On my way back home this morning, I got a call from the NRA, wanting me to renew my membership. The lady was very pleasant, with a deep Southern drawl, but was obviously reading from the standard NRA fund-raising spiel about upcoming legislation brought by Democrats, Chuck Schumer wants to take your guns away, etc. etc. Then she switched to the “Now I need you to renew your NRA commitment, so let’s get that taken care of” closer.
My response was not what she expected, nor I think what she wanted.
“Frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed in how the NRA is spending our membership dollars — for starters, I don’t want my money being spent just so Wayne LaPierre can look good on TV, and I’m pretty sure Col. Oliver North could point to a few similar misuses of the NRA’s cash. So I’m not going to renew my NRA membership today, or, most likely, in the near future either. Instead, I am going to send the equivalent amount to the Second Amendment Foundation who, it appears, have been quite successful in arguing our cause before the state courts and the Supreme Court as well. Feel free to pass these sentiments on to the senior management of the NRA. Good day to you.”
…and I hung up.
Or have I missed something here? (I should point out that I have a three-year membership of the TSRA, which I have every intention of renewing.)
Feel free to enlighten me in Comments.
Amen! If they spent as much defending our rights as they spend on fundraising and on Wayne’s suits and lifestyle, we would be a lot better off.
The anti-gun people need a bugbear in order to organize their people to fight against. The NRA provides this service and charges its members to do so. Once you realize that first and foremost, the NRA is a fund-raising organization, it all makes sense.
But never mind; the NRA lost me forever when they endorsed Dirty Harry Reid over a viable Republican candidate because they were scared of the phrase “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer”. Chuckie can’t be Majority Leader if the Dems are not in the majority, now can he?
There are plenty of other organizations out there fighting for our Second Amendment rights (GOA, SAF, JPFO, etc.) that NRA can just go whistle.
I became a Life member in the 80’s and feel no need to cancel my membership. If nothing else it’s existence gives the GFWs a large target to spend money going after, while ignoring the stiletto from below (i.e. SAF et. al.).
I’m not currently in a situation to give money to anyone outside of my family (can’t even buy ammo at the moment), but if I were, I agree there are more productive places to spend it until they get their internal crap in order. For instance, by state 2A organization has been effective in blocking stupidity while also gradually improving our CCW and self defense laws.
The gun club/range I belong to is very nice, but is basically run by Charles Cotton who is apparently “somebody” in the NRA. So then the club has a requirement that one must be an active NRA member to also be a club member. If it wasn’t such a nice range, I’d say piss off. But I grit my teeth, get the cheapest membership option available, and throw away the mountains of fundraising mail they send my way. I occasionally enter the free raffles without ever donating any money. Haven’t won anything yet.
The NRA misses one aspect of ethical behavior. It’s not enough to just be legally not criminal, you must avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Get rid of LaPierre, 75% of the sitting board, and 75% of the top management within the next year. They’re all tied to the current scandal, real or not, and the taint will hurt the organization for years. If they are truly concerned about our gun rights, then their primary mission right now should be picking clean and honest successors. Nothing more.
> So then the club has a requirement that one must be an active NRA member to also be a club member.
Most clubs have this requirement and don’t have someone associated with the NRA on their board. When I was a member of the Santa Clara Valley Rifle Club in San Jose (RIP San Jose Municipal Firing Range) we were required to be a member, and now that I’m a member of in a free state, I am also required to be a member.
I *believe* that this is for insurance purposes–the range gets insurance through the NRA and one of the stipulations is NRA membership for members.
Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
We all know that any organization is not perfect, and the NRA certainly isnt. It’s worth my membership just for the fear they instill in the gun grabber crowd.
Support them all, get involved in them all.
Historically, I’d agree with you, but there’s been shenanagans at a high level there.
Most of the leadership should be driven out…of town with cattle whips.
I haven’t given the NRA anything for a long time but I still tell my lefty friends I do every time they get on a gun control kick.
BTW, I still have my Nation of Riflemen tee-shirt and I wear it often.
