'I don't trust them any more': how the NRA became its own worst enemy

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) Oliver North cut a lonely figure as he walked through the Indianapolis airport, quietly slipping out of the city midway through the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) convention which was still in progress. A day later, North announced from afar that he was not seeking a traditional second term as its president, while it also emerged that the New York attorney general was investigating the NRA’s tax-exempt status.

That was April 2019. More than a year later, the turmoil that heralded North’s departure has culminated in the New York attorney general, Letitia James, suing to put the NRA out of business, alleging that senior leaders used charitable donations for family trips to the Bahamas, private jets and lavish meals that shaved $64m off the organisation’s balance sheet in three years, turning a surplus into a financial crisis.

The NRA has been the most powerful gun lobby in the world since another former president of the group, Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, promised to resist efforts to prise firearms “from my cold, dead hands”. It has fought to suppress research on the danger of guns in society, keep open loopholes for background checks on gun sales and even for firearms to be present in schools.

The NRA also has been an electoral ally of Donald Trump, spending $30m to help him beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democrats, gun control activists and others have fought long and hard to curb its influence. But in the end, the NRA’s worst enemy was the NRA. Victim of its own success and hubris, it strayed from its core purpose and shot itself in the foot. ..........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/07/nra-new-york-attorney-general-lawsuit-leaders

[Aristus]

1. You'd need an electron microscope to see how little I care that the trust of crazed gunfucks

has been breeched...

[Thirties Child]

2. Mr. 30s liked to target shoot, joined a gun club in Georgia.

You could only join the club if you joined the NRA. If lots of gun clubs demanded the same thing, I'd guess that their numbers about membership are misleading.

During our ten years on four acres in rural New Mexico (Grant County) Mr. 30s built his own target range, dropped his NRA membership immediately. My attitude to his guns was boredom. He was pretty much a Renaissance Man, and I very much preferred the writer, the potter, the woodturner to the shooter.