lapierre, wayne NRa
wow blank 3/18, primary 819 on pink beach suits same days as djt fold bkgd checks 2x
see NRA
no merri
grift/ klepto
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laid ground for 2nd civil war with direct mail grift, hype fear obama take your guns fast and furious etc asault rifles
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1 24
nra-president-wayne-lapierre-resigns-days-before-trial-begins
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6-8 all gop prz cand went 3? or sent video msgs
nikki noemi?? said diverse then brutal pan of aud by cnn
https://www.alternet.org/south-dakota-governor-nra-white/
https://www.alternet.org/oscar-winning-edit-nra-audience/
https://www.alternet.org/mike-pence-nra/
booed?
hard to beleive he is still prz
https://www.alternet.org/nra-ceo-threatening-political-careers/
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elephant hunt? why they need big magazine?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/nras-wayne-lapierre/
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/wayne-lapierre-2652801230/
elephant hunt video
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wsj
a link to doc
BUSINESS
Hollywood Producer Emerges as Key Figure in Alleged NRA Financial Abuses
David McKenzie did business with gun group and lent CEO Wayne LaPierre his 108-foot yacht; NRA cites business rationale
By Mark Maremont
Aug. 14, 2020
An Emmy-award winning Hollywood producer with longtime ties to the National Rifle Association has emerged as a major figure in the New York attorney general’s case alleging corruption and spending abuses at the nonprofit gun-rights group.
A lawsuit filed last week by the office of Attorney General Letitia James against the NRA alleges that the producer, David McKenzie, was the “principal stakeholder” in four large NRA vendors that together were paid $100 million by the NRA in recent years.
Mr. McKenzie also lent NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre his 108-foot yacht on several occasions, paid for Mr. LaPierre’s stays at a Bahamas resort, and Mr. McKenzie and his family received costly gifts from Mr. LaPierre at the NRA’s expense, the lawsuit says.
Mr. LaPierre traveled by private jet to Los Angeles to meet with Mr. McKenzie at least 20 times between 2013 and 2017, the complaint says.
Mr. McKenzie isn’t named in Ms. James’s complaint but is referred to as the “MMP Principal”—a reference to Membership Marketing Partners LLC, one of the NRA vendors with which he was allegedly involved. Mr. McKenzie’s identity is clear from other public documents and prior Wall Street Journal interviews with him.
Among other things, the complaint said Mr. LaPierre violated NRA policy by taking gifts from an NRA contractor—the use of the yacht—and failed to disclose the gifts on annual NRA ethics forms.
Mr. McKenzie said he hadn’t read the complaint and couldn’t discuss any litigation. In prior interviews with the Journal, he defended his dealings with the NRA as appropriate.
Ms. James’s suit seeks to dissolve the NRA, alleging that years of expense abuses, self-dealing and lax governance meant the NRA should no longer continue as a nonprofit entity.
The NRA struck back with a federal lawsuit claiming that Ms. James, a Democrat, was trying to destroy the NRA for political reasons. “We’re ready for the fight. Bring it on,” Mr. LaPierre said in a statement last week, adding that the NRA was “committed to good governance.”
Mr. LaPierre didn’t respond to a message left at NRA headquarters. He told Ms. James’s office that the Bahamas trips and yacht stays were justified for business reasons, such as donor cultivation, the attorney general’s complaint says.
In a statement, Charles Cotton, an NRA director, said arrangements with vendors such as MMP “are reviewed, vetted and approved.” He also said that the “trips in question” were undertaken “to drive donations, third-party support, and enormous visibility for the NRA brand.”
NRA President Carolyn Meadows, in a separate statement, lauded Mr. LaPierre’s accomplishments in building the NRA, and said “Wayne LaPierre does not need to make any apologies to me about his travel arrangements, vendor relationships, or marketing decisions.”
As a nonprofit, the NRA, registered in New York and regulated by the state’s attorney general, is required to use its money to advance its social-welfare mission, not for the benefit of individuals.
James Fishman, a Pace University law professor and co-author of a textbook on nonprofit law, said in general it would be a conflict of interest for a CEO of a nonprofit to accept significant personal benefits from a major vendor. A CEO in that position might be reluctant to push the vendor for lower prices or better terms, he said.
The 71-year-old Mr. McKenzie is president of Associated Television International Inc., a Los Angeles production company best known for making magic and travel shows and producing TV specials such as the Daytime Emmy Awards. He has won several honors, including a Daytime Emmy for a documentary about poverty in Africa.
McKenzie is a stage name; his legal name is David Stanton, according to public documents.
Mr. McKenzie’s relationship with Mr. LaPierre was a source of controversy within the NRA nearly 25 years ago, when the NRA chief was relatively new to the top job.
Amid a boardroom power struggle, members of one faction raised concerns about “cronyism” with major vendors, according to documents later filed by the dissidents with the Federal Election Commission.
The then-chairman of the NRA’s finance committee in an internal memo wrote that Mr. LaPierre had directed $14.3 million to Mr. McKenzie’s Associated Television “based on a vague personal ‘purchase order,’” according to the filings. Some of the money, the memo said, was spent on “The Wayne LaPierre Radio Show,” a weekly, two-hour production that the finance chair called a “vanity” project.
At the time, Mr. LaPierre said of the dissidents: “We’re being slashed from within with a lot of inaccuracies and a lot of falsehoods, and it’s destructive to the organization.”
[LOOKING AT THE NRA’S FINANCES
Leaked Letters Reveal Details of NRA Chief’s Alleged Spending
Private Jets Ferried Relatives of NRA Chief Executive
NRA Board Retroactively Approved Transactions Benefiting Insiders]
The dissidents were beaten back after Mr. LaPierre’s main rival was defeated in a bid for a top board job.
Mr. McKenzie’s Associated Television has continued to work for the NRA. He also has become what Ms. James’s office called the principal stakeholder in three other NRA contractors.
The three firms started business with the NRA on the same date in 2011 and share the same CEO and address at the NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, Va., the complaint says.
Of the $100 million paid to the McKenzie companies, the largest share—$60 million—went to MMP for mailing and fundraising, according to the complaint.
Mr. LaPierre signed most of the contracts with Mr. McKenzie’s companies, the complaint says, but denied any role in negotiating their terms.
Starting in the late 1990s, the NRA paid Mr. McKenzie’s Associated Television to produce and distribute a true-crime TV series called “Crime Strike,” hosted by Mr. LaPierre, the complaint says.
Former “Crime Strike” staffers said it was a low-budget affair, costing less than $50,000 per episode in the early years. In recent years, Mr. McKenzie said in a prior interview, some existing episodes were “refreshed”—which TV professionals said was an inexpensive way to recycle old material.
The NRA has paid Associated Television nearly $17 million since 2014, according to the attorney general’s complaint, including $4.7 million from January 2018 to May 2019.
Since 2015, Mr. LaPierre has visited the Bahamas at least eight times, taking private flights at NRA expense, the complaint says. Sometimes, he stayed at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island, with the lodging tab picked up by Mr. McKenzie, the complaint alleges, while other times Mr. LaPierre and family members stayed aboard the producer’s yacht.
—Joe Flint contributed to this article.
Write to Mark Maremont at mark.maremont@wsj.com
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/irs-probing-nra-ceo-wayne-lapierre-for-possible-criminal-tax-fraud-report/
igor d
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is investigating National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre for potential criminal tax fraud in the wake of a referral from New York's attorney general, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The reported probe comes after LaPierre, who collected $11.2 million in income from the NRA between 2014 and 2018, was accused of funneling millions in personal expenses through the nonprofit and its vendors in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which seeks to dissolve the organization.
James, whose lawsuit aims to remove LaPierre from his position as the group's CEO and recoup millions in lost assets, said when she announced the move in August that she would refer her investigation's findings to the IRS. The lawsuit also named several other NRA executives, alleging that had they contributed to the group's $64 million loss over three years by awarding contracts to relatives and close associates and failing to comply with tax laws.
"Altogether, there are 18 causes of action, and these actions violated multiple laws, including the laws governing the NRA's charitable status, false reporting on annual filings with my office and the IRS, improper expense documentation, improper wage reporting, improper income tax withholding, failure to make required excise tax reporting and payments; payments in excess of reasonable compensation to disqualified persons; and waste of NRA assets amongst other offenses," she said at the time.
James said the investigation did not "come to a conclusion on whether or not [LaPierre] violated the Internal Revenue Code," but that she would refer her findings to the IRS.
Kent Correll, an attorney for LaPierre, told The Journal that he was "not aware of any inquiry."
"The NRA is not aware of any IRS inquiry, but of course, will fully cooperate with any appropriate requests for assistance," William Brewer III, an outside attorney for the NRA, told the outlet, adding that the group's tax filings are audited.
The IRS investigation is related to LaPierre's personal taxes, according to the report.
James alleged that LaPierre had received undisclosed compensation through the NRA and its vendors in the form of lavish trips and expensive suits, among other benefits. The lawsuit claimed that the NRA did not include the compensation in LaPierre's W-2 forms, which "permitted him to file false personal tax returns with the IRS."
The report noted that underreported income would likely trigger a civil audit, but a criminal probe would require the IRS to "demonstrate that a taxpayer willfully underreported income, typically over multiple years."
If it is a criminal case, "the IRS would be looking for evidence of concealment," Mark Matthews, the former head of the agency's Criminal Investigation unit, told The Journal.
Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who also called on the IRS to investigate LaPierre, predicted that the investigation would "likely reveal a pervasive corrupt climate at the NRA, requiring direct action by the IRS and the Justice Department."
The lawsuit alleged that LaPierre and his family flew on private jets to the Bahamas at least eight times over several years, costing the group more than $500,000. LaPierre allegedly stayed at a hotel paid for by a Hollywood producer, who was a major NRA vendor in the Bahamas, or on the producer's 108-foot yacht, which was not disclosed.
LaPierre told James' office that he had not disclosed the trips for security reasons. He argued they were work-related, because they included discussions about the NRA Women's Leadership Forum, with which his wife and niece are involved.
"Any time I get the two of them together anywhere, there is a benefit for the NRA," LaPierre told investigators, according to the lawsuit. "Yeah, they got together in the Bahamas . . . It could have been in Washington."
He also said he relied on private jets for security reasons, and he was not aware there were limits on how much he could spend for private air travel.
The NRA also faces a separate lawsuit from D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, which accused the group of diverting funds from its charitable arm for "wasteful spending" by its executives. The lawsuit alleges that the NRA sought to "exploit" its charitable foundation with "risky multi-million-dollar loans" and charged the foundation "millions of dollars in fees without documentation of the work the NRA was performing."
"Charitable organizations function as public trusts," Racine said, "and District law requires them to use their funds to benefit the public — not to support political campaigns, lobbying or private interests."
Gun control advocacy groups sent LaPierre their "thoughts and prayers" after the latest report, a knock on the NRA's frequent refrain after school shootings.
"Wayne LaPierre's decades of alleged self-dealing are finally catching up with him," said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, "but the true cost of his reckless leadership of the NRA should be measured in lives lost, not dollars stolen."
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/court-filings-show-the-nra-is-in-shambles-and-wayne-lapierre-hopes-his-lawyer-can-keep-him-out-of-jail/
igor d
a year after being re-elected as the executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre has seen his group go from an electoral kingmaker to the edge of financial ruin. He and other NRA executives have urged laid-off employees to seek public assistance benefits. The nation’s most prominent pro-gun lobby has lost tens of millions of dollars amid numerous legal woes and investigations that have exposed its questionable financial dealings. Now, the longtime NRA leader hopes his lawyers can “keep him out of jail,” according to previously unreported allegations in court documents in the group’s legal battle against its longtime public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.
The documents, which were published in full on NRA Watch, a new database launched by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, allege that LaPierre has grown “preoccupied with going to jail.” Ackerman’s allegations paint a picture of an executive who “didn’t trust his own accounting department” and instructed associates not to disclose important information to the group’s auditors.
The documents also include allegations about the NRA’s search for a personal mansion for LaPierre, whose alleged obsession with “purchasing a lavish home for himself” led Ackerman to pull out of the deal. They also allege that LaPierre may have violated his own group’s bylaws by improperly using Ackerman to pay off the group’s former president, Lt. Col. Oliver North, who left the organization after what it described as a “failed coup attempt.”
Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, told Salon that NRA Watch aimed to show that LaPierre “used member dues for what looks like personal reasons” while “only 10% of NRA funds in 2018 were even spent on gun safety.”
“NRA is losing at the ballot box, in courts, on the balance sheet,” Watts said. “We always talk about shining a light under the refrigerators and forcing the cockroaches to run out, and that’s really what this website does.
“It’s important to point out why the NRA is underwater reputationally and financially,” Watts continued. The NRA’s policy priorities are killing us, so stopping the NRA is our top priority. But when it comes to legal issues, the secret to our success is that we let the NRA beat itself.”
