The Decline and Fall of the NRA

The leftwing press is rejoicing over the fact that the National Rifle Association reported $312 million in income last year which is down from $367 million the prior year.

I, for one, would not be rejoicing that my enemy raked in nearly a third of a billion dollars last year. But I am not a leftist, and so their logic escapes me.

NRA vice-president Wayne LaPierre is the real power behind the throne of the NRA president, currently Oliver North. The NRA presidents come and go, typically lasting a year or two but Mr. LaPierre has held the reigns of power at the NRA since 1991.

NRA Board Has No Control

The NRA board members, like the President of the NRA, have no real power. Actor Tom Selleck recently resigned from the NRA board of directors. His publicist is reported as saying that Mr. Selleck had never been active on the board of directors and had nothing to do with policy.

This should not surprise anyone given that the NRA (which is to say Mr. LaPierre) runs its elections much like the defunct Soviet Union. It picks the people it wants to sit on the board of directors and then submits their names to its voting members for approval.

It is true that one can theoretically get on the ballot by obtaining enough signatures from voting members of the NRA. But unlike the registrar of voters who will sell you a list of persons who are registered to vote in your county for a nominal fee, the NRA won’t give potential candidates its voter list, or sell it for any amount.

Which brings us full circle. Mr. LaPierre is in no danger of losing his job. We won’t be seeing him working as a greeter at a WalMart anytime soon, or ever.

However, Mr. LaPierre looks much older than his 69 years and time catches up with all of us eventually. It will catch up, sooner or later, with Mr. LaPierre.

When it does, whatever sycophants there are left at the NRA after he is gone will battle over the dying carcass of the organization, leaving nothing but bones to be tossed into the waste bin of history.

There is an old saying that, “Rome was not built in a day.” It is also true that Rome did not collapse in a day. But the NRA is not Rome, its inevitable collapse will occur in a decade or so and the reasons why are many.

There are many reasons why the collapse of the NRA is inevitable. One of the reasons is the NRA has become dependent on the politics of fear to keep it going. Privately, Wayne LaPierre no doubt rejoiced at the Democrats regaining control of the House of Representatives. He will now have two years to exploit the insane histrionics of Nancy Pelosi and the other aged leftists of yesteryear who will now head the various house committees.

Crazy And Really Crazy

As an added bonus, the NRA will have as well the more youthful uncorked communists and socialists newly elected to the House of Representatives, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

There is Nancy Pelosi crazy and then there is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez crazy. Which is a craziness that even Ms. Pelosi, with all of her years devoted to mastering the art of crazy, won’t be able to compete.

And, of course, the campaign for the presidency in the 2020 election has already begun. We will have candidates like the leftist junior senator from California running for President, Kamala Harris, and no doubt Senator Cory “I am Spartacus” Booker from New Jersey will take a stab at running as well.

Who knows, perhaps the Democrats will choose Harris-Booker as their candidates for 2020, with Spartacus no doubt being the bottom.

NRA Just Wants Money

And there will be the NRA saying, “Give us money, or else.”

And this will be enough to keep the lights on at the NRA, for another election cycle.

But the generation of NRA true believers is aging and some of them, like the much smaller number of younger supporters, have begun to notice that they can see through the NRA’s robes.

They are beginning to discover that the NRA lies to them and the NRA makes promises it is either unable to keep, or never had any intention of keeping.

The NRA will always have its cult members. After all, Russia still has a faction who want to return to the nightmare of Stalinist Russia and so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are those people who will believe in the infallibility of the NRA to their last breath.

But there are also those who have begun to realize that without gun-control, the NRA and the other so-called gun-rights groups have no reason to exist, and that realization explains a lot about why the NRA does what it does and why it doesn’t do what it says it does.

National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bill

Take the national concealed carry reciprocity bill as an example. The NRA said give us your money, help us elect the right people in 2016, and we will make your concealed carry permit valid throughout the nation.

The bill passed the House of Representatives. The only thing the House needed to do to ensure its passage was to attach it to a budget bill because budget bills cannot be filibustered and they require only a simple majority to pass.

Democrat politicians, and more than a few Republican politicians, don’t want to see any reduction in Federal gun laws but the special interests who put them in power want the thousands of billions of dollars of taxpayer money more.

Which is why President Obama passed a law rolling back gun-bans in National Parks. It was attached to a bill he wanted to sign, and he signed it.

As my readers are well aware, I am no fan of concealed carry but there is no shortage of Federal gun laws I want to see repealed, such as the Federal Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1995, and the Federal Gun-Control Act of 1968, and the National Firearms Act of 1934, and … well, I can’t think of a Federal gun law I would keep on the books.

But the point is, there isn’t a Federal gun law I can think of which couldn’t have been repealed by simply attaching a bill repealing the law to a budget bill, or some other piece of legislation that President Trump wanted to sign.

NRA Doesn’t Support Gun Law Repeal

But the NRA did not support repealing any Federal gun-law other than reclassifying silencers, moving them from one category of Federal “regulation” to another category.

And that didn’t happen either.

There was a bill introduced in the House of Representatives to repeal the Federal Gun-Free School Zone law. Remember how often the NRA representatives railed against gun-free school zones on NRA TV?

Not only did the bill not make it out of committee, it never even got a hearing in the committee.

Where was the might and power of the NRA?

But with each Federal gun law repealed, there is that much less need to have an NRA or any of those other gun groups, and you know which ones I am referring to.

By the way, only a very tiny amount of the money you give to the NRA actually goes to supporting, or opposing, a candidate to public office. The NRA spends the money on itself.

Decline and Fall of the NRA

And so instead of writing checks to the NRA this election cycle, perhaps you should cut out the middle-man and give your money directly to your favorite politician. Odds are the Federal campaign contribution limits far exceed what you would have given to the NRA anyway.

And you would have the satisfaction of knowing that 100% of your donation went in support of a candidate you supported, instead of a candidate you opposed.

Which is another reason not to give to the NRA. The NRA has a long history of supporting anti-gun politicians.

As I said toward the beginning of this article, “There are many reasons why the collapse of the NRA is inevitable.” The NRA’s support of anti-gun politicians is just another of those many reasons.

As people wake up, the decline and fall of the NRA gets closer.

Investigating The Gun Rights Groups

Click here to search the IRS database for the latest financial reporting Form 990 from your favorite non-profit “gun-rights” group.

Click here for the NRA financial statement for 2017.

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