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Wayne’s World Is Crumbling
I didn’t write about this yesterday because I was angry and I rarely write well when my emotions get the best of me. I am a Patriot Benefactor Life member of the NRA. I have voted for responsible candidates in every NRA election. I have never voted for Wayne LaPierre. I care about the organization and its mission.
Yet, in spite of that, if what the NY AG has alleged is true, a platoon of Wayne LaPierre cronies have been elected to the Board and continue to help him pillage membership funds on behalf of himself and his family. That’s money that suckers like me contributed. So, yeah, I guess I’m still a little angry even today. Nothing has been proved at this point. All of this is allegation. I leave it for those interested to find the facts and make a determination for themselves. While I do not know if any of this is true, the opinions below are based on the possibility that it may be.
Now, I have no quarrel with the New York AG taking Wayne to task for what he’s allegedly done. I have not seen the evidence. I have not seen the receipts. I can’t imagine that a state Attorney General would make claims it could not back up in court (unlike, for example, the Mueller team with General Flynn). Some, or even a large part of the lawsuit may be smoke and mirrors.
If the smoke proves to be from a fire, and the mirrors turn out to be a true reflection of the leadership of the NRA, then I have no quarrel with her taking on LaPierre and his alleged co-conspirators who have allegedly defrauded the membership. I have no quarrel with her investigation demonstrating that the NRA Board of Directors is little more than a bunch of chained and costumed characters in an S&M bondage flick. But let’s remember, they defrauded the membership, not the state of New York, and the membership is not perpetrator, they’re the victim. What the NY AG proposes is, in fact, just shooting everyone.
Reviewing the allegations, I’m very troubled by what is there. I’m mostly troubled by the alleged lack of oversight of a compliant Board. I once got fired from a board because I questioned the CEO. I would rather be fired than be labeled compliant. I would never want to be a current NRA board member. I don’t know how you could look any other NRA member in the eye if this is true.
The truth is the truth. The people who have occupied the board positions – many of them including Hollywood stars – are fully to blame for the debacle that the NRA faces in its lawsuit. They’ve been sitting in the living room, smelling the smoke, feeling the heat increase, seeing the flames, and fighting this fire with a water pistol while a rebel faction in the organization has been arguing that it’s time to bring out the two-inch lines and put the damned fire out. The NRA board – and everyone on it – should be writing a letter of apology to the membership that ends with the words “therefore, I resign.”
The NRA’s countersuit, which I have not yet read, sounds like pretty weak sauce to me. I do think they have a point with regard to the First Amendment. But the remainder of it seems contrived to ignore the facts in the AG’s lawsuit. Keep in mind, I love the NRA. It truly is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, founded in 1871. It’s the NRA leadership I abhor.
Several years ago, a true American patriot, Lt. Col. Oliver North, tried to force Wayne LaPierre out. He didn’t do that because he needed a job. He had one. He did it because he cared about the organization. But instead of listening to a stand-up guy, the board backed Wayne, meaning, from my point of view, that they approved of Wayne’s wasteful and selfish consumption of resources as well as his strident but frankly ineffective leadership. Wayne removed Chris Cox, who was one of the most effective and articulate voices on the NRA payroll. Then, because he perceived it to be a threat to his “leadership” (it was telling the truth about the NRA and its leadership) he canceled NRA TV. People who had put a lot of time, effort, and energy into the project, Like Dana Loesch, were de-platformed in an attempt to cling to the reins of power for a few more years.
The picture that emerged, again, solely from my opinionated viewpoint, is that of a tin-pot dictator trying desperately to stay in power. Every month I get NRA publications, and while the quality of the writing of the technical articles in Shooting Illustrated and American Rifleman are good, the editorial content is simply more re-written crap from the last five years.
Democrats are bad
The government’s coming for your guns.
Send us your money and we’ll fight for you.
Wash, rinse, repeat. I’m sure if you did a computer comparison article to article of the last 20 columns by Wayne, you’d find the same hackneyed phrases and overused adjectives in each of them. When you bang the drum to lead the march, you have to make sure you’re in step with the marchers. Wayne’s been out of step for a really long time. And he can’t play the drums, either.
Most of my fellow life members care deeply about the organization and at the annual meeting every year we vote. We vote our ballots before the meeting, and we vote at the meeting to ensure that we can get a decent board. But the structure of the NRA, that was set up when a bunch of gun-control losers tried to take control, prevents our votes from counting and ensures the election of pro-Wayne board members. Marion Hammer, one of the past presidents of the NRA is on record saying “the NRA is not looking for new leadership. We have an outstanding, super-qualified, selfless, dedicated Second Amendment-to-the-bone Leader. And that is not likely to change until way off in the distant future.” Pay no attention to the fact that payments to Marion were flagged in the lawsuit itself.