The NRA worked with Ackerman McQueen, creators of the now-defunct online video channel NRATV, since the 1980s, paying them as much as $42 million a year. But the NRA sued the firm in Virginia in 2019, accusing Ackerman of overbilling for its services. More recently, the NRA filed a lawsuit in Texas alleging that Ackerman continues to improperly use the NRA’s brand and properties. The NRA later filed an amended complaint in October alleging that Ackerman had breached its fiduciary duties, engaged in fraudulent billing and failed to maintain adequate records. The NRA has also accused Ackerman of a pattern of corruption, including its “failed” NRATV venture, for the purpose of collecting millions in fees.
Some of the new allegations were made in Ackerman’s bid to have the law firm of Bill Brewer, a longtime friend of LaPierre, disqualified as the NRA’s legal team.
Brewer’s firm responded to Salon’s questions with a statement from Linda S. Eads, professor emerita at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.
“After my review, it is my initial opinion that this request for disqualification provides no legal basis for the relief sought,” Eads said. “Factually, it appears to be supported only by assumptions and innuendo. Also, it is based on allegations that have not been factually established. It is too early in the litigation process to use such unsupported claims as a basis for disqualification, which is one of the most serious actions a court can take against a litigation party — to cause the party to lose its lawyer.”
Brewer’s firm is expected to issue a formal response to the new allegations next week. The response comes after Ackerman successfully asked the court in Virginia to stay the litigation pending a resolution of the Texas case, against the objections of the NRA, according to a previously unreported court order.
LaPierre was elected to a second term as the NRA’s CEO at the group’s annual convention in 2019, one year ago this week. It was not the party that the longtime gun activist had expected. What was supposed to be a coronation quickly devolved into a civil war that has since led to the ouster of multiple top NRA officials.
Before that meeting, North — then the NRA president — began to raise concerns about the large legal fees the NRA was paying to Brewer. By the first day of the meeting, LaPierre wrote a letter to the NRA board claiming that North had attempted to force him to resign by threatening that Ackerman would release a “devastating account” of the NRA’s financial dealings.
Hours after LaPierre, North and President Trump appeared on stage together at the meeting, news of North’s attempted coup had leaked. On the third day of the meeting, North issued a statement announcing that he would not seek another term. The statement was read by another board member as LaPierre, who had reportedly orchestrated North’s ouster, looked on next to an empty chair reserved for the group’s president.
Though LaPierre was successful in beating back the alleged coup attempt, the NRA’s legal entanglements in the year since have laid bare its devolving financial situation and threatened its tax-exempt status. Along with multiple lawsuits involving Ackerman, the attorneys general in New York state and Washington, D.C., have launched investigations questioning the group’s tax status. New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating whether the group violated the state’s charities law, which some legal experts and NRA insiders believe could result in a criminal referral related to LaPierre’s “use of nonprofit funds for personal expenses,” according to the New York Times.
A previously unreported court filing by Ackerman alleged that “[s]ometime in early 2018, LaPierre became preoccupied with going to jail.”
LaPierre later allegedly told Angus McQueen, Ackerman’s longtime chief executive, that he believed “Brewer was going to keep him out of jail,” according to another previously unreported court filing in March.
The NRA roundly rejected Ackerman’s claims.
“This is the same stale, desperate and contrived narrative Ackerman has been peddling for a year,” Andrew Arulanandam, managing director of public affairs at the NRA, told Salon. “In any event, it does nothing to diminish the confidence the NRA has in Bill or his law firm — or our commitment to hold this former vendor accountable.”
“The simple truth is, Ackerman is desperate to distract from the agency’s woes and alleged improper actions,” Arulanandam added. “It seems the agency has resorted to unhinged rants, based on non-existent communications and allegations from terminated employees.”
The group’s finances have taken a huge hit as a result of its legal woes.
According to a secret recording obtained by NPR, LaPierre recently told members that the NRA took a “$100 million hit” over the past two years and had to cut “about $80 million” from the budget and “took it down to the studs.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he warned in the recording. “We still gotta wrestle with this financial situation.”
Internal documents obtained by The Trace show that the group’s finances soured as it spent millions in member donations on salaries for executives, legal bills and lavish travel, while spending less than 10% of its funds on its supposed core mission: gun safety, education and training.
The NRA’s members have begun to raise questions about the group’s spending after it was reported that LaPierre spent hundreds of thousands on Italian suits and luxury vacations. Brewer has argued that the “vast majority of travel involved donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.”
NRA board member Allen West, a former Republican congressman from Florida, slammed LaPierre after NRA officials defended their CO. West argued the defense was filled with “outright lies” and said he was removed from key committees for daring to “challenge the cabal of cronyism.”
More than 10% of the organization’s board has resigned in the past year.
“If you’re surprised by this you don’t know Wayne LaPierre,” Watts said, “because he has a long history of overseeing sweetheart deals and self-dealing to himself, friends and family and others.”
Many of the more lurid allegations of impropriety came from Ackerman in response to the NRA’s lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed weeks ahead of the 2019 annual meeting, in what appeared to be an attempt to get ahead of the allegations raised by North.
North warned officials that the legal fees paid to Brewer were “draining NRA cash at mind-boggling speed” and “pose[d] an existential threat to the financial stability of the NRA.” North claimed that LaPierre had rejected multiple attempts to request a full audit of the legal fees.
After North’s ouster, several NRA members spoke out against LaPierre and NRA leaders and initiated motions for a no-confidence vote in LaPierre, though that effort was defeated.
Since then, mounting allegations of wrongdoing have consumed the group. But executive compensation has continued to rise. In 2018, LaPierre’s salary increased by 57% to $2.15 million per year. Other “senior staff cashed in, too,” the New York Times reported,” while oversight “has been complicated by paydays to the 76-member board.”
Court filings suggest that shortly after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the NRA considered buying LaPierre and his wife a $6.5 million mansion through Ackerman. The NRA sent a $70,000 check to a newly formed LLC to facilitate the transaction.
In a previously unreported declaration, Ackerman’s chief financial officer, William Winkler, said that he refused to move ahead with the acquisition when “it became apparent … that Mr. LaPierre was more interested in purchasing a lavish home for himself” than in addressing “alleged safety concerns.”
The NRA has dismissed the allegations.
“The agency introduced Mr. LaPierre to its preferred local real estate agent, directed a tour of multiple homes, and established a company to manage the investment,” Arulanandam said in a statement to the Washington Post last year. “No matter, Mr. LaPierre ultimately rejected the opportunity and not one dime of the NRA’s money was spent on this venture.”
In a separate transaction that even the NRA’s own accountants described as “vague and deceptive,” the NRA paid $1.8 million to rent a house in Southern California from a production company that worked on a show featuring LaPierre, according to The New Yorker.
The NRA also “used unorthodox means to arrange [LaPierre’s] travel, including his use of private jets for almost every trip,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The group’s accountants were “instructed to pay” for certain trips “without the usual detailed supporting documentation, which was held in a private file in the NRA treasurer’s office,” including private flights that “totaled about $2 million in one recent year.”
The big spending extended to other officials as well. A previously unreported February court filing by Ackerman alleged that LaPierre convinced North to “leave his paid position at Fox and become the next President and an employee of [Ackerman] by hosting a television show on NRATV.”
“The NRA agreed to compensate [Ackerman] for Col. North reimbursing [Ackerman] for his work,” the filing claimed.
The contract may have violated the group’s bylaws, Everytown for Gun Safety said.
“The pass-through nature of the contract raises serious questions about whether the NRA was attempting to conceal its payments to its board president, especially since the NRA’s organizational bylaws do not provide for compensation of the board president,” according to a report from NRA Watch. “One concerned NRA employee wrote a memo shortly afterward, warning that ‘using a vendor to provide compensation to’ North ‘does not work to hide disclosure of the compensation.’ Months later, the NRA audit committee retroactively approved North’s contract.”
The NRA’s relationship with vendors like Ackerman sparked concern within the group’s audit committee, which held an emergency meeting in 2018 to discuss the spending. Documents obtained by The New Yorker show that the group’s accountants were concerned that the “NRA pays overbilled, deceptive, vague invoices to ‘preferred’ vendors and contractors” and “decisions are made in the best interests of vendors,” not the organization.
A previously unreported filing by Ackerman alleged that “[t]hroughout his tenure with the NRA, LaPierre has routinely used third-party vendors like [Ackerman] to conceal his penchant for personal spending, seemingly with the NRA’s blessing.”
The filing goes on to allege that LaPierre “on many occasions, told [Ackerman] that he didn’t trust his own accounting department within the NRA” and that “on several occasions, LaPierre would specifically instruct [Ackerman] not to disclose certain information to certain auditors” in the NRA’s accounting department.
The relationship with Brewer also drew scrutiny after the NRA paid the firm more than $24 million in legal fees, according to North. Ackerman has alleged that Brewer’s firm is a “PR firm masquerading as a law firm to try cases in the ‘court of public opinion,’ not the courtroom.” The filings also raise questions about the firm’s methods. Revan McQueen, the son of former Ackerman CEO Angus McQueen (who died in July of 2019), alleged in a previously unreported declaration that attorney Bill Brewer “had detailed knowledge about Angus’s cancer treatment and used that information to time his litigation and media attacks.”
Another filing by Ackerman alleged that Brewer “engaged in deeply personal and calculated attacks on the McQueen family … at times strategically coordinated with Angus [McQueen’s] medical treatment, his final family events, his declining health, and ultimately the period of grief following his death.”
The past year has also seen several congressional investigations aimed at the NRA. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., called for the IRS to investigate the organization’s nonprofit status after a yearlong probe into allegations of self-dealing and corruption. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., separately urged the IRS to investigate financial fraud by the NRA. Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., Dwight Evans, D-Pa., and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., followed with their own call for an IRS probe.
In the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, led an investigation that found that “NRA leaders may have violated tax laws that prohibit use of organization resources for personal benefit.” Wyden and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have called on the IRS to investigate the group’s tax-exempt status.
Raskin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have separately called for an investigation into whether the NRA violated campaign finance laws by coordinating communications with the Trump campaign and other Republicans.
As the investigations mounted, LaPierre issued statements warning gun owners that their rights were under attack by lawmakers who want to make “Americans less safe and less able to defend themselves.”
“The NRA is mired in crisis and they’re strapped for cash and their leaders keep going back to the old playbook to bail them out: fear-mongering about the collapse of society to raise money [and] to sell guns,” Watts told Salon. “And it’s so dangerous right now given that there are increased risks of domestic violence, unintentional gun violence [and] gun suicides because of the coronavirus crisis.”
The past year also saw NRATV shutter after three years after the NRA spent upwards of $20 million annually to sustain the network. The NRA later said in court filings that some NRA leaders found the network’s content to be “distasteful and racist” and described the overall effort as an “abject failure.”
The past year has also seen a purge of NRA board members who had spoken out about the alleged financial misconduct. Eight of the group’s board members have resigned and multiple high-ranking officials have left the group, including former top lobbyist Chris Cox, who was executive director of the NRA Institute of Legislative Action.
The NRA suspended Cox in June of 2019 after accusing him of participating in North’s attempted coup. Cox, once considered the “heir apparent” to LaPierre, resigned days later as NRA-ILA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker insisted that “any notion that Chris participated in a coup is absurd.” Baker was subsequently fired as well.
But the purge has not stopped the leaks about questionable spending at the group. Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post show that the organization spent $9.3 million on office supplies in 2018, roughly $12,000 per employee. To make up for the big spending, the NRA cut funding for gun training, a key component of its purported core mission.
According to the NRA’s financial report, the group ended 2018 with a $10.8 million deficit, marking the third straight year it spent more than it brought in, even as it continued to increase executive pay.
This year, the NRA announced across-the-board 20% pay cuts and layoffs, urging affected employees in a leaked memo to “contact any germane state or federal agency to determine eligibility for any additional aid.”
LaPierre in the memo blamed “extraordinary challenges resulting from COVID-19” for the cuts despite years of deficits and increased legal spending.
But the revelations in the court documents and news reports make it clear, Watts said, “that the pandemic is not what’s bankrupting the NRA. “That’s its own corrupt leadership. It’s really showing that even though Wayne LaPierre is scapegoating, he and the rest of the NRA leaders have used the organization as their personal piggybank for years.”
The NRA has also seen its political influence wane as its election spending has dropped precipitously. In the group’s home state of Virginia, voters elected a Democratic legislative majority in 2019 that quickly passed a package opposed by the NRA that implemented expanded background checks, a “red flag” law and other gun-control measures. The previous Republican majority had refused to take up the issue even after the mass shooting that killed 12 people at a municipal building in Virginia Beach.
“We outspent the NRA eight-to-one in Virginia, we outworked them on the ground, making hundreds of thousands of calls and knocking on tens of thousands of doors,” Watts told Salon. “And as a result we flipped both chambers” of the state legislature.
