The National Rifle Association (NRA) endured a withering attack recently from an unlikely source – the Firearms News – in an opinion piece bashing the organization as “running on empty” as it convenes its annual meeting this weekend in Indianapolis.
The magazine is chock full of ads selling firearms. But that didn’t prevent it from giving voice to Rocky Marshall, a Texas trucking executive and former NRA board director, who warned that the meeting “ironically corresponds to a financial tipping point when the NRA’s cash meter drops to empty.”
And Marshall didn’t stop there with his not-so-friendly fire:
“The annual meeting should be a highlight for all members as a celebration of the second amendment and of the NRA’s long history of supporting firearm programs,” the opinion piece stated. “However, the greatest spectacle will be when the NRA’s financials are reviewed by the Board of Directors (BOD) with the possible anecdote ‘Indy We Have A Problem!’”
“The NRA’s financials are more than just a problem; the actual numbers reflect how the ongoing corruption scandal has decimated the organization,” it continued. “In reviewing the current balance sheet through November 30, 2022, the pending disaster is easy to predict.”
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The NRA failed to respond to a request for comment from Raw Story about the Firearms News column. Marshall also couldn’t be reached for comment, and his scathing commentary, replete with data detailing the NRA’s financial condition that he said is extracted from the NRA’s balance-sheet metrics, could not be independently verified.
But the NRA’s financial challenges have been widely confirmed. And advocates in the gun-violence prevention (nee “gun control”) movement are delighting in the NRA’s plight, no longer considering it the existential threat they once did.
“The NRA leadership has been operating so far from its membership that it’s really one of the reasons that the gun-violence prevention has been so successful in the last decade,” Christian Heyne, vice president of policy and programs for Brady, a nonprofit gun violence prevention organization, told Raw Story. “Folks who are members of the NRA know how corrupt and extreme the leaders are and they’re beginning to pressure politicians for action. They’re sick and tired of the violence, too.”
Heyne added that the NRA has become overrated as a force in American politics, focusing its campaign spending on easy red-state races to run up its winning percentage, while losing an increasing number of key races around the nation.
Heyne also noted how Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin distanced himself from the NRA during his 2021 race despite the NRA’s headquarters location in that state.
“For a lot of years, the NRA has been a paper tiger,” Heyne said.
Indeed, the NRA’s federal lobbying expenditures, as well as the overall number of lobbyists it employs, have trended downward of late, according to federal lobbying data compiled by nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.
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The NRA’s super PAC spent more than $15 million to advocate for or against federal candidates running during the 2022 midterms, but it made many of its biggest bets on losers — U.S. Senate candidates Herschel Walker of Georgia, Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona and Adam Laxalt of Nevada.
Meanwhile, its direct political action committee contributions to federal political candidates, like its lobbying expenditures, is declining.
Bloomberg reported in November that, “the National Rifle Association’s revenue is continuing to slide as record legal bills consume a growing share of its budget.
“The gun-rights group generated $139.7 million in the first eight months of the year, an internal NRA document reviewed by Bloomberg shows,” the publication wrote. “During the same time period, the NRA’s office of the general counsel spent more than $40 million, the documents showed. The organization’s annual revenue is on track to be the lowest in more than a decade as legal costs for 2022 approach $60 million, set to exceed previous records.”
Peter Ambler, executive director and co-founder of Giffords, another anti-gun violence organization, said the NRA’s financial woes were not a surprise.
“I would not want to be the one holding the gavel at the start of the NRA meeting this year,” Ambler told Raw Story. “The organization is a shell of its former self and a lot of that has to do with its strained credibility with its base.
“There are the perks that the executives there have rewarded themselves with and the obsession with lobbying and influence over the interests of regular gun owners,” Ambler continued. “Consequently, [NRA leaders] have come to rely all the more on their far-right base which is a tiny sliver of the population but has some very extreme views. The NRA has left behind the millions upon millions of Americans who understand that with rights come responsibilities and that firearms ownership and the Second Amendment are not invitations to insurrection.”
Ambler doesn’t have a any further insight into the financial meltdown predicted in Firearms News for the NRA. But he didn’t doubt that the organization’s annual confab would be a colorful scene. It’s a prediction in part made true by the crowd’s booing of former Vice President Mike Pence and the appearance of former President Donald Trump, who on Friday called for arming schoolteachers and promised to be a “loyal friend” to the NRA if he’s once again elected commander-in-chief.
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“Walking through an NRA convention these days is an extraterrestrial experience,” Ambler said. “It is a theme park of every right-wing grievance and conspiracy theory that you could concoct, with racism and extremism on display everywhere. You’ve got companies marketing weapons like the AR-15. Whatever happened to responsibility?”
In the Firearms News, it’s hard to imagine a publication less in step with the philosophies of Brady and Giffords, yet the two sides found common ground – for different reasons – with their criticism of NRA leadership.
On April 4, Giffords updated its assessment of the NRA’s “disarray” that it has published since 2019. It now states that “the NRA seems to be teetering on the brink, hemorrhaging both money and support.”
At Firearms News, Marshall was more blunt:
“Insolvency is the last warning sign on the financial road which drives most organizations into bankruptcy.”
Citing calculations from the NRA balance sheet data he obtained, Marshall predicted the NRA could be expected to run out of cash right around the start of today’s meeting.
“Financial planning is never this precise; however, observing a financial wreck approaching and not attempting to avoid the disaster is unfathomable,” Marshall wrote. “The Board of Directors has been warned REPEATEDLY by former Directors, industry advocates, and industry reporters without taking the necessary action to avoid the coming calamity.
He added: “I spoke to a few of the current NRA BOD members who attended the January 2023 meeting, and once again the BOD was not informed of the current financial crisis. With the Indy-23 meeting looming, the NRA is running on fumes and will not finish this race!”
