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So the troubles of the NRA began when they were caught selling an illegal product in New York. Or maybe it was when pressure started mounting after the Parkland shooting. Their woes certainly weren't helped when they had to skip the line of succession and appoint Ollie North as leader because everyone else was compromised by a Russian spy.
At any rate, now they claim they're broke and can no longer function as an advocacy group or a non-profit.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-financial-trouble-706371/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amberjamieson/nra-financial-crisis-parkland
Here's an article about some of the inner turmoil facing the NRA right now and post insurrections they've faced.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...alists-pressure-nra-from-within-idUSKBN1KQ09H
https://www.motherjones.com/politic...ina-cause-a-leadership-shake-up-at-the-nra-1/
https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/nra-money-thoughts-and-prayers-meme_us_5b6573b9e4b0de86f4a1bfd9
Click on the articles to see the hyperlinks to their sources.
At any rate, now they claim they're broke and can no longer function as an advocacy group or a non-profit.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-financial-trouble-706371/
The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’
The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon “be unable to exist… or pursue its advocacy mission.” (Read the NRA’s legal complaint at the bottom of this story.)
The reason, according to the NRA filing, is not its deep entanglement with alleged Russian agents like Maria Butina. Instead, the gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led “blacklisting campaign” that has inflicted “tens of millions of dollars in damages.”
In the new document — an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in late July — the NRA says it cannot access financial services essential to its operations and is facing “irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm.”
Specifically, the NRA warns that it has lost insurance coverage — endangering day-to-day operations. “Insurance coverage is necessary for the NRA to continue its existence,” the complaint reads. Without general liability coverage, it adds, the “NRA cannot maintain its physical premises, convene off-site meetings and events, operate educational programs … or hold rallies, conventions and assemblies.”
The complaint says the NRA’s video streaming service and magazines may soon shut down.
“The NRA’s inability to obtain insurance in connection with media liability raises risks that are especially acute; if insurers remain afraid to transact with the NRA, there is a substantial risk that NRATV will be forced to cease operating.” The group also warns it “could be forced to cease circulation of various print publications and magazines.”
In addition to its insurance troubles, the NRA court filing also claims that “abuses” by Cuomo and the New York State Department of Financial Services “will imminently deprive the NRA of basic bank-depository services … and other financial services essential to the NRA’s corporate existence.”
2018. Trump began his remarks by hailing a number of Republican politicians in attendance, voicing full support for Sen. Ted Cruz in his bid for re-election. (Tom Brenner/The New York Times)
President Trump leaves the stage after addressing the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas, May 4th, 2018.
The lawsuit presents these financial risks as catastrophic. Without access to routine banking services, the NRA claims, “it will be unable to exist as a not-for-profit or pursue its advocacy mission.” The lawsuit accuses New York’s government of seeking to “silence one of America’s oldest constitutional rights advocates,” pleading to the court: “If their abuses are not enjoined, they will soon, substantially, succeed.”
The lawsuit stems from actions taken by New York financial regulators to halt the sale of an illegal, NRA-branded insurance policy. The NRA actively marketed “Carry Guard,” a policy to reimburse members for legal costs incurred after firing a legal gun. In May, the state of New York found that Carry Guard “unlawfully provided liability insurance to gun owners for certain acts of intentional wrongdoing.” The NRA’s insurance partners agreed to stop selling the policies and pay a $7 million fine.
The NRA complaint alleges that New York was not content to block this single insurance product, but instead