun rights orthodoxy.
According to the Post and Courier, South Carolina state Rep. Peter McCoy, a Republican who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, is now under police protection after receiving a death threat on Facebook. The threat, replying to a post of Freedom Action Network of South Carolina calling McCoy the "#1 enemy of restoring our gun rights," said "Totally sucks that one guy has that much control. Maybe we should shoot him?"
McCoy's offense? He declined to advance a bill in the Judiciary Committee to implement "permitless carry," which would completely eliminate the need to obtain certification to carry a handgun in the state.
Freedom Action Network's president condemned the threat, saying "Under no circumstance do we advocate even the hint of a threat of violence," but it wasn't an isolated incident. Other comments on that same post include, "McCoy needs a 'come to Jesus talking to' and a serious one," "Get the bill passed or look at your future," and "He needs a behind the barn talking to!"
Permitless carry bills are being advanced in several GOP-controlled states, and were recently signed into law in Kentucky and South Dakota. But the death threats against McCoy seem to have blunted its momentum in South Carolina even further — the state Senate has now canceled hearings on a similar bill.
This isn't the first time pro-gun activists have metaphorically shot themselves in the foot by escalating their tactics. A similar permitless carry bill in Texas was recently scrapped after the leader an extreme gun rights group went door to door intimidating people in state House Speaker Dennis Bonnen's neighborhood.
After news broke that an activist pushing a “constitutional carry” gun proposal tried to visit the homes of several Texas House leaders, state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, declared his bill on the matter dead and wrote in a statement Friday he’s “officially canceling” his request for a committee hearing.
House Bill 357 would give Texans the right to openly carry a firearm without a permit. While the proposal has failed to gain traction at the Legislature in prior sessions, it made headlines after The Facts reported that a gun rights activist, angry at the lack of movement on the bill, visited the homes of House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and other House leaders seemingly hoping to convince them to advance the gun legislation.
The activist, Chris McNutt, executive director of the nonprofit group Texas Gun Rights, was intercepted by officers with the Department of Public Safety when he attempted to visit Bonnen’s home.
Other gun rights activists on Facebook urged Bonnen to advance Stickland’s bill, with some posting threatening messages such as “Drag ’Im Out ... To The Nearest Tree.”
According to the Houston Chronicle, Bonnen called the activist's move “gutless.” And Democratic state Rep. Poncho Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass, who chairs the House committee where Stickland’s legislation was referred, told The Texas Tribune this morning that he initially planned to give the bill a hearing but, “the behavior of certain groups and/or individuals who are unreasonable on their expectations and even more unreasonable in their behavior caused me to reconsider.
“I have no hearing currently planned as a result,” Nevárez said.
In a Facebook video, Stickland said he was “saddened by the act of a few individuals that have stolen the conversation about legislation that I deeply care about. … There is a right way and a wrong way to influence the legislative process. … It is never okay to target their homes or personal businesses when you know they are not in town.”
Stickland admitted defeat in subsequent statement. He said that while “constitutional carry” was of “great importance” to him, it “will not become law this session.”
“I refuse to act like it is still a possibility and continue to provide false hope to my constituents,” Stickland said. “I cannot participate in political theatre and ask that Texans come to Austin to spend their time and money for a piece of legislation that has no path to success.”
NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield posited on Thursday that Democrats may be trying to push Joe Biden out of the presidential race as part of a plot to curb gun ownership in the U.S.
In his Wednesday NRA TV program, Stinchfield argued that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was behind the four women who have said that Biden touched them inappropriately.
"Just weeks before his expected candidacy is announced, they come out in full force to destroy him," Stinchfield said. "No matter what your feelings are about creepy Joe, the timing of all this is suspect. And things are never what they seem in politics."
According to the NRA presenter, forcing Biden out of the race would allow New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg to run on his anti-gun platform.
"The newfound exposing of Biden may have been orchestrated by the Bernie Sanders crew," Stinchfield offered. "Bernie will not benefit as much as Michael Bloomberg will. With Biden out, Bloomberg would come back in. For gun owners, that would be a disaster."
"The most anti-gun politician in America," the NRA host continued. "A man willing to spend millions to destroy the Second Amendment, steal your rights. In an ultimate power grab, he could ultimately become president and his destructive ways would not just stop with the Second Amendment."
Stinchfield warned that a "Bloomberg presidency will first take away your guns."
"His anti-freedom government would then go on a seek-and-destroy mission of anyone or anything associated with guns and conservatism," Stinchfield remarked. "The NRA would be his first target. That means you."
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS 
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS 
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS 
AFP / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS 