Gotta keep my political donation funds a little closer to home. I’ll donate to the RMGO (Rocky Mountain Gun Owners) until Democrats in this state figure out that loopy gun control laws proposed by room temperature IQs in New York and California have no place in Colorado and is only a recipe for recall and election loss. Then again with so-called conservatives like Tony Spurlock, what do we need liberals for?
RMGO sucks. Dudley managed to upset grassroots efforts to turn the Colorado anti-gun agenda some years ago. RMGO and NAGR are all about Dudley, not about gun rights. Piss on him.
I met him shortly after I moved to Colorado, and this was the scent I got off him.
But, but, but…hmmmm, actually I can’t really enlighten you on this. The only way the NRA is going to change is if it gets hit hard in the pocketbook, and I believe you took the correct course. If I wasn’t already a Life Member I would not renew either.
WLP has been at the helm for far too long, courtesy of his toadies on the way-too-large board, and he needs to step down for the good of the organization and, most importantly, for the defense of the second amendment. The longer he stays there the more he shows his selfish disregard for defending that amendment.
I have thought that Wayne LaPierre was a prince and not a leader for many years now.
For an organization which constantly raises staggering sums of money, it’s always broke.
He’s an overpaid cheerleader.
I love and respect Oliver North and Richard Childress (who resigned yesterday from the Board) and have no use for WLP.
I concur with Don Curton about engaging in some ethnic cleansing at the highest levels of NRA governance and operations if the NRA is ever going to recover its long-held credibility.
It’s in a complete free-fall right now.
I am a Range Officer for local competitions at our gun range so I keep current with the NRA on that and minimal annual membership. When I receive and email from the NRA with Wayne asking for money I send back a reply that no how, no way until they kick that scum, sucking leech out on his ass. Then I go on to tell them that having Bill Brewer III, the lawyer with the worst ethics, sanctioned many times, who has a background as a supporter of Democrats for a number of years, weaseling his way in to charge millions and millions in legal fees while he strokes and props Wayne up is not going to end well. Brewer III is not a friend of gun owners, actually he is only a friend of himself and I information comes from two of my best friend who are Dallas attorneys, one now retired and the other still practicing and they have had first hand experience with Brewer III and know him well.
So, while I give minimal support to the NRA for my own benefit, I am predicting that Wayne will continue to hang on for a bit longer while Brewer III raids the till until the money is gone and the NRA is upside down, then Brewer III will throw Wayne under the bus and try to have all of the NRA property liquidated to pay his overcharged legal bills. I hope I am wrong but I suspect Brewer III will take credit with his fellow Democrats for tearing up the NRA. Even lawyers think Brewer III is an amoral, egotistical, money grabbing toad who has found the ultimate ambulance to chase down the road, the NRA.
And we can all guess what will happen to the NRA’s museum if Bill Brewer liquidates the NRA property.
For those that are still NRA members – I am running for the Board of Directors by petition.
I’m the one that stood up at the annual meeting and put my name on the resolution calling for Wayne and the audit, executive and finance committees to step down due to misfeasance.
I need 706 signatures of life and voting members (5 continuous years of membership) to bypass the Wayne led nominating committee and qualify for the ballot. I am running on the reform agenda of the Save the Second group.
Link to my platform and background http://taitnra.com
Link to my petition here https://tinyurl.com/TaitNRA
I would appreciate your support.
Dang. I don’t have 5 continuous years.
Spot-on, Kim!
Thankfully (as I wrote out the “big check” a couple decades back for both LIFE membership in the NRA, and it’s state-affiliated association, the CRPA) I don’t get too many of those calls anymore.
But, I would have given the caller the same message.
What’s that old saw about “politicians and babies need to be changed for the same reason, and frequently”?
They should have canned Wayne, and put Ollie in to conduct a mop-up.
Robert Conquest’s second and third laws:
2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
The NRA?
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:
Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
I have seen much bigger organizations disintegrate. The NRA will come out of this IF Wayne and company walk away now. He has to know that he faces criminal charges as multiple AGs scrutinize the books. They will flip an insider and then Wayne and his wife are doomed.
For all their talk of the talk of concealed carry, they’ve been utterly mute when those same “good guys with guns” are wrongfully cut down by police. They’ve become beholden to authority, whether it be elected leaders or the militarized Home Guard.