Sadly, it’s the size of the NRA Board that is one of the major problems with the organization. There are 76 board members. A board that large cannot be effective at management. There would never be a board meeting where all 76 members could actually contribute something without the meeting taking days, if not weeks. Whoever thought 76 members on the board was a good idea is either an idiot or someone who wanted to take the organization over and install a flock of sheep. In order to be nominated, a person has to either get a nomination from the official nominating committee of the board (making it self-perpetuating) or run a campaign outside the NRA to gather signatures and petition for a board seat. Because so few of the members understand the voting system, and how their votes are counted, the board-approved members tend to get elected (or re-elected) time and again. And if they’re nominated by the board, you can bet they’ll be loyal to LaPierre.
Because there are 76 board members, only about a third are elected in any given year, and because of the way the votes are tallied and collected, change is difficult to orchestrate. If you have 40 people running, and you can vote for 20 of them, then if you vote for any of the board-nominated candidates (for example, Tom Selleck, whom I respect) because of his name recognition, your vote makes his election likely, but it dilutes its effectiveness generally because only the top vote-getters are elected. Thus, the only want to force change is to vote only for those who are petition nominated and loyal to the Second Amendment. For the past several years I have voted only for petition-driven candidates because they have a desire to effect change, and change is sorely needed. But every year the board members elected are a bunch of current leadership sycophants who do not have the interest of the organization at heart. They have only the interest of Wayne Lapierre at heart.
All that said, what the New York AG is trying to do is blame the passengers in the back of the bus for the driver’s ridiculously bad driving. Most of my fellow life members paid real money for the privilege to claim NRA life membership. Now the NY AG wants to not only change the driver, it wants to impound the bus and steal our wheels. That’s not going to fly.
There are so many defenses to this lawsuit that what it amounts to is a political stunt in an election year. It is a virtue-signaling news release cloaked as litigation. It attempts to intrude on protected First Amendment rights of free association. Its intent is solely to suppress the message of the NRA. While the leadership may stink, the message does not. We need greater respect for the Second Amendment, not less. Simply put this is the New York AG trying to bankrupt an association that does nothing but advocate for the rights of gun owners (while, sadly, simultaneously lining the pockets of its leadership).
If I were representing my fellow life members I would move to intervene and try to force change in several ways. I would file a third-party petition against the leadership, demand that a Court of equity order the restructuring of the NRA to a 12-person board, with the Chairman chosen from a slate of candidates nominated solely by life members and prohibiting the nomination of anyone who has served on the board in the last 30 years. I would order a complete restructuring of the bylaws to make the organization more accountable to the membership, and insist upon regular audits by outside auditors. I would cap the salary of the CEO at $100,000 per year, and cap any expense account at a yearly max of $25,000. I would allow reasonable mileage expenses, but I would restrict hotel and per-diem expenses to the amount allowed for federal employees. The parts of the organization that provided value and made money would be revitalized, and those that sucked out resources would be closed.
Those reforms, or ones much like them, are needed to make the organization accountable. The Board, sadly, is the first thing that has to go. Anyone who tells you otherwise has something to gain from their relationship with LaPierre.
Political game-playing aside, the AG’s lawsuit should not succeed on the merits. The entire organization and its members are not to blame for LaPierre’s alleged self-dealing. Only those who actively planned, carried out, aided, or abetted that alleged pillaging are responsible. I’m looking at the board. It needs to be held accountable, and the entire board should resign along with LaPierre. Hopefully, the lawsuit will be seen for what it is. But hopefully, it can also be used to drive some much-needed change in an organization desperately in need of it.
Published in Guns
I’m a Life Member of the NRA and I agree with virtually everything you’ve said. I supported LTC North’s attempt to get LaPierre out; he’s truly a corrupt individual. Each mailing that I’ve received from the NRA asking for more money, I’ve returned with a large felt-tipped pen inscription of “NO MORE MONEY FROM ME UNTIL LaPIERRE’S GONE”. (And, I would ask all of my fellow NRA members to do the same thing.)
Still, I believe that the AG of New York is even more corrupt than LaPierre. Her actions aren’t against LaPierre (even though they could have been); they’re against the NRA.
Democrats have given their violent paramiltary arm unchecked power in some of our largest cities. And their propaganda arm describes it as “mostly peaceful.” Not one American in five believes that guff.
Not this one. Maybe the next.
The last figure I heard was that since the Democratic Party temper tantrum of the last two months, membership has been increasing at a rate of 1000 per day.