Watts said the Virginia elections were only one example of the NRA’s waning influence: “The NRA is weaker than it’s ever been and we are stronger than we’ve ever been. We outspent and outworked them in 2018. We were able to flip the U.S. House of Representatives and change the makeup of seven state legislatures and elect over 1,000 ‘gun sense’ candidates across the country.”
Going into the 2020 elections, Watts said, her group has “already committed to spending $60 million, which is twice what the NRA spent in 2016. And the NRA is so deep underwater that even the president they worked so hard to elect no longer wants to work with them.”
President Trump received more than $30 million in backing from the NRA during his 2016 run, but has recently complained to aides that the group is “going bankrupt,” according to the New York Times, and tweeted that the NRA “must get its act together quickly, stop the internal fighting, & get back to GREATNESS – FAST!”
“Donald Trump talks about the Second Amendment, but he doesn’t so much talk about the NRA anymore,” Watts said. “Some of the NRA’s own board members have distanced themselves from the NRA and major donors have begun to distance themselves from the NRA, so it’s really not surprising that Donald Trump would as well if he sees them as possibly an albatross around his neck.
“If you look at the way this country has been going since the 2016 election, background checks continue to pass, red-flag laws, laws that disarm domestic abusers. We have a 90% track record in the last five years of stopping the NRA’s agenda in state houses. So politically, they have not been as successful.”
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amazing news about corruption of lapierre had no effect; must be that guns are fundamental to base? tho big %even of NRA rank and file ok w/ bkgd checks?
CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Trump for cowering in fear of the NRA — after he slammed Republicans for doing exactly that
President Donald Trump is backing down from his support of bulked-up firearm background check legislation, clearly fearful of backlash from the National Rifle Association. And according to The Atlantic, Trump…
on pink beach suits same days as djt fold bkgd checks 2x
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wapo
no lnx many
Sections
Democracy Dies in Darkness
National
D.C. attorney general issues subpoenas to NRA, its charitable foundation
By Katie Zezima ,
Carol D. Leonnig and
Keith L. Alexander July 12 2019
The District’s attorney general issued subpoenas Friday to the National Rifle Association and its charitable foundation, putting additional pressure on the embattled gun rights organization from nonprofit regulators.
The office of Attorney General Karl A. Racine is seeking financial documents from the NRA and its foundation. The NRA Foundation is chartered in the District, and the NRA is registered as a nonprofit and does business there.
“The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act,” Racine said in a statement.
He continued: “We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors.”
William A. Brewer III, the NRA’s outside counsel, said in a statement that the organization will cooperate with “any appropriate inquiry” into its finances.
“The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance,” Brewer said, noting the organization’s financial statements are audited and that it is “committed to utilizing best practices” in accounting and governance.
Racine’s office has jurisdiction over nonprofits. It can seek court action to dissolve or place into receivership a nonprofit that misuses funds or does not act in accordance with its stated mission.
Racine’s subpoenas come as the organization is under mounting internal and external pressure. They are the second state legal action taken against the NRA in recent months.
In April, New York Attorney General Letitia James also issued subpoenas to the NRA and its foundation seeking financial records about its tax-exempt status. The NRA was chartered in New York in 1871.
Racine’s inquiry into payments to officers and directors comes after The Washington Post reported last month that 18 of the NRA’s 76 board members collected money from the NRA during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence. They include a former National Football League player who received $400,000 for public outreach and firearms training, and a writer who was paid more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications.
NRA board members are tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.
[NRA money flowed to board members amid allegedly lavish spending by top officials and vendors]
The NRA is also enmeshed in a lawsuit with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who issued a directive last year urging insurance and financial services companies to review their relationships with the organization. It came after a state investigation found the NRA’s “Carry Guard” insurance [murder insurance] product to be illegal under New York law.
Scrutiny of the organization has also increased on Capitol Hill. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been investigating the organization, looking for answers about financial and other ties between the organization and Russia. Two Democratic House members have written to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, stating they were concerned about a “complex web of relationships” between the organization and Russia.
The NRA also has been grappling with growing internal strife in recent months. In the past several weeks, it has seen its top lobbyist resign and its television arm shut down, and has severed all business with its longtime public relations firm, which helped brand the NRA as a hard-edged organization that would defend gun rights at all costs.
The NRA’s top lobbyist, Christopher W. Cox, resigned last month after being accused of being part of an extortion scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox had led the organization’s political and lobbying arm since 2002 and was considered one of its most effective and high-profile leaders. The political arm spent more than $30 million to help elect President Trump.
In April, LaPierre accused former NRA president Oliver North of extortion, claiming North threatened to reveal damaging financial information if LaPierre did not step down and withdraw the NRA from a lawsuit against its longtime and now estranged public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.
[Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come]
The organization has been rocked by revelations of exorbitant spending by top executives, including that LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, according to invoices.
North, who stepped down from his post after the allegations, also claimed the NRA spent $24 million in legal bills last year. The allegations come as the organization’s 2018 financial report show that the nonprofit, its four affiliated charities and its political committee ended the year $10.8 million in the red.
The report shows that the NRA increased spending on overhead including legal fees, travel, entertainment and office supplies, while cutting money to its core missions, including gun training and political spending.
Katie Zezima
Katie Zezima is a national correspondent covering drugs, guns, gambling and vice in America. She covered the 2016 election and the Obama White House for The Washington Post. Follow
Carol D. Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Follow
Keith L. Alexander
Keith L. Alexander covers crime and courts, specifically D.C. Superior Court cases, for The Washington Post. Alexander was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that investigated fatal police shootings across the nation in 2015. He joined The Post in 2001. He previously worked as a reporter for USA Today, BusinessWeek and The Dayton Daily News
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ref
no lnx
Politics
Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come
A demonstrator interrupts a speech by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre in Washington on Dec. 21, 2012, a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
By Carol D. Leonnig ,
Beth Reinhard and
Tom HamburgerJuly 4
Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.
In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.
Archival video: NRA calls for protecting schools with armed guards
National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre called for schools to be protected with armed guards on Dec. 21, 2012. (Photo: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.
Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the couple was on official business, doing outreach to donors and supporters, whom he declined to identify.
After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, “Wayne’s main concern was being respectful of the victims and their families,” he said. LaPierre, as leader of the NRA, sought “to figure out a way to harden our schools” while also defending the Second Amendment, Arulanandam said.
New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.
During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.
In recent months, a bitter legal dispute over control of the NRA has fractured their longtime alliance, spilling the revelations about the organization’s finances into public view. Ackerman and the NRA are now estranged, locking in warring lawsuits. The tumult led to the resignation last week of longtime NRA lobbyist Christopher W. Cox, whom the NRA has accused of participating in a scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox has denied the allegations.
[‘All those people are completely estranged and at odds.’ Beth Reinhard on rifts within the NRA. Listen on Post Reports.]
The factors that would later fuel this remarkably public civil war were already at play in on Dec. 14, 2012, when the NRA confronted perhaps its worst political crisis in history. On one side was Cox, who was pushing for the group to take a lower-key approach amid a wave of national outrage. On the other was LaPierre, who decided to go on the offensive.
Four months after the massacre, a raft of gun control measures failed in Congress. But outrage about lawmakers’ inaction after the loss of so many young lives in Newtown also spurred a resurgence among groups fighting to restrict firearms.
'Kids are getting shot'
A man and child leave the funeral for 6-year-old Jack Pinto on Dec. 17, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The mass shooting at Sandy Hook, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, scalded the country.
President Barack Obama wiped away tears as he spoke that day about the children who had died. When he visited Newtown two days after the shooting to talk privately with families who had lost their loved ones, he later said, he saw something he’d never witnessed before: the stalwart Secret Service agents on his detail quietly weeping.
The tragedy immediately led to a clamoring for new limits on firearms. Obama vowed that gun control would be a “central issue” of his second term.
Some NRA leaders girded for what they considered inevitable: congressional action to revive the federal ban on assault weapons that had expired in 2004. Several senior officials and longtime leaders thought the killing of children required the group to alter its normally defiant response to mass shootings and keep a low profile — at least in the immediate aftermath, said people familiar with internal discussions.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’ ” one former NRA employee said, describing internal discussions about whether the group should consider a modest gun control compromise or alter its aggressive posture. “Kids are getting shot. Is there something else we should be doing?”
Cox, a seasoned political strategist, wanted to head off efforts to restrict firearms and thought that a combative approach at that time was unwise and could invite a public backlash, said multiple people familiar with the debate.
But LaPierre ultimately agreed with Ackerman McQueen that the NRA had to forcefully counter growing public calls to rein in weapons.
Cox, who did not respond to requests for comment, did not attend a news conference that LaPierre held a week after the Sandy Hook shooting.
As soon as LaPierre stepped before hundreds of reporters at the Willard hotel in Washington on Dec. 21, he made it clear that the NRA would remain fiercely opposed to any gun control measures.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said after the Sandy Hook massacre. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The NRA chief announced that a task force would create a program, later called NRA School Shield, to help train armed security guards to protect schools from shooters — and preemptively defended the group from those he predicted would criticize the idea.
[Put armed police in every school, NRA urges]
“Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word ‘gun’ automatically become a bad word?” LaPierre said.
He then delivered the line that would become a mantra of NRA hard-liners: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
LaPierre ridiculed gun-free school zones as welcome signs to insane murderers and warned of “monsters .?.?. who walk among us every day.”
“The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them,” he said.
Two days later, LaPierre went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the NRA’s new shield program. “If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security [guards] in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” he said.
When Obama later voiced skepticism that putting more guns in schools would keep children safer, Ackerman McQueen produced a video that alluded to his daughters’ Secret Service protection, calling him an “elitist hypocrite.”
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator intoned.
[Ackerman McQueen PR firm has been behind NRA’s provocative ads for decades]
There were signs that some inside the NRA were uncomfortable with the focus on Obama’s daughters. Jim Baker, one of the organization’s top lobbyists, said at the time that he considered the ad “ill-advised,” adding, “I don’t think it was particularly helpful.”
In a statement, Ackerman McQueen officials said that the firm’s job was to help the NRA respond to news and public events, as it did after the Sandy Hook massacre, and that LaPierre was the final decision-maker on the strategy to propose armed defenders in schools.
“Throughout the entire relationship with the NRA, Wayne LaPierre controlled every aspect of NRA public communications,” the firm said.
Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, whose four children graduated from Sandy Hook Elementary before the shooting, called the approach taken by the NRA and Ackerman McQueen “corrupt and irresponsible.”
“We felt the NRA’s position after Sandy Hook was completely insensitive and so out of touch when we were going through such a significant amount of trauma,” she said.
Arulanandam said that LaPierre “had great compassion for those impacted by this horrific event” and was seeking to find a way to “protect our most treasured resource — our children.”
“These events, sadly, all too often become politicized by people on all sides of the conversation,” he said, adding: “At the same time, during these events the media demands that we defend our position on the Second Amendment.”
Gun control falters
After his combative public performance, LaPierre left town.
Three days after the mass shooting in Newtown, he charged $39,947 for a private jet to Eleuthera, according to internal travel records detailed in letters this spring from Ackerman McQueen’s chief financial officer to LaPierre, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Washington Post.
On Dec. 27, the LaPierres flew to the island, NRA officials confirmed. The organization has previously said that LaPierre, as the public face of the organization, must travel by private plane for security reasons.
Arulanandam, the NRA spokesman, said the couple’s week-plus visit to the Caribbean resort area during the winter holidays was a business trip related to donor outreach. The organization declined to provide details, saying it was against NRA policy to discuss individual donors.
“There was a business trip after Christmas 2012 involving donor outreach and the recruitment of influential NRA supporters and members,” Arulanandam said. “Wayne is responsible for a campaign to raise almost $400 million annually, so he travels extensively on behalf of the Association — even over the holidays.”
Susan LaPierre, co-founder of theNRA Women’s Leadership Forum, a coalition of female philanthropists who support the Second Amendment, traveled with her husband to “assist with NRA business and development efforts as she frequently does,” Arulanandam said.
After ringing in the New Year in the Caribbean, Wayne LaPierre charged another private air charter on his Ackerman McQueen credit card: $29,100 on Jan. 3 to fly from Nassau, Bahamas, to Dallas, according to internal documents and people familiar with his trips.
NRA officials said LaPierre flew to Dallas to attend donor and member events there as part of a hunters’ sporting exposition.
NRA chief lobbyist Christopher W. Cox and LaPierre stand near an empty seat reserved for then-NRA President Oliver North at the group’s annual meeting in Indianapolis on April 26. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)
William A. Brewer III, a lawyer for the NRA, has said that the vast majority of LaPierre’s travel involved “donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.” He said that the NRA chief routed some travel expenses through Ackerman McQueen for “confidentiality and security purposes,” but that this method of billing has since been modified.
Ackerman McQueen said the firm footed the initial bill for LaPierre’s travel at the NRA’s instructions.
“Ackerman McQueen did not have any knowledge of the plans or details of the expenditures in question, all of which the NRA client claimed had a sound business or security rationale,” the firm said in a statement.
For several months, the deaths of the Connecticut schoolchildren continued to spur public cries for action. Polls showed that 90 percent of Americans supported new legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
In a letter dated Jan. 3, 2013, that was sent to congressional lawmakers, Cox said the NRA wanted to be a “constructive voice” in the debate about how to prevent the next school massacre. He stressed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons, but said the organization supported efforts to keep all weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.
The tragedy spurred a rare bipartisan effort on gun control in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a pro-gun Democrat, and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) joined forces to expand background checks to cover a major source of gun sales: unlicensed dealers at gun shows and online vendors.
Parents of the Sandy Hook victims visited Washington to pressure lawmakers to act, carrying pictures of their children: a freckle-faced boy smiling with a missing front tooth, a 6-year-old boy in his favorite Superman shirt.
But by the time of the final vote on April 17, their chance of victory was slim. Some Republicans said the bill was unfair to gun owners because it would require them to pay for a background check to exercise their right to buy a gun. The NRA had vowed to “score” senators based on their vote on the legislation, stressing that they would face consequences for supporting it. The organization asked its members to flood senators with letters, emails and phone calls.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that Sandy Hook was a turning point for the NRA and that “its leaders chose the course of extremism and refused to even consider common-sense laws supported by most Americans.”
As a cluster of Sandy Hook parents gathered in the gallery to watch the key vote, a Republican-led filibuster blocked the measure, with four Democrats joining to oppose it. The Senate also blocked other measures Obama sought to ban certain military-style rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines.
The visibly angry president declared that it was a temporary loss.
“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said, vowing to try again. “Sooner or later, we’re going to get this right.”
Julie Tate, Alice Crites and Katie Zezima contributed to this report.
Carol D. Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Follow
Beth Reinhard
Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post. Follow
Tom Hamburger
Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/nra-board-subpoena-letitia-james.html
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mma 819
The National Rifle Association released a video responding to recent mass public shootings in which NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre grouped together mass shooters with politicians and other prominent figures who seek to address gun violence as supposed threats to the Second Amendment. The video is one of the first high-profile communication efforts that the NRA has undertaken since the group pulled the plug on its messaging operation NRATV in June amid massive infighting.
The three-minute NRA video responds to mass public shootings that occurred earlier this month in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured. In both cases, the shootings were carried out with military-style assault weaponsequipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines.
In the video, LaPierre pushed typical NRA disarmament conspiracy theories, claimed that efforts to regulate firearms would “defame” NRA members and concluded, “Let’s fight to make sure no madman, or billionaire, or elitist politician ever takes away our God-given right to protect our lives, our homes, and the people we love.” In essence, LaPierre grouped together the people who carry out mass shootings with some of the people who seek to address gun violence by regulating firearms.
...
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pro pub 819
Document Shows NRA Money Helped Its Chief Search for a Personal Mansion
The gun group’s lawyer said “not a cent” of the nonprofit’s money was spent on helping executive Wayne LaPierre’s mansion search. A document we obtained shows that payments were flagged by internal accountants for doing just that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/nra-nratv-ackerman-mcqueen.html
no lnx
N.R.A. Shuts Down Production of NRATV, and Its No. 2 Official Resigns
ImageThe N.R.A. has ceased production of live content on NRATV because of concern over its broadcasting arm’s financial costs and right-wing talking points.
The N.R.A. has ceased production of live content on NRATV because of concern over its broadcasting arm’s financial costs and right-wing talking points.CreditCreditPete Marovich for The New York Times
By Danny Hakim
June 25, 2019
Moving to clean house amid an organizational crisis, the National Rifle Association cut ties with its second-in-command, Christopher W. Cox; severed its relationship with Ackerman McQueen, its estranged advertising firm; and shut down live production at its online media arm, NRATV.
The steps took place within a brief span on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
The resignation of Mr. Cox, the gun group’s top lobbyist and the architect of its legislative strategy, was communicated to the N.R.A.’s board and employees on Wednesday. The news comes days after a court filing by the N.R.A. implicated him in a failed plot to oust Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s chief executive, an allegation Mr. Cox has disputed. Last week, The New York Times reported that the N.R.A. had suspended Mr. Cox.
Mr. LaPierre, in a message sent Wednesday to employees and board members, said he had accepted Mr. Cox’s resignation and wanted “to thank Chris for his service to the N.R.A. and for his efforts to advocate for the Second Amendment.” He noted that Mr. Cox had been“placed on administrative leave” pending an investigationinto the claims against him, and said, “Naturally, that pursuit will continue in the interest of the N.R.A. and our members.”
The development is the latest in an already tumultuous year for the N.R.A. The gun group has struggled to right its finances; faced investigations in Congress and by the New York attorney general; and witnessed a leadership struggle that pitted Oliver North, until recently the N.R.A.’s president, against Mr. LaPierre.
Mr. Cox could not be immediately reached for comment. In a statement last week, he said that “the allegations against me are offensive and patently false. For over 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization. My efforts have always been focused on serving the members of the National Rifle Association, and I will continue to focus all of my energy on carrying out our core mission of defending the Second Amendment.”
The series of moves leaves the N.R.A., a crucial ally of President Trump, in flux, particularly in the leadership of its legislative agenda. On Twitter in April, Mr. Trump urged the N.R.A. to “stop the internal fighting, & get back to GREATNESS — FAST!” Mr. LaPierre told the board and employees he would soon name an interim leader for the organization’s lobbying arm.
By ending production at NRATV, the N.R.A. is also ceasing its relationship with a number of high-profile representatives of the organization, since its on-air personalities — Ackerman employees including Dana Loesch — will no longer be the public faces of the N.R.A. It remained unclear whether the N.R.A. would try to hire some of those employees, but there was no indication it was negotiating to do so.
The move comes amid a flurry of lawsuits between the N.R.A. and Ackerman, and increasing acrimony that surfaced after two prominent N.R.A. board members first criticized NRATV in an article in The Times in March. The separation had become inevitable: The two sides said last month that they were ending their partnership of more than three decades.
“Many members expressed concern about the messaging on NRATV becoming too far removed from our core mission: defending the Second Amendment,” Mr. LaPierre wrote in a message to members on Wednesday. “So, after careful consideration, I am announcing that starting today, we are undergoing a significant change in our communications strategy. We are no longer airing ‘live TV’ programming.”
[ImageChristopher Cox, the N.R.A.’s top lobbyist, resigned days after being implicated in a plot to oust the gun group’s leader.
Christopher Cox, the N.R.A.’s top lobbyist, resigned days after being implicated in a plot to oust the gun group’s leader.CreditSaul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]
In a notice to Ackerman’s chief executive, Revan McQueen, sent Tuesday night, the N.R.A. said it “regrets that a longstanding, formerly productive relationship comes to an end in this fashion.”
Ackerman, in its own statement, said it was “not surprised that the N.R.A. is unwilling to honor its agreement to end our contract and our longstanding relationship in an orderly and amicable manner.”
“When given the opportunity to do the right thing, the N.R.A. once again has taken action that we believe is intended to harm our company even at the expense of the N.R.A. itself,” Ackerman added. It said it would “continue to fight against the N.R.A.’s repeated violations of its agreement with our company with every legal remedy available to us.”
A legal filing last week by Ackerman, which is based in Oklahoma City, underscored the dire risk to its business, which derived 41 percent of its gross revenue from the N.R.A. last year. The company accused the N.R.A. of failing to pay $1.6 million in invoices and to post a $3 million letter of credit that it said it was due, moves that Ackerman said would force it to “terminate or put on unpaid leave” roughly 40 percent of its work force within days, and shutter Mercury Group, its Northern Virginia subsidiary.
On Wednesday, a judge in Virginia denied a motion by Ackerman to immediately force the N.R.A. to make those payments.
N.R.A. officials had grown leery of the cost of creating so much live content for NRATV, which was started in 2016, and wondered whether the return on its investment was worth the effort. The site’s web traffic was minuscule, with 49,000 unique visitors in January, according to a report provided by Comscore.
Some N.R.A. board members and officials were also unnerved by the breadth of the channel’s content, which strayed far beyond gun rights and encompassed several right-wing talking points, including criticism of immigration and broadsides against the F.B.I. A show hosted by Ms. Loesch that put Ku Klux Klan hoods on talking trains from the popular children’s program “Thomas & Friends” drew outrage from some within the organization.
But the dispute between the N.R.A. and Ackerman goes deeper than NRATV. It has its origins in threats last summer by Letitia James, now the New York attorney general, to investigate the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status. The N.R.A. began an audit of its contractors, and has said that Ackerman, which it paid roughly $40 million a year, refused to comply. Ackerman has disputed that allegation.
The advertising firm has assailed the role of the N.R.A.’s outside lawyer, William A. Brewer III, over the size of his legal fees, and has seen him as its chief antagonist. The contention has a bitter family twist because Mr. Brewer is the brother-in-law of Mr. McQueen, Ackerman’s chief executive.
The schism between the organizations has been shocking. They had a closely intertwined partnership going back to the “I’m the N.R.A.” campaign in the 1980s, and Ackerman came to be known as the voice of the N.R.A.
But by Tuesday night, splitting up was seen as inevitable.
“This is just an affirmation of what we’ve known is going to happen,” Joel Friedman, an N.R.A. board member, said in an interview.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: N.R.A. Shuts Down Production of NRATV as Its No. 2 Official Resigns.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2019/6/26/18760446/nra-chris-cox-wayne-lapierre-ackerman-mcqueen-dana-loesch
619 implosion?
chic sun times
Infighting at the National Rifle Association exploded Wednesday, when the powerful association severed ties with its longtime public relations firm, suspended operations of its fiery online TV station and lost its top lobbyist.
The latest turmoil emerged just a year before the critical 2020 presidential elections when the NRA’s ability to influence the outcome could decide the fate of gun rights.
Lobbyist Chris Cox, long viewed as the likely successor to longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre, was placed on administrative leave about a week ago by the NRA, which claimed he was part of a failed attempt to extort LaPierre and push him out.
It also came within hours of the association officially severing ties with Ackerman McQueen, the Oklahoma-based public relations firm that has shaped some of the NRA’s most memorable messages in the past decades. That includes severing its relationship with spokesperson Dana Loesch, who works for Ackerman McQueen.
Cox had been the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, since 2002. He was credited with leading efforts to allow a decadelong ban on “assault weapons” to expire in 2004, an achievement that allowed the gun industry to resume selling what the industry calls “modern sporting rifles” and critics claim are used too often to exact mass carnage.
His resignation was confirmed by NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. No other comment was immediately made about his departure.
Cox did not immediately return a message seeking comment. However, when he was suspended, Cox said in a statement obtained by The New York Times that allegations he had been part of a group seeking LaPierre’s ouster were “offensive and patently false.”
“For 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization,” he said.
Cox played his usual prominent role at the NRA’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in April, and there was little public evidence that he and LaPierre or the NRA’s board of directors were at odds. Infighting spilled out during what is normally a pep rally of sorts among gun-rights enthusiasts when Oliver North, then the NRA president, threatened to expose questionable personal and travel expenses unless LaPierre stepped down. Instead, LaPierre turned the tables on North and accused him of trying to extort him into submission.
RELATED
NRA president ousted following leadership dispute
Joel Friedman, a longtime NRA board member, told The Associated Press his first reaction when he heard that Cox was stepping down was surprise. He said he saw no indications during the annual meeting that Cox was in a dispute with LaPierre.
LaPierre announced Cox’s resignation in an email sent Wednesday to staff and NRA board members that was obtained by the AP. The letter also said an investigation will continue into allegations that North sought to extort LaPierre and that the storied Marine veteran was aided by Cox, a claim first laid out in a lawsuit filed June 19.
In the past few months, the NRA has filed several lawsuits against Ackerman McQueen, accusing it of refusing to document its billings and of seeking to undermine the association. Ackerman McQueen has countersued, claiming the NRA is trying to renege on its financial obligations and smear the public relations firm.
Last year, NRA began asking all of its vendors for detailed documentation about its billings after New York authorities began threatening to investigate the NRA’s nonprofit status. The NRA was founded shortly after the Civil War and is chartered in New York, giving that state broad authority to investigate its operations.
During its two decades by the NRA’s side, Ackerman McQueen was responsible for crafting the association’s aggressive messaging, including the now-famous “From my cold dead hands” line uttered by actor Charlton Heston in 2000 as he vowed to resist any effort to take away his guns. The line became a rallying cry for gun owners around the country.
Ackerman McQueen also created and operated NRATV.In a statement posted Wednesday on the NRA website, LaPierre said it would no longer be airing live programming and would be evaluating the station’s future. It wasn’t clear what would happen to its prominent hosts but there appeared to be no signs those on-air personalities, who are employees of Ackerman McQueen, would find spots at the NRA.
In a lawsuit, the NRA said some of its members had questioned NRATV’s weighing in on “topics far afield of the Second Amendment.”
In a statement Wednesday, Ackerman McQueen accused the NRA of trying to avoid its financial obligations by shuttering NRATV and implied its financial woes are partly the result of now paying for high-priced lawyers.
“When given the opportunity to do the right thing, the NRA once again has taken action that we believe is intended to harm our company even at the expense of the NRA itself,” the company said.
“For Ackerman McQueen, it is time to move on to a new chapter without the chaos that has enveloped the NRA,” the statement continued. “Ackerman McQueen will continue to fight against the NRA’s repeated violations of its agreement with our company with every legal remedy available to us, but we will always be proud of the work that we completed during our 38-year relationship on behalf of the individual citizens that are the NRA.”
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trump veto int'l arms treaty b/c sovererinty conf
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bailled? beat by lapierre, disarray russia collusion
Oliver North, Who Illegally Funneled Weapons to Contras, Resigns as NRA President
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/rump-is-facing-impeachment-the-nra-is-facing-bankruptcy-its-a-good-day-in-america/
Here’s a good one for you. Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the National Rifle Association (NRA) sent out a fundraising appeal in March pleading with its members for donations. “We’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the N.R.A. but in the entire history of our country,” LaPierre whined. “ cannot survive without the N.R.A., and the N.R.A. cannot survive without your help right now.”
Then what did LaPierre do? Why he stepped-up NRA lobbying against The Violence Against Women Act, which the House of Representatives reauthorized a few weeks later. Because of course the NRA doesn’t need the donations of women who might benefit from the provision in the Violence Against Women Act which prohibits sales of firearms to anyone who has been convicted of stalking, assaulting, or otherwise harming a domestic partner.
The NRA can’t afford to lose too many lobbying battles like that one anymore. As The New Yorker reported this month, “the N.R.A. is troubled; in recent years, it has run annual deficits of as much as forty million dollars.” LaPierre has presided over a reduction in the main mission of the NRA – gun safety, training, and representing hunters – to less than 10 percent of its budget. What do they spend the other 90 percent on, you might ask? Messaging, according to The New Yorker. “The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a life style built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/nras-wayne-lapierre-warns-that-group-may-be-shut-down-forever-thanks-to-democrats/
National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre issued a stark warning that the group may be forced to shut down due to financial woes in a fundraising letter to supporters.
LaPierre wrote in a four-page letter that the group may be forced to shutter “very soon,” The Daily Beast reported. The NRA chief blamed the financial woes on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who last year directed state regulators to “urge insurance companies, New York State-chartered banks, and other financial services companies licensed in New York to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association.”
LaPierre wrote that Cuomo’s “tactics are already working.”
“Right now we’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the NRA, but in the entire history of our country. And if this attack succeeds, NRA will be forced to shut down forever,” LaPierre wrote.
“And let me be clear,” he added. “Cuomo’s tactics are already working. One by one, more and more banks and insurance companies across the country are knuckling under to Cuomo’s threat — and telling NRA they won’t do business with us — because they don’t want to be targeted and crushed by Cuomo’s strong-arm tactics and the vast power of thousands of New York bureaucrats.”
The NRA sued Cuomo last year, accusing him of violating its First Amendment right. A judge allowed the suit to move forward in November, The New York Law Journalreported.
The suit claims the NRA has “suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages” as a result of Cuomo’s actions and warned that “it could be forced to shutter its multimillion-dollar television network, NRA TV, or a number of its print publications.” Without insurance, the suit said, the group “cannot maintain its physical premises” or “convene off-site meetings and events.”
The NRA’s financial woes go well beyond Cuomo. While President Obama was a boon for NRA donations, Presient Trump’s across-the-board pro-gun stance has caused the group’s income to plummet by $55 million, The Daily Beast reported. The organization suffered an $18 million loss in 2017 after losing $46 million in 2016.
As a result, the NRA’s PAC spent just $9.2 million to back Republicans in the 2018 midterms, compared to the $27 million it spent on the 2014 midterms. The group spent $54.3 million in 2016, much of it to help elect Trump.
The NRA’s unprecedented support for Trump has also led to many questions. The group, which spent $30 million to help Trump, nearly three times what it spent supporting Mitt Romney in 2012, appears to have illegally coordinated spending with the Trump campaign, The Trace reported.
The NRA is also under scrutiny for its ties to Russian officials. Numerous of the group’s officials traveled to Russia in 2015 as part of a Russian effort to infiltrate conservative political organizations. The trip was organized by then-Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, an ally of Vladimir Putin, and admitted Russian spy Maria Butina. Torshin was the focus on an FBI probe into whether Russian money was funneled through the NRA to the Trump campaign, Politico reported last year.
“We should let them express their gratitude now,” Butina wrote in an email to Torshin after declaring the 2015 Moscow trip a success, “we will put pressure on them quietly later.”
cf trms email says trip to give conduit to djt
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/leaked-documents-incriminate-gop-russia-ties-with-nra-as-a-common-denominator/
Leaked emails obtained by several news outlets contradict the NRA’s denials that it had nothing to do with its members traveling to Moscow to meet top Russian officials on a 2015 trip organized by admitted Russian agent Maria Butina.
Butina, who recently pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges after she was accused of working as a Russian agent to infiltrate conservative circles, organized a 2015 trip to Moscow for top NRA officials. While there, they met with Russia’s then-foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and other prominent figures as part of an apparent Russian campaign to gain influence with American conservatives.
Several NRA officials told the New York Times on Monday that NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre “was opposed to the trip” and ordered members not to go. “Given Mr. LaPierre’s power within the organization, it is unclear how such a trip would have proceeded at all despite his opposition to it,” the Times noted.
ABC News reported that internal NRA documents and emails, as well as photos on social media, appear to show that theNRA “was significantly involved in planning” the trip.
Among those who went on the trip was former NRA president David Keene.
An email obtained by the Daily Beast written by Paul Erickson, Butina’s boyfriend and longtime Republican operative, said that Russian Central Bank official and Butina’s handler Alexandr Torshin offered Keene, who was also a columnist for the Washington Times, an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“[I]mpressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is also the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin on behalf of David Keene and the Washington Times— a plum that was dangled in front of Keene by Torshin himself during a recent Torshin visit to Washington, DC,” Erickson, wrote according to the Daily Beast. “High stakes all around.”
Erickson’s email also said that the trip could ease tensions between the U.S. and Russia and pave the way for relations with a future Republican president.
“As we discussed over lunch in Iowa, Russia believes that high level contacts with the NRA might be the BEST means of neutral introduction to either the next American President OR to a meaningful re-set in relations with the Congress under a (God forbid) President Clinton,” he wrote. “This simple good will trip would have enormous diplomatic consequences for a future U.S. / Russia bilateral relationship to the world.”
The emails show thatKeene played a large part in organizing the trip with Butina, and was angry when another NRA official dropped out of the trip, putting Keene’s plans in jeopardy. Despite LaPierre’s claims, the NRA paid for Keene’s travel expenses, at least, and also bought official NRA “gifts” for the Russian delegation, according to the Times.
Among the members who accompanied Keene were Joseph Gregory, co-chair of the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom, a group for donors of $1 million or more; and Pete Brownell, the group’s vice president, who later became its president. Brownell also paid for former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, an NRA member, to go on the trip.Brownell later abruptly resigned from the NRA.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,who is leading at least four investigations into the NRA’s ties to Russia, told ABC News that “it’s not credible for the NRA to claim that they played no official role in the 2015 Moscow trip.”
“Americans would rightly be outraged if they learned that officers of a powerful, taxpayer-subsidized organization were offered personal incentives by the Kremlin in exchange for access to elite Republican circles,” Wyden later told The Daily Beast. “That question is right at the heart of my inquiry.”
After the meeting, Butina wrote to Torshin about the successful trip she organized.
“We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later,” she wrote.
Around the same time, Erickson wrote, in an email obtained by the FBI, that he was “involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [unnamed political party] leaders through, of all conduits, the [unnamed gun-rights organization].”
When FBI agents raided Erickson’s South Dakota home, they found a note in whichErickson mused, “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” The FSB is the Russian state intelligence agency, successor to the infamous Soviet-era KGB.
During this same period, the NRA, relying on an arm of the organization that is not required to disclose its donors, spent a record $30 million helping to elect President Trump, which was nearly three times the $12.5 million it spent to help Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. The NRA and the Trump campaign went as far as coordinating their ad buys for maximum impact, The Trace reported.
All this has caught the eye of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose team has been “raising questions about the relationship between the campaign and the gun group,” according to CNN.
Despite mounting suspicions and eyebrow-raising emails, William Hurd, a lawyer for Erickson, dismissed the reports even as his client faces his own possible charges.
Hurd told the New York Times, “Anyone who thinks that a freedom-loving group like the NRA is going to get all cozy with Vladimir Putin is living in Fantasyland.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/nra-desperately-backpedaling-from-russia-as-investigators-look-closer/
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nra-vs-america-20130131
The NRA vs. America
How the country’s biggest gun-rights group thwarts regulation and helps put military-grade weapons in the hands of killers
Protesters marching with the social activist group CREDO along with other concerned citizens descend on the NRA's lobbiest's office in Washington, DC on December 17th, 2012. PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty
By Tim Dickinson
January 31, 2013
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Eleven days after the massacre, Wayne LaPierre – a lifelong political operative who had steadied the National Rifle Association through many crises – stood before an American flag and soberly addressed the nation about firearms and student safety: "We believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period," LaPierre said, carving out a "rare exception" for professional law enforcement. LaPierre even proposed making the mere mention of the word "guns" in schools a crime: "Such behavior in our schools should be prosecuted just as certainly as such behavior in our airports is prosecuted," LaPierre said.
This speech wasn't delivered in an alternate universe. The date was May 1st, 1999, at the NRA's national convention in Denver. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton, Colorado, had just killed 13 students and teachers, shocking the conscience of the nation.
Wayne vs. Wayne: When the NRA Chief Endorsed Gun Control in Schools
The disconnect between the NRA chief's conciliatory address on that day 14 years ago and his combative press conference in the aftermath of the slaughter of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, could hardly be more jarring. In his now-infamous December 21st tirade, LaPierre ripped the gun-free zones he once championed as an invitation to the "monsters and predators of this world," advertising to "every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk."
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LaPierre then o ffered what he called a "proven" solution to school gun violence – one that would open a lucrative new market for the gun industry while tidily expanding the power of the NRA itself. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre insisted, before proposing that armed, NRA-trained vigilantes should patrol each of the nation's nearly 100,000 public schools.
The shift in LaPierre's rhetoric underscores a radical transformation within the NRA. Billing itself as the nation's "oldest civil rights organization," the NRA still claims to represent the interests of marksmen, hunters and responsible gun owners. But over the past decade and a half, the NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora, Colorado. "When I was at the NRA, we said very specifically, 'We do not represent the fi rearm industry,'" says Richard Feldman, a longtime gun lobbyist who left the NRA in 1991. "We represent gun owners. End of story." But in the association's more recent history, he says, "They have really gone after the gun industry."
Today's NRA stands astride some of the ugliest currents of our politics, combining the "astroturf" activism of the Tea Party, the unlimited and undisclosed "dark money" of groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, and the sham legislating conducted on behalf of the industry through groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council. "This is not your father's NRA," says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a top gun-industry watchdog. Feldman is more succinct, calling his former employer a "cynical, mercenary political cult."
The NRA's alignment with an $11.7 billion industry has fed tens of millions of dollars into the association's coffers, helping it string together victories that would have seemed fantastic just 15 years ago. The NRA has hogtied federal regulators, censored government data about gun crime and blocked renewal of the ban on assault weaponry and high-capacity magazines, which expired in 2004. The NRA secured its "number-one legislative priority" in 2005, a law blocking liability lawsuits that once threatened to bankrupt gunmakers and expose the industry's darkest business practices. Across the country, the NRA has opened new markets for firearms dealers by pushing for state laws granting citizens the right to carry hidden weapons in public and to allow those who kill in the name of self-defense to get off scot-free.
Gabby Giffords Speaks on Gun Control: 'The Time Is Now'
The NRA's unbending opposition to better gun-control measures does not actually reflect the views of the nation's gun owners or, for that matter, its claimed 4 million members. A May 2012 poll conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz revealed surprising moderation on behalf of NRA members: Three out of four believed that background checks should be completed before every gun purchase. Nearly two-thirds supported a requirement that gun owners alert police when their firearms are lost or stolen. "Their members are much more rational than the management of the NRA," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, tells Rolling Stone. "They're out of touch."
