Is The NRA In Trouble? I Don’t Think So.
Far be it from me to question the motives or behavior
of advocacy groups trying to reduce gun violence, because I happen to agree
with the idea that there is simply no rational reason to justify or even
attempt to explain 125,000 deaths and injuries from guns every year. I also
know that if you want to have any voice in any public discourse at all, it
doesn’t come cheap. So I’m not overly concerned when I get the multiple, daily
emails from Everytown, Brady, et. al., asking me for dough. I receive just as many,
if not more requests from the other side.
In the midst of all the sturm und drang over the recent so-called ‘revelations’ about
financial mismanagement at Fairfax, however, I think
something needs to be kept in mind. For all the talk about how Wayne-o has been
given a golden parachute, how money and wine flow freely at certain NRA executive events, how cash is
borrowed from outside sources to keep the organization afloat, blah, blah, blah
and blah, what seems to be missing from the outrage and umbrage of Gun-control
Nation is an acknowledgement that the way in which the NRA maintains its basic premise – representing the interests of
gun-owners – hasn’t changed at all.
NRA is and
has always been a charitable organization registered in New York State. I
happen to have managed a not-for-profit organization that was also registered
in New York State, so I have a pretty good idea about how New York regulates
charities and what this regulation means and doesn’t mean for the NRA. And what it basically means,
because New York happens to be a state which does a greater degree of
non-profit regulating than most states, is that the tax-exempt donations you
receive have to be spent on the charitable purposes for which the organization
is chartered to provide. And I don’t see one single activity that the NRA is currently providing that doesn’t fall within the
definition of what it is supposed to do, namely, promote gun safety and gun
training, and protect gun-owning rights.
Now the fact that these activities often result in
messaging that is offensive and misleading to some of us, doesn’t mean anything
at all. And the fact that the defense of gun ‘rights’ puts the NRA in opposition to even the flimsiest,
most benign gun regulations, is also in no way against non-profit law. And even
the fact that management is pissing away money by giving some vendors all kinds
of sweetheart deals is also not outside of the relevant regulations, as long as
those vendors are providing services that further the organization’s goals.
Let’s be honest here for a minute folks, okay? When phony
videos purporting that Planned Parenthood was selling
aborted fetal tissue began circulating in 2015, the pro-choice movement got up
in arms and rightfully so. I’m not saying that any of the current criticisms of
the NRA are inventions or aren’t
based on certain facts. What I am saying is that, taken together, none of the
financial flimflamming that has been detailed by Mike Spies to date necessarily constitutes
anything more than a combination of sloppy financial management and reading the
tea-leaves of current public opinion in the wrong way.
I don’t think the NRA
ever imagined that their support of Sleazy Don would generate the headwinds
that have been blowing ever more fiercely from the #Resist network which, at
this point, appear to have Schmuck-o going back to being a New York landlord in
2021. I also don’t think the boys in Fairfax understand the degree to which
Gun-control Nation has both expanded and solidified its activist base. Frankly,
some of the political diatribes
wafting out from NRA-TV are stupid beyond belief.
None of which, however, comes even remotely close to helping consign America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ to the ash-heap of history or running Wayne-o into jail. My friends in Gun-control Nation shouldn’t need to sensationalize something out of nothing in order to justify their existence or raise funds.