When I can afford to contribute to my Constitutional rights, I give it to California gun rights groups like CRPA and the Calguns Foundation. Those folks don’t have member-paid mansions, and they don’t send me cheap Chinese knickknacks either. They’re too busy fighting every clause and sub-clause of new antigun legislation.
Kim, you ought to send that money to the front lines!
https://crpa.org/
https://www.calgunsfoundation.org/
Life member here. I neither love nor hate WLP and don’t have a clue what actually happened. What I do know is that when an organization descends into chaos, the CEO has got to go, to restore confidence, if for no other reason.
I’m pretty much in the same boat as you. I have been involved with other lobbying efforts/groups etc. In most cases they only deal with their constituency when they HAVE to, as a necessary evil before we get back to the healthy confines of DC. “Des Moines, your job is to give us $, not insist on us doing anything”.
My shooting club, Hollywood Rifle & Pistol Club, Hollywood FL, requires that all members belong to the NRA. Further, in order to compete in my chosen shooting sports, (Smallbore Prone & Across the course High Power) NRA membership is needed.
That said, I certainly can see the need for significant ‘adjustments’ in the NRA’s management and financial ethics. Wayne LaPierre always in the past appeared to be a stalwart supporter of firearms rights. Today it appears that he is a stalwart supporter of his own rights and financial future. Time for him and the top echelon of the NRA to be replaced with their goals set toward firearms rights.
GOA and my local 2A group here in Alabama, BamaCarry. Right now I wouldn’t support the NRA even if I were paid to do so.
I’m a lifer. So I don’t get the calls.
That said I have never been a fan of WLP. He always seemed more interested in the DC cocktail party set than the 2nd Amendment. I DO think the NRA has helped engineer a more gun friendly congress under his watch.
There may still be some good people at NRA, but the leadership is rotten to the core and its starting to come out.
I hope my portion of the $ contributed went to the museum.
I’m a life member. And would dearly love to see WLP shown the door.
We need NRA leadership that is willing to go on the political offensive. No more conceding a dozen states to the hoplophobes. No more playing pure defense at the national level.
We also need NRA leadership willing to provide significant support to the shooting sports…instead of treating them as a way to shovel money into the general fund.
Kim,
Here in IL, land of Madigan and Fat-boi Governor Toilet Yanker . . . I give $$$ and participate in activities of ISRA – IL State Rifle Assoc. NRA does not get a dime from me. I also make myself a thorn in the side of my local pols . . . they know I’m out there, that I talk to people, and that I vote. Still, I’m fighting the North Shore progressive elites, so I know, at least very locally, I’m in a losing battle.
@Velocette . . . I grew up (mostly) in Hollywood. Home was very close to the intersection of Stirling Rd & 56th Ave., just a couple miles from your club. Small world.
I am debating right now whether to attend the Friends of the NRA dinner this September that I’ve been going to for 14+ years. I _think_ that a fair amount of the money raised stays local but I need to confirm it (the NRA definitely gets some for the prize packages).
I am satisfied from a _lot_ of reading that WLP is corrupt. I’m also infuriated by the NRA position on bumpstocks (Trump too); I don’t own one or want one but they were willing to let them be banished by regulatory fiat. Machine guns are defined by statute. There is no room for a subordinate regulatory agency to start expanding that willy-nilly. And there is almost nothing that Trump (and WLP/NRA) could have done to more empower the “deep state”, the “swamp” than by calling for and supporting that regulatory fiat.
I am a life member, a couple of levels up from that actually but I don’t recall the name. I’m not quitting the organization but they’re getting not one more cent from me (FNRA, sigh, I loved that event…) until the corruption is flushed out. Assuming the organization survives. Right now it seems like its primary purpose is protecting WLP and some others from prosecution and liability.
We just bumped up our donations to CCRKBA, 2FA, and a couple of state organizations; they’ve been screwed by the NRA backing out of supporting lawsuits against various municipalities because WLP is upset with the law firm. These orgs had nothing bad to say about NRA-ILA in the past. I’m also trying to find out if NRA support for the main lobbyist in Springfield has been cut.