That's by design. Today's NRA is a completely top-down organization. It has been led since 1991 by LaPierre, its chief executive, who serves at the pleasure of a 76-member board that is all but self-perpetuating. Only one-third of the board's membership is up for re-election in any given year. Voting is limited to the NRA's honored "lifetime" members and to dues-payers with at least five consecutive years of being in good standing. Write-in candidates occasionally pepper the ballot, but in practice, the tiny slice of eligible members who bother to vote rubber-stamp a slate of candidates dictated by the NRA's 10-member nominating committee – one of whose members isGeorge Kollitides II, CEO of Freedom Group, which manufactures the Bushmaster semiautomatic that Adam Lanza used to slaughter children in Newtown.
The NRA's board is stocked with industry brass. Pete Brownell, president of Brownells – an Internet arms superstore that features "ultrahigh-capacity magazines" – campaigned for his seat touting the importance for the NRA to have "directors who intimately understand and work in leadership positions within the firearms industry." Another board seat belongs to Ronnie Barrett, CEO of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, whose company produces .50-caliber sniper rifles capable of piercing armor from nearly a mile away. Barrett's firm also sells scope-mounted ballistics computers that enable clueless civilians to hit targets like they were special-forces snipers. The ammunitions side of the industry finds a voice in board member Stephen Hornady, whose company peddles armor-piercing bullets and trades on the slogan "Accurate. Deadly. Dependable."
These NRA directors are representative of a firearms sector that knows lethality sells. "The industry has changed," says Tom Diaz, former Democratic counsel to the House subcommittee on crime, a longtime gun-violence policy analyst and author of a forthcoming book on the industry, The Last Gun. "In terms of what sells and what is marketed most successfully, we're now talking about guns that are derived directly from military design."
Of the top 15 gun manufacturers, 11 now manufacture assault weapons, many of them variants of the AR-15 – derived from a military rifle designed to kill enemy soldiers at close-to-medium range with little marksmanship. The industry loves these "modern sporting rifles" because they can be tricked out with expensive scopes, loaders, lights and lasers. "Most of the money is in accessories," says Feldman.
As one gun rep recently boasted to an industry publication: "The AR platform is like Legos for grown men."And a 2012 report from Bushmaster's parent company boasted that the industry's embrace of these guns has led to "increased long-term growth in the long-gun market while attracting a younger generation of shooters." The campaign certainly seems to be working. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster. Twenty-five-year-old James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, was in many ways the dream customer of the surging industry. He bought an AR-15 .233-caliberSmith & Wesson assault rifle – a category the company's CEO bragged was "extremely hot" – tricked it out with a 100-round ultrahigh-capacity magazine and then purchased thousands of rounds from BulkAmmo.com, spending nearly $15,000 on his greater arsenal.
The changes in the industry are underscored by dispatches from industry websites and publications, like this one from Shooting Wire, in which the NRA is an advertiser: "The net of all the numbers is that if you're a company with a strong line of high-capacity pistols and AR-style rifles, you're doing land-office business. If you're heavily dependent on hunting, you are hurting."
Conservatives Have their Worst Week Ever
The NRA insists in its publications that it is "not a trade organization" and that it is "not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition." That is a lie. NRA's corporate patrons include 22 firearms manufacturers, 12 of which are makers of assault weapons with household names like Beretta and Ruger, according to a 2011 analysis by the Violence Policy Center. The report, drawn from the NRA's own disclosures, also identified gifts from dozens of firms that profit from high-capacity magazines, including Browning and Remington. Donors from the industry and other dark reaches of the corporate world – including Xe, the new name of the mercenary group Blackwater – had funneled up to $52 million to the NRA in recent years.
More disturbing, the NRA receives funds directly from the sales of arms and ammunition. The "Round-Up" program, launched by arms retailer Midway USA, encourages customers to increase their purchases to the nearest dollar and sends the extra coin to the association. Midway customers alone have contributed nearly $8 million in this way to support NRA's lobbying division, the Institute for Legislative Action.
In 2011, Ruger set out to be the first gun company to "build and ship a million guns in one year."So it ginned up a promotion that would give a dollar to the NRA for every weapon sold between the 2011 and 2012 NRA annual meetings. The company broke its own sales goal, sending $1,254,000 to the NRA-ILA. Glock – whose pistols have been used in at least six mass murders since 1991, including the Virginia Tech and Gabby Giffords shootings – has been shipping an offer for discounted NRA memberships with its handguns. In 2007, the NRA thanked Glock for helping it recruit 10,000 new members.
Top corporate patrons are treated like royalty. Those whose giving to the NRA reaches $1 million or more are inaugurated into an elite NRA society called the "Golden Ring of Freedom" in a ceremony where they're presented with a silk-lined golden blazer with a hand-embroidered crest. Industry honchos seen in "the million-dollar jacket" include the heads of Ruger, Beretta, Midway and Cabela's, an outfitter that sells 12 models of semiautomatic rifles.
Much like elite funders of a major political party, these Golden Ringers enjoy top access to decision-makers at the NRA. Their interests, not the interest of the $35-a-year member, rule the roost. "They've got this base of true believers that they mail their magazines out to," says policy analyst Diaz. "But the NRA is really about serving this elite."
In more than three decades of service to the NRA, Wayne LaPierre has done more than any other man alive to make America safe for crazed gunmen to build warlike arsenals and unleash terror on innocents at movie theaters and elementary schools. In the 1980s, he helped craft legislation to roll back gun control passed in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations.And since the late 1990s, twice he has destroyed political deals that might have made it hugely difficult for accused killers like Holmes and Lanza to get their hands on their weapons.
A predecessor once characterized the NRA as being "one of the world's great religions," and 64-year-old LaPierre is a strange fit to be its pope. LaPierre did not come from gun culture. He wasn't a hunter, a marksman, a military man or a Second Amendment activist. "He's not a true believer," says NRA biographer Osha Gray Davidson. "He's the first NRA chief you can say that about."
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According to NRA legend, LaPierre is actually a menace with a gun. NRA's PR team once thought it would be sexy to film LaPierre at a firing range. "It was a nightmare," an NRA staffer told Davidson. LaPierre was aiming downrange for the camera when an engineer called for a sound check. To answer the man, LaPierre swung around, but he failed to lower his rifle, aiming it directly at the engineer – before someone took the gun away from LaPierre. The incident, terrifying at the time, became a dark joke at NRA headquarters. Staffers behind on their projects were threatened that they'd have to "go hunting with Wayne." (The NRA's press office did not reply to Rolling Stone inquiries.)
Between 1978, when LaPierre was hired as a lobbyist, and 1991, when he took over as CEO, the NRA had been on a historic roll.In those early days, LaPierre served at the knee of a revolutionary NRA executive named Harlon Carter, who transformed an old-time shooters club into a political powerhouse – an "NRA so strong," Carter boasted, "that no politician in America mindful of his political career would want to challenge [our] goals." The NRA started grading politicians on guns – a process Bob Dole kvetched was "a litmus test every five minutes" – rewarding allies with campaign cash and subjecting foes to the backlash of millions of rabid, single-issue gun-owning voters. In 1980, the NRA made its first-ever presidential endorsement with Ronald Reagan, and by 1986 had the Gipper's signature on legislation, overseen by LaPierre, that would usher in a new era of unregulated gun shows.
By the late 1990s, however, the once mighty NRA was reeling on LaPierre's watch: It had suffered stinging legislative defeats – the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993 and the Assault Weapons Ban a year later. Despite being credited by President Clinton for the GOP takeover in the House in 1994, the association was riven by factionalism and money troubles that had many writing the association's obituary.
Instead, LaPierre orchestrated a stunning turnaround, rebuilding the NRA's power, this time as the voice of the industry. In so doing, he destroyed a historic gun-control effort.
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Cities around the country, emboldened by the success of the legal action that had humbled Big Tobacco, had begun suing gun manufacturers, claiming that the industry was liable for the social costs of gun violence. These suits argued that firearms manufacturers had negligently marketed guns to criminals and profited from illicit gun sales by turning a blind eye to their distribution networks. The Clinton White House, in an initiative driven by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, announced its own class-action, suit over gun violence in the nation's housing projects.
"The liability fight was an existential threat to the firearms industry," says Feldman. "They thought that if those lawsuits continued, let alone were successful, it would drain the industry." In the industry's moment of peril, LaPierre saw an opportunity to expand the NRA's power: The NRA would get out in front of gunmakers and, through its membership, lead their fight. Charlton Heston, then NRA's president, brought a stark message to the industry's biggest trade show in 1999: "For a century, we have thrived independently," Heston said. "But now your fight has become our fight." Under LaPierre, the NRA went to work at the state level, securing bills that would ban localities from suing gun manufacturers. It also began to draw up a national campaign to get Congress to immunize gun manufacturers from liability for their deadly products.
Smith & Wesson, at the time America's biggest handgun manufacturer, was hesitant to bank on the NRA's legislative moonshot, deciding that the best way to limit the damage would be to negotiate a settlement with Cuomo. "We have to save the business," said CEO Ed Schultz." So we're talking, instead of hiding our head in the sand like the National Rifle Association."
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In exchange for immunity from product liability lawsuits, Smith & Wesson agreed to make safer guns and to clean up distribution networks. The measures included changes to the guns themselves, such as internal locks, triggers that couldn't be operated by kids and making new guns incompatible with old, high-capacity magazines whose manufacture was now illegal thanks to the Assault Weapons Ban. Smith & Wesson also promised to ship only to dealers who ran background checks at every sale, including at gun shows, and who refused to sell grandfathered assault rifles. With Smith & Wesson on board, Cuomo was confident that other manufacturers would fall in line.
But LaPierre would tolerate no defections. Determined to kill off any comprehensive gun-control agreement, he decided to hurt Smith & Wesson like the NRA had punished so many wayward politicians, by riling up the membership and organizing a consumer boycott that left the company reeling. Cuomo's negotiations with the industry soon collapsed.
So too did the effort to pass new gun restrictions in the aftermath of Columbine, underscoring the NRA's resurgent power. Three guns used in the Columbine massacre had been picked up at a gun show, where, thanks to a loophole in the Brady Bill, the purchases weren't subject to background checks. The Senate quickly passed an amendment to close the gun-show loophole, with Al Gore casting the decisive vote. But the NRA made its stand in the House. A month later, when the amendment came up for a vote, it got stomped, 193 to 235.Democrats, mindful of the punishment of 1994, contributed 49 nay votes.
The dual defeats left Cuomo disillusioned. He gave a speech in June 2000 that was stunningly bleak. "If we engage the enemy in this town, we will lose," he said. "They will beat us in this town. They are too strong in this town. Their fortress is within the Beltway."
LaPierre had helped gunmakers dodge two bullets as the Clinton years drew to a close. But to lock in these gains, the NRA needed an ally in the White House.
The NRA backed Bush to the hilt in the 2000 race. According to one tally, one in three dollars spent by outside groups to support the Bush ticket was spent by the NRA, and in the end Bush beat Gore among gun owners by 25 points. "The gun issue cost Al Gore the White House," says Feldman. "Forget the couple of hundred chads in Palm Beach. Absent the gun issue, he would have won Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia."
TheBush administration rewarded the NRA as few could have imagined. Bush appointed NRA favorite John Ashcroftas attorney general, who, in May 2001, announced that for the first time in the nation's history the Justice Department had adopted the view, long championed by the NRA, that the Second Amendment confers an individual, not a collective, right to bear arms.
In the aftermath of 9/11, when other constitutional protections were being trampled, nothing would shake this conviction, not even the fact that a jihadist training manual found in Afghanistan instructed Al Qaeda operatives living in the United States on how to, legally and without arousing suspicion, "obtain an assault weapon, preferably an AK-47 or a variation."The Bush administration continued to press the NRA's expansive vision of the Second Amendment until it was even adopted by the Supreme Court in 2008.
It wasn't only restrictions on the sale of military-grade weaponry that the NRA fought. It also fought to keep Americans in the dark about the relative dangers of such guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms compiles detailed records about what firearms are used in what types of crime, and even published a list of the top 10 crime guns. To block the release of that data, Todd Tiahrt, a GOP congressman from Kansas and an NRA ally, tacked a rider onto a 2003 appropriations bill that forbids ATF from spending any money to share the data it collects with the public – or even with Congress. "If you wanted to know how many Bushmasters have been used in what kinds of crime for the last five years, that information is in ATF's files," says Diaz. "But it can't be released because of the Tiahrt Amendment."
With Bush in the White House and the public now blindered to the perils of semiautomatic weapons, the Assault Weapons Ban was on a glide path to expire in 2004. And the NRA, hellbent to free the gunmakers and dealers from any responsibility resulting from the use of these dangerous weapons, continued to press ahead in its fiercest fight: a federal bill immunizing the industry from liability.
In 2004, the NRA had gathered its forces in the Senate and pushed them to bring a liability bill to the floor. A gun-control group, Americans for Gun Safety, made the decision that it was willing to stop fighting the bill, whose passage seemed all but certain, if it could somehow force the NRA to accept renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban and the closure of the gun-show loophole in the bargain.
The compromise bill had a clear path to victory. The gun-control activists believed they'd backed the NRA into a corner. Their thinking, says Jim Kessler, who directed policy for AFGS, was that the NRA would say, "OK, we gotta take this because who knows what will happen in 2005. John Kerry could be president."
Then something extraordinary happened: The NRA blew up the deal, letting senators know that any votes for the bill would be recorded as votes against the NRA. "You could see them on the Senate floor looking at their BlackBerrys and changing their votes," says Kessler. The bill died by a vote of 8 to 90.
This was becoming a pattern. Just as he'd done by upending the White House settlement talks with the industry in the late 1990s, LaPierre had once again cut the bottom out of a hard-fought political compromise to impose meaningful gun restrictions. "There is not a middle ground with the NRA," says Diaz. Indeed, LaPierre had laid this strategy in a 2002 speech to his membership: "We must declare that there are no shades of gray," he said. "You're with us or against us."
Bush rolled to re-election, and the NRA continued to roll up victories. The Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, reopening the market for the high-capacity magazines favored by mass murderers.And in 2005, the NRA finally secured clean passage of a law immunizing manufacturers, importers, distributors and dealers from any civil liability. After President Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that October, LaPierre called it "the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in 20 years." Who did it benefit? LaPierre made no pretenses: "History will show that this law helped save the American firearms industry."
The NRA, severely weakened just years earlier, seemed once again an invincible force in Washington. And Democrats, tired of losing elections on the issue, made gun control the new third rail of Washington politics. In the 2006 election cycle, two longtime foes of the NRA, Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer, were responsible for recruiting and funding attractive Democratic candidates. And they decided to drop guns as an issue altogether. "People didn't care about what your position was on guns," says a top Democrat. The party would support you either way.
They recruited pro-gun candidates who won the kind of races Democrats usually get trounced in. Among the ranks of the 2006 class of gun-friendly Blue Dogs was one Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. The gun lobby welcomed its new amigos with open arms. "I always bent over backwards to help Democrats," says Feldman, the former lobbyist. "A Democrat who was supportive of my issue was worth 10 Republicans."
Though Barack Obama had campaigned on modest gun-control proposals, he ducked any fights over the issue. "His view was never that we shouldn't move on these things," political strategist David Axelrod says. "His view was that such moves would be largely symbolic because of the power of the gun lobby to stop them."
Bloomberg doesn't buy that excuse. "The first two years of the Obama administration, the Democrats had the White House, the Senate and Congress," says Bloomberg. "And they did nothing." In early 2009, after Attorney General Eric Holder casually mentioned that renewing the Assault Weapons Ban was a priority, Rahm Emanuel, then the president's chief of staff, sent a characteristically profane message to Holder on the gun issue: "Shut the fuck up."
In fact, Obama moved to expand gun rights as though Bush were still in office. He signed laws to allow guns in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and to allow conceal-carry permit holders to pack heat in national parks. In 2009, the Brady Campaign gave Obama a report card with seven F's.
While Jared Loughner's assassination attempt on Giffords was met with a national presidential address and tearful pieties, the aftermath stopped short of meaningful legislative or executive action. "In response to a horrific series of shootings that has sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary," Giffords wrote in January. "Nothing at all."
Like every other element of today's modern conservative machinery, the NRA works in the background to expand corporate power – while pretending in public to advance the interests of the little guy. The NRA continues to put forward its members as the face of the organization. But dues from members bring in less than half of the association's yearly expenses, which include spending heavily on a sophisticated telemarketing campaign to sustain its membership.
To stay afloat, the NRA relies on tens of millions in grants and gifts – increasingly linked to the gun industry. Such funds totaled $71 million in 2010 and have been growing twice as fast as membership dues have. And the NRA, looking to bring in even bigger bucks, is now fishing for donors with Koch-size wallets. On its website, the NRA lists a donor tier for those who give $25 million or above, which it calls the "Charlton Heston Society."
The Citizens United decision has fundamentally transformed the way the NRA operates politically. The NRA can now tap into unlimited donations from individuals and corporations to engage in direct political advocacy – running TV advertising calling for the defeat of individual candidates. The NRA gets to play like a Super PAC. But unlike groups that sprang up to support Mitt Romney (Restore Our Future) or Barack Obama (Priorities USA), the NRA does not have to disclose the names or contributions of its donors.
That's because the rifle association is incorporated under the same provision of the tax code that shelters Karl Rove's "dark money" operation, Crossroads GPS. "The NRA is a 501(c)(4) organization," it advertises to potential donors, "which enables it to be involved in political processes including lobbying and political campaign activities." Such groups must be primarily engaged in "social welfare" activities. While that's a source of legal concern for groups like Rove's, the NRA has so many tentacles – from shooting clubs to youth education programs to magazines – that it's perfectly positioned to benefit from the dark-money boom.
The NRA's traditional, regulated PAC is as strong as ever. It spent $16.6 million in national political races in 2012. But it was joined by a newly empowered NRAILA, which kicked in an additional $7.4 million from undisclosed sources, making the NRA the eighth-largest dark-money group in the country. In a startling collusion among right-wing powerhouses, NRA-ILA's efforts were actually funded by a $600,000 grant from Rove's GPS group.
President Obama's Missing Executive Order on Gun Control
The NRA is not simply working for the industry on the national stage. In 1987, only 10 states had "right-to-carry" laws permitting citizens to pack heat. By 2010, the NRA celebrated its efforts in converting the 40th state. A former NRA lobbyist once crowed to The Wall Street Journal: "The gun industry should send me a basket of fruit – our efforts have created a new market."
Yet for many gun owners, carrying a gun in public has been a source of anxiety. It's one thing to keep a weapon in the nightstand to guard against intruders. It's quite another to take a gun out in public. That's where the notorious "stand your ground" law comes in. The brainchild of former NRA president Marion Hammer, stand-your-ground makes it legal for a person who is attacked in public to use lethal force as a first resort. The first such measure was passed in 2005 in Florida – championed by an ambitious state legislator named Marco Rubio and signed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.
At the time, LaPierre said Florida was just the beginning – the "first step of a multistate strategy." To keep its efforts below the radar, the National Rifle Association partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council to steer similar laws through other state legislatures. Since 2005, the NRA, through ALEC, has taken stand-your-ground nationwide, helping to pass laws in 24 other states. At least 10 of those laws are all but identical to the language of the Florida legislation.
Conceal-carry and stand-your-ground laws do nothing to suppress crime, but they do boost gun sales. "This now expands the scope of where people are going to be carrying guns," says Diaz. "And you're more or less insulated from liability if you feel like you have to kill somebody." In Florida, Trayvon Martin's home state, "justifiable homicides" tripled between 2005 and 2011. A new study out of Texas A&M found that by "lowering the expected costs associated with using lethal force," these stand-your-ground laws "induce more of it" – driving an eight percent increase in murders and manslaughters.
These numbers are profoundly disturbing to most Americans. But to LaPierre and his allies in the gun industry they add up to something else: opportunity. "We live in the most dangerous of times," LaPierre warned the gathered activists at the NRA's 2012 convention in St. Louis. America has been infiltrated by terrorists and Mexican drug criminals, he said, who "are lurking and plotting to murder us." LaPierre railed against "the Obama crowd" for "conspiring with the world's dirty-handed, thug governments" and telling "lies" about the "coming realities" – catastrophic events that he insisted could "freeze our transportation systems, black out our cities, shut down our distribution of fuel and food" and bring an "unprecedented breakdown of social order." LaPierre told his flock, "Americans are facing the reality that they're on their own."
But like any good preacher, LaPierre did not simply paint a lurid portrait of hell – he also laid out a path to salvation: "We are the millions of Americans who have found faith in the Second Amendment," he said. "People are anticipating dangerous times and are responding in the only sensible, logical way possible – they're buying guns!"
With a twinkle in his eye, LaPierre added that "America's women are leading the way! . . . The more women who buy and own and shoot guns, the safer and better off we'll all be!"
Twenty tiny coffins have again put the NRA on the defensive. In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, which Adam Lanza perpetrated with his mom's arsenal, public support of new gun-control laws is overwhelming. Today, 92 percent of the country support background checks for gun buyers, and 63 percent support limiting the capacity of gun magazines. "If there's a conflict for some members of Congress between their politics and their conscience, they should ponder that 92 percent number," says Axelrod.
There's also new leadership in the gun-control movement. Bloomberg tells Rolling Stone that his mayors' group will be bringing local pressure on national elected officials and orchestrating coordinated visits by the nation's mayors to congressional and Senate offices, with delegations of voting constituents in tow.
"These people want to get re-elected," says Bloomberg of Congress. "If they think the public wants gun control, they'll do it. If they think the NRA is more powerful than the public, they'll follow the NRA. We've got to convince them that the NRA is not that powerful."
To beat the NRA in Washington, however, the gun-control crowd is going to need more than constituent visits. It's going to need money. In the 2012 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $24 million in both regulated and dark money. Compare that to just $3,000 in campaign spending by the Brady Campaign.And such yawning disparities don't begin to account for the NRA's advantage in organizing activists at the level of every congressional district in the country. "If you think about politics as a tug of war," says Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, "when all the strength is on one side, it's not surprising where the rope ends up."
Republicans who control the House have already declared that gun control is off the table. Even newly elected Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of gun-loving North Dakota has called the president's push for new gun laws "wrongheaded."
Andrew Cuomo's bleak declaration – "If we engage the enemy in Washington, we will lose" – may hold as true today as it did in 2000. But Cuomo himself is demonstrating that there's another path to victory that doesn't rely on a cowed Congress. In January, Cuomo, now governor of New York, passed the nation's strongest gun-control law, limiting magazine clips to seven rounds, strengthening the state's ban on assault rifles and requiring mental-health professionals to notify police about patients who threaten violence – before they go postal.
Cuomo is fulfilling the prediction he made as a 42-year-old HUD director: "We're going to beat them state by state, community by community, because we have the ultimate weapon with us, the American people."
The NRA wins because Americans lose focus. Because our outrage fades after each new heartbreak. Because by November 2014, most of us won't be thinking about the victims of Newtown. Most of us won't be thinking about guns at all – while millions of activists, riled by Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, will be thinking of nothing else. If this time is going to be different, Americans have to act different, give different, vote different. In his speech laying out his gun-safety agenda in January, President Obama was absolutely right: "This will not happen unless the American people demand it."
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Wayne Robert LaPierre, Jr. (born November 8, 1949 in Schenectady, New York) is an American gun rights lobbyist. As executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, he advocated armed guards for schools in response to the school shootings at Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas. He controversially supports longer sentences for gun crime, institutionalization of the mentally ill, and the suppression of violent video-games.
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Early life
Wayne Robert LaPierre, Jr.[4] was born on November 8, 1949, in Schenectady, New York,[5][6][7][8] the eldest child of Hazel (Gordon) and Wayne Robert LaPierre, Sr.[4] His father was an accountant for the local General Electric plant.[4] The family moved to Roanoke, Virginia, when LaPierre, Jr. was five years old, and he was raised in the Roman Catholic church.[4] Despite a draft number (097)[9] that placed him in the “most likely to be drafted” category for 1970, he avoided military service during the Vietnam War.[10]
Career
Wayne LaPierre has been a government activist and lobbyist since receiving his master's degree in government and politics, including positions on the board of directors of the American Association of Political Consultants, the American Conservative Union, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.[11]
National Rifle Association activity
Since 1991, he has served as executive vice president and chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest gun rights and small arms industry advocacy organization in the United States.[12] LaPierre joined the NRA in 1977 after working as a legislative aide to Democratic Virginia delegate and gun rights advocate Vic Thomas.[13]
In 2014, NRA contributions totaled $103 million and LaPierre's compensation was $985,885.[14] In 2015, NRA contributions totaled $95 million. In that year, LaPierre received a $3.7 million "employee funded deferred compensation plan", which was required by federal law, according to the NRA raising his total annual compensation to $5,110,985.[14]
Views on gun control
 | This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (February 2013) |
LaPierre has called for the presence of "[a]rmed, trained, qualified school security personnel" at schools.[15][16] At a press conference in the wake of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, LaPierre announced that Asa Hutchinson, former Arkansas congressman and DEA chief, would lead the NRA's National School Shield Emergency Response Program, saying "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun."[15]
LaPierre blamed the Sandy Hook incident, and others like it, on "lack of mental health reform and the prevalence of violent video games and movies".[15]
LaPierre has stated his support for the following:
- Increasing funds for a stricter and more efficient mental health system, and reform of civil commitment laws to facilitate institutionalization of the mentally ill when necessary.
- Creating a computerized universal mental health registry of those adjudicated to be incompetent, to help limit gun sales to the mentally ill.
- Increasing enforcement of federal laws against and incarceration of violent gang members or felons with guns.