I don’t know anything about LaPierre. Chuck him out and 90% of his board with him. NY AG Letitia James ran on shutting down the NRA, and while she hasn’t done that yet, she has successfully made “we are coming for your guns” a plank in the presidential platform.
Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.
The salary is not the problem. The problem is the self-dealing grift. If anything, such low compensation as you propose increases the tendency toward grift.
NRA member here. I am not lifetime because despite what some seem to think the NRA is not a club but a political organization. I want to pay my membership and more for my voice. I do not know if the top is corrupt, I expect it is to some degree because everything is. Including AGs out of NewYork. Maybe especially AGs out of New York. I will wait for facts and investigations. But this much is known. The NRA is not the Clinton Charities. An organization so corrupt no AG dissolved. It is an effective political organization furthering and protecting gun right. It actually does something so well it scares the Left. Something I want and need done. If there is corruption at the top maybe some reorganization needs to happen. But talk dissolving and corruption at this point sounds like politics. Democrat politics.
I appreciate the background and summary of the situation. I was hoping for more coverage when Oliver North was ousted, I respect him as well and wondered what it was all about. The self-dealing and expense account abuses don’t surprise me, that’s every organization, worse when tdd they’ve been as effective as the NRA has.
I’ve been an occasional NRA Member (I’d been looking at other organizations after the Oliver North kerfluffle) but will sign up again for sure after this, not for LaPierre but to counter the NYAG and them Dems.
@ctlaw I think the salary should be set in a way that fairly compensates someone’s efforts but not so much that it begs them to stay and work for themselves, not the organization. I think that’s where the NRA is now. Grift could be corrected by independent audits and by a smaller, active board.
For what it’s worth, I’m tanned, rested and ready if they call.
20 columns? I think you could go up an order of magnitude there.
I’m a Life member, and I used to donate generously to them too (never paid up for the Benefactor level because I didn’t see the point – even though I donated more than enough to have put myself there). But I had enough long before Ollie attempted his coup – the constant affiliation with Ted Nugent long after it was apparent Nugent was crazy, the endless shilling for more cash, the tone-deafness of Wayne blathering on about video games (Wayne, your speechwriter called, you’re still using your 1997 script!), and the way the NRA continued to promote a particular culture of gun owners as only being Southern-livin’ country-music lovin’ rich hunters, none of which am I. Oh, and then there were the various frauds where they’d subscribe you to a Columbia House like deal where unsolicited books, DVDs, and other stuff would just show up in the mail, and if you didn’t remember to immediately fire it back they’d bill, then attempt to collect.
In short, the cultural image of the NRA has, for the last decade, been out of touch and out of tune with who gun owners are, and who many gun owners want to be seen as.
Frankly, if the NRA board had had the balls to can Wayne, or ease him into retirement a decade ago, the NY AG (an office routinely abused by the Empire State to attempt to impose New York laws on the other 49 states) would have no opening with the rest of the NRA, and the NRA could have spent the last decade recognizing that most gun owners aren’t caricatures of 1990s Democratic stereotypes of rural Republicans, but are urban non-hunters whose interest in firearms may well be independent of party lines and masculinity proofs.
The NRA should fire him now, and clean house thoroughly, and if that includes sacrificing Wayne to the NY AG, so be it.
I don’t know the details here. I do not think that it is automatically improper to hold a corporation responsible for the wrongful actions of its top management and board. In fact, corporations are usually responsible for such wrongful actions. Dissolution of a corrupt non-profit corporation does not strike me as an impermissible remedy in all cases.
I do not know whether the allegations against the NRA are serious enough to warrant such a sanction.
You stated: “I have no quarrel with her investigation demonstrating that the NRA Board of Directors is little more than a bunch of chained and costumed characters in an S&M bondage flick. But let’s remember, they defrauded the membership, not the state of New York, and the membership is not perpetrator, they’re the victim. What the NY AG proposes is, in fact, just shooting everyone.”
Well said! In this day and age, those on the Far Left use their power not so much to bring about justice, but to sensationalize every single possible scandal in a method that tarnishes everyone of us in the Center.
I am also an NRA Life Member, and I endorse this message.
Although it’s clear the NY AG is a hack, being a hack.
The NRA is a political advocacy group that also provides worthwhile instruction for first time hunters, firearms instruction, and shooting competitions.
The allegations are an internal matter for its members. This action may play well in some states, especially in those former colonies that rebelled against the British. The sad thing is after a brutal fight some of these colonies didn’t waste anytime surrendering their 2nd Amendment rights.
A housecleaning is necessary, but why is everything piling up in 2020? One of the big lessons of the current unrest is the importance of unexamined strong interconnections. CCP-19 and the lockdowns made everyone uneasy, but who expected this spasm to follow? I expect other blows. Every vulnerable organization of the right is in somebody’s sights.
I hope other organizations get the message – you are out of time to clean your house. Talking to you, Mitch.
I am an NRA member. I don’t even own a gun but after the Newtown – Sandy Hook Massacre I thought it necessary to make a statement about responsible gun owners so I joined. I very much identify with @skipsul‘s comment above.
I am a Life Member. I also have long felt a certain discomfort about the presence of Wayne LaPierre being in his current position. It occurred to me years ago that people like him do not want to win any battles, but, instead, want the war to go on indefinitely. His annual salary and benefits depend on it extending into perpetuity. I felt the same way about the leadership in the Sierra Club and any number of other organizations with professional leadership. There is a conflict of interest when meeting the goals of the organization you head will mean the dissolution of your position and salary, particularly when that salary is in the high six figures.
I don’t know the details of the charges against LaPierre. I have heard some of the things he has allegedly done with the NRA’s funds over which he held some discretionary power. If he did, indeed, use those funds for his own and his family’s vacations, etc., and made the Organization pay for his clothing, then I think he definitely needs to be removed from his position, and, if appropriate, charged criminally. Anyone who assisted in his alleged abuse should be similarly treated.
The NRA is the most effective lobbying group we have for the preservation of our Second Amendment rights. That should not be effected by this developing problem. LaPierre is one member of an organization that is comprised of several million members and represents their interests. He is not the organization, nor does its existence and effectiveness depend upon him. The NY Attorney General is a nasty political opportunist. With regard to dealing with her, we share a common interest with LaPierre. With regard to his alleged crimes, we share no common interest other than seeing him out the door.
I’m a life member, and I’m going to wiat and see what happens. The charges may or may not be true – I don’t know. However, I read somewhere the AG did not file criminal charges, but is filing a civil lawsuit. If misinformed, please help me out.
However, this is clearly a political hit job, trying to dissolve the NRA instead of rooting out alleged graft in its leadership. If Ollie North quit because of graft, why didn’t he report it from the gitgo? If he did, why no legal action until now?
Regardless of the leadership, I’m sending money because we have a political fight on our hands . . .
Thank you @anthonydewitt from a fellow Benefactor Life NRA Member. Here is a link to my letter to the Board of Directors following the Oliver North debacle: https://www.forrestertrust.co/open-letter-to-nra-board-of-directors/ A letter which was, obviously, ignored by a Board which should already have, as you’ve said, tendered its resignation with apologies to the membership.
This issue has been out there for over a year since Oliver North resigned. Many of the details have been known since then and its been a frequent topic on Second Amendment blogs. There was even speculation back then that the NRA being a New York corporation made it a sitting duck for an aggressive and progressive AG.
Wayne LaPierre is not a good macho name.
I wouldn’t be too quick to jump onto Oliver North’s side in this fight. Ackermann McQueen (AckMac for short) has been joined at the hip with the NRA for over two decades, and in 2014, they launched “NRA Freestyle” which went nowhere. AckMac then capitalized on that lack of success by launching NRA-TV. They hired Cam Edwards (a really nice guy) and Dana Loesch (who waved her clenched fist of freedom in everyone’s face) and it went… nowhere.
The NRA started to question what they were getting for all their money, and that’s when the sparks started to fly. Oliver North was a host of a show on AckMac’s NRA-TV, and by all indications, it was that connection that caused the rift. This just might be a case where both Col. North and WLP are in the wrong.
And this, if true, is huge, and will be a big, big headache for the NRA Board of Directors.
This has the potential to be an awful, horrible situation for America’s gun owners.
EXACTLY!!
The most likely scenario, considering the track records of each.
The important thing is that the NRA is powerful despite LaPierre. The NRA is not about the organization, it’s about the gun owners. They are the power. LaPierre is just a leach that convinces people to give him a whole lot of money, with which he makes a lot of pretty statements but does nothing to end restrictions on gun rights.
If Lapierre and his minions are ever ousted from the NRA, and that will happen after the GOP establishment is cleaned out of Bush dynasty minions (which means never), then I’ll support the NRA again. Until then, I urge you to support Gun Owners of America. They have a lot less corruption, for now.
Concur
Not as bad as Pierre Delecto.
NB: I highlighted it to check the spelling and my Mac took me straight to Good Mitt’s bio.
Now might be a good time to get involved with the state-level gun rights group of your choice.
I once put the names of my entire office into the Carlos Danger Name Generator
Mine came out as Guillermo Sly. If Mitt had used the generator to come up with his pseudonym, it would have been “Pablo Menace”
I think Pablo Menace is a better name than Pierre Delecto.
Mitt chose poorly, again.