How Deep Is The Hole That The NRA Has Dug?
This week’s New
Yorker magazine includes a major article
by one of my favorite gun journalists, Mike Spies, about the financial mess at
America’s ‘first civil rights organization,’ otherwise known as the NRA. Since
I happen to be a Patriot Life Member Benefactor of the NRA (I actually have a plaque signed by Ollie North) and have been
a member since 1955, obviously I have more than a passing interest in the
goings on at the home office in Fairfax, and according to Mike, the goings on
ain’t very good.
According to Mike, in a detailed and lengthy report,
the NRA’s leadership has not only been hiding the extent to which serious
amounts of organizational money have been flowing into the coffers of various
PR companies, but it appears that these companies may be nothing more than
business entities founded and run by Board and staff members of the NRA itself. Worse, the payments to these
outfits have been so large that the NRA is
facing a financial squeeze that could ultimately jeopardize the existence of the
gun-rights organization itself.
This is hardly the first time that mainstream media has
carried articles on financial undoings within the NRA. Spies quotes Brian
Mittendorf, a Professor at Ohio State, who says that the organization has been
spending money it really doesn’t have for seven of the past eleven years. In
fact, Mittendorf published
these details last year, and other media venues have carried
the same news. What these stories all miss, however, is the fact that the NRA’s
current financial problems aren’t basically caused by having given too much
money to Schmuck-o in 2016 or investing heavily in video programming with costs
running far ahead of returns. The serious financial issues facing the boys in
Fairfax has much more to do with a fundamental shift in the behavior of gun
owners and the inability of the NRA to adjust to this new view.
In 1978, Florida passed its concealed-carry (CCW) law, which basically gave every
resident of the Gunshine state who could pass a background check the right to
walk around with a gun. Over the past 40 years, what is called ‘shall-issue’ CCW has become law in 43 of the 50
states. But the licensing difference between just buying a gun as opposed to
carrying one around, is that in the latter case, most ‘shall-issue’ states
require some kind of training before the CCW
is approved. And here is where the
rubber has now met the road.
Because in the olden days, the NRA held a monopoly on gun-training,
and the NRA certified trainers, of
whom there used to be more than 100,000 around the country, were the
organization’s shock troops when it came to recruiting new members, as well as
responding in force whenever a political situation, such as a debate over a gun
law, required that gun owners show up and make some noise.
Given the appearance of the internet, the emphasis on
face-to-face gun training, indeed face-to-face training for any skill or work
requirement has gone down the tubes. Instead, everyone now goes to a website,
pays a fee, watches a video and then takes an online test. In that respect, the
NRA is hardly the only training organization
which fell behind the curve. Take a look at the online training offerings
of Butler Community College in Kansas. The school has six campuses throughout
the state, but you don’t have to ever show up at any physical location in order
to qualify for hundreds of job-related certifications. Now take a look at the NRA‘s online training website.
It’s a joke.
The article by Mike Spies gives lots of details about how the NRA invested enormous financial resources in the internet, but what it fails to point out is that by promoting personalities (Dana Loesch, Colion Noir) instead of training, they went the wrong way. Judging from the emails I receive every day, I’m still not sure that the boys in Fairfax recognize their mistake.