- Project Exile and similar programs that mandate severe sentences for all gun crimes, especially illegal possession. LaPierre stated, "By prosecuting them, they prevent the drug dealer, the gang member, and the felon from committing the next crime... Leave the good people alone and lock up the bad people and dramatically cut crime."[17]
LaPierre supports regulation on bump stocks (pictured here on aWASR-10 rifle)
- Restriction on "bump-fire" type rifle stocks, in the aftermath of the Vegas shooting in 2017.
- Bans on fully automatic firearms [18]
LaPierre has stated that he opposes the following:
- Universal background checks, as he believes this will lead to a universal gun registry.
- The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013[citation needed]
- Any limits on the law-abiding public's access to semi-automatic weapons.
- Some gun control laws which he views as a form of government tyranny: "What people all over the country fear today is being abandoned by their government. If a tornado hits, if a hurricane hits, if a riot occurs, that they're going to be out there alone, and the only way they will protect themselves, in the cold, in the dark, when they are vulnerable, is with a firearm." He has said he supports a ban on gun sales to convicted felons or incompetent or mentally ill persons.
Criticism
Multiple U.S. presidents, includingGeorge H.W. Bush (pictured) have criticized LaPierre's rhetoric.
In 1995, LaPierre wrote a fundraising letter describing federal agents as "jack-booted government thugs" who wear "Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens."[19] The term "jack-booted government thugs" had been coined by United States Representative John David Dingell Jr., Democrat of Michigan, in 1981, referring to ATF agents, and came to be frequently repeated by the NRA.[20] Former president George H. W. Bush was so outraged by the letter that he resigned his NRA life membership.[21] In response to growing criticism, LaPierre apologized, saying he did not intend to "paint all federal law-enforcement officials with the same broad brush".[22]
In 2000, LaPierre said President Bill Clinton tolerated a certain amount of violence and killing to strengthen the case for gun control and to score points for his party.[23] Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart called it "really sick rhetoric, and it should be repudiated by anyone who hears it".[24] In 2004, citing Democratic candidate John Kerry's history of authoring and supporting gun control legislation, LaPierre actively campaigned against the senator in the 2004 presidential elections.
On December 21, 2012, the NRA held a televised media event at Washington's Willard Hotel located adjacent to the White House at which LaPierre read a 30-minute prepared statement[25] in response to the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 27 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old—the deadliest mass shooting in a school in U.S. history.[26][27] He connected gun violence with "gun-free zones", violent films and video games, the media, weak databases on mental illness and lax security, and called for armed officers at American schools in an effort to protect children from gun violence.[28][29] He blamed the video game industry for the shooting, describing it as "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games."[25]
Following the event, several in the media criticized LaPierre's statements, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board[30] and The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg.[31] On December 14, Rupert Murdoch tweeted, "Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy."[32] After the press release, one of his newspapers, the New York Post, that is usually considered editorially conservative, labelled LaPierre a "Gun Nut!" on its December 22, 2012 cover.[33] The accompanying article which was highly critical of LaPierre statement, described it as "bizarre".[25] New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that LaPierre's vision of America was "paranoid" and "dystopian" and portrayed the United States as "dangerous and violent ... where everyone is armed and no place is safe."[25]
In a tweet sent out after one of the funerals, Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who represents Newtown, said, "Walking out of another funeral and was handed the NRA transcript. The most revolting, tone-deaf statement I’ve ever seen."[25] Others also criticized LaPierre's remarks, including Republican Party strategist and pollster Frank Luntz[34] and pundit Ann Coulter.[35] In response to LePierre's recommendation to protect schools with armed guards, then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, "You can’t make [school] an armed camp for kids."[25]
In response to the February 14, 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and adults were killed and 14 injured—one of the world's deadliest school massacres[36]—LaPierre delivered a speech on February 22 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in National Harbor, Maryland, in which he criticized the FBI, the media and gun control advocates. "As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain. The elites do not care one whit about America’s school system and schoolchildren. If they truly cared, what they would do is they would protect them. For them it is not a safety issue, it is a political issue ... [Gun control advocates] don’t care if their laws work or not. They just want get more laws to get more control over people. But the NRA, the NRA does care."[37] His reference to "elites" was questioned as some might consider him to be an "elite", as he is a multimillionaire.[37] He also argued that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms "is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright."[37]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/wayne-lapierres-trumpian-base-strategy/553964/
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Wayne LaPierre’s Cynical Exploitation of Outrage
The NRA executive vice president’s pugnacious speech on Thursday provoked an indignant response—exactly as he’d aimed to do.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
DAVID A. GRAHAM FEB 22, 2018 POLITICS
It’s been a strange few days in the American gun debate—with teenagers shaking an otherwise moribund discourse into new territory, senators being cowed on national television, and President Trump edging toward minor gun regulations. In the wake of the shooting, the Conservative Political Action Conference decided not to put National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on its list of speakers.*
But LaPierre spoke, and it was a stemwinder. Over the course of 35 minutes, LaPierre was combative and provocative. At a moment when students and others are challenging the gun consensus, he opted to escalate rather than conciliate.
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“As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain,” LaPierre said of last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. “Theelites do not care one whit about America’s school system and schoolchildren. If they truly cared, what they would do is they would protect them. For them it is not a safety issue, it is a political issue.”
This is a false binary, and it is difficult to take seriously elite-bashing from LaPierre, who has for years led one of the nation’s most powerful lobbies and earns millions from his work. But LaPierre was just getting started. He argued that the constitutional right to bear arms “is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.”
Elsewhere in the speech, he said even centrist Democrats Andrew Cuomo and Cory Booker were “European-style socialists” and said that Karl Marx was “the most assigned economist” on American college campuses.
LaPierre’s comments are, to borrow a phrase often applied to President Trump, shocking but not surprising. Year after year, LaPierre delivers fiery and controversial speeches, whether at CPAC or at the NRA’s own events. Given the frequency of mass shootings in the United States, these often come not long after some sort of massacre. It happened in 2012, after Newtown; in 2013; in 2015; in 2017; and probably on other occasions that don’t come to mind immediately. As Elspeth Reeve wrote a few years ago, this has been going on since at least 1987, when LaPierre called subway shooter Bernie Goetz a “political prisoner.”
Every time, LaPierre’s comment elicit outrage, often rightfully so; and every time, there are predictions that LaPierre has finally gone too far. Perhaps this moment really is different. The impact of teenagers from Parkland speaking out has been unpredictable and wide-ranging. During a CNN town-hall event Wednesday night, Senator Marco Rubio seemed genuinely knocked back and unprepared for the heated questioning he faced, and he made some notable concessions, including supporting the idea of raising the age limit for buying a rifle and reconsidering limiting high-capacity magazines. The president has timidly stepped toward regulation, too, backing a ban on “bump stocks” and tighter background checks. Meanwhile, LaPierre is not the only one making outlandish statements. Dana Loesch, an NRA spokeswoman, also delivered some outrageous and untrue comments at CPAC on Thursday, saying that “many in legacy media love mass shootings” and that “crying white mothers is ratings gold.”
But more often, post-shooting discussions have reverted to stalemate, and as LaPierre knows, stalemate favors the NRA. Existing gun laws are relatively loose, and all the NRA needs to win is to prevent immediate action, or else limit regulation to tinkering around the margins.
LaPierre’s claims will upset and alienate many Americans, but from the NRA’s standpoint, that’s the point. When LaPierre says wild things, the mainstream media covers them; when the mainstream media covers them, it gins up NRA supporters, who renew memberships, send new money, or rededicate themselves to lobbying their representatives. It doesn’t matter that most people will be angry at what LaPierre says. After all, poll after poll after poll has shown majority support for a range of gun-control measures, but the NRA has learned to achieve its goals with a small but staunch base.
This kind of base-oriented strategy is reminiscent of Trump’s approach to politics. It’s probably not a coincidence that LaPierre, echoing Trump, attacked “the unbelievable failure of the FBI” Thursday morning. Trump also tweeted supportively before LaPierre’s speech: “What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots. They love our Country and will do the right thing.” The danger for Trump is that it’s hard to be reelected with a small, embattled base and massive disapproval. Not so for the NRA, which functions quite effectively that way.
Even for LaPierre, there is a risk in his strategy of provocation. Someday he may go too far and incur a backlash even from his supporters. Perhaps this is that day, though there’s no particular reason to believe that at this point. The thing to remember is that outlandish statements at venues like CPAC aren’t an unforced error or a lapse in judgment. They are a carefully calibrated, and thus far highly successful, strategic choice.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/politics/wayne-lapierre-cpac-speech-nra/index.html
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NRA chief accuses Democrats of pushing 'socialist' agenda in wake of Florida shooting
Lauren Fox
By Lauren Fox, CNN
Updated 5:23 AM ET, Fri February 23, 2018
NRA chief addresses Parkland shooting 02:23
National Harbor, Maryland (CNN)The head of the biggest gun lobby in the US has accused Democrats of pushing a "socialist" agenda to deprive gun owners of their weapons, in an uncompromising speech just a week after 17 people died in the Florida school shooting.
Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, made no attempt to moderate his message a day after survivors of the Parkland shooting faced down lawmakers in a CNN debate and the President at the White House. Instead, he told conservative activists that voters should be "frightened" of any future Democrat election victories, and accused Democrats of exploiting the deaths in an effort to destroy the Second Amendment.
"Socialism is a movement that loves a smear," he said.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservatives outside Washington, LaPierre warned Democrats would use the tragedy to push an agenda that went beyond gun control. "What they want is more restrictions on the law-abiding," LaPierre said. "They want to sweep right under the carpet the failure of school security."
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Staring out into the audience, LaPierre told them "you should be anxious and you should be frightened" about the potential of another Democratic takeover of the House, Senate and White House.
Trump pushes suggestions to prevent gun violence
"If they seize power ... our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever," he said. "The first to go will be the Second Amendment."
LaPierre spent a significant portion of his remarks warning against the expansion of socialist political ideas, despite the fact that Republicans control both chambers in Congress and the White House, and the suggestion by President Donald Trump Thursday morning that he's open to gun reforms opposed by the NRA.
He called out rising-star Democratic lawmakers -- many of them potential candidates for the 2020 presidential election -- by name. He criticized independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and other high-profile Democrats, whom he accused of backing European style socialism as well creating new victimized groups and hurling insults at conservatives.
Polarizing figure
In the aftermath of a high school shooting that left 17 dead, the country has found itself once again balancing the scope of the Second Amendment with its desire to protect children in schools. LaPierre has been a deeply polarizing figure as an outspoken and consistent advocate for gun rights, who has previously been among the public figures to voice the NRA's position in the wake of mass shootings.
Once again LaPierre repeated his calls for schools to increase security, even arming schoolteachers, a controversial proposal that even some Republicans have rejected.
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.
LaPierre said the NRA will provide support and guidance on how schools can protect themselves free of charge. He argued that was "more" than the Democratic Party or news organizations were doing.
"We share a goal of safe schools, safe neighborhoods and a safe country," LaPierre said, and warned that "evil walks among us."
He also returned to an oft-used NRA slogan, one LaPierre invoked following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 students and six adults dead,"To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun."
Contrast with Rubio
LaPierre's speech comes just a day after Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has an A+ rating from the NRA, announced he was opposed to arming teachers and was in favor of raising the age limit from 18 to 21 on individuals purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15. Rubio also told the audience he was reconsidering his past opposition to limiting the size of large gun magazines.
"I absolutely believe that in this country if you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle, and I will support a law that takes that right away," Rubio said, making the comments during a CNN town hall in Florida.
Facing critics, Rubio steps into heated gun debate and signals willingness to change laws
Facing critics, Rubio steps into heated gun debate and signals willingness to change laws
Limiting the size of gun magazines and raising the age limit on buying rifles, including guns like AR-15 style rifles, are both positions that the NRA opposes.
The NRA was represented at the town hall Wednesday night by the organization's national spokeswoman, Dana Loesch, who faced sharply critical comments from Parkland shooting survivors and family members of shooting victims.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump hosted students and parents at the White House for a raw, televised listening session. By Thursday morning, Trump tweeted he was committed to pushing for comprehensive background checks and limiting the age of those buying assault-style weapons.
RELATED: This is Trump's big chance on changing gun laws -- if he wants to take it
"I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue - I hope!"
A cornerstone of LaPierre's speech centered around the fact that the NRA says they've worked to try and fix the country's background check system by encouraging lawmakers to fight to incentivize states to enter records into the National Criminal Background Checks system.
How AR-15-style guns, such as the one used in Parkland shooting, are legal
"When you hear politicians who won't fix the broken system talk about expanding it, don't buy it," LaPierre said in a pre-recorded video.
The comment came after Trump suggested on Twitter he wanted to overhaul the background checks system.
LaPierre didn't directly address Trump's tweets or positions in his speech.
RELATED: How an 'ugly,' unwanted weapon became the most popular rifle in America
Just minutes before LaPierre was scheduled to speak, however, Trump defended the NRA.
"What many people don't understand, or don't want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots. They love our Country and will do the right thing. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump tweeted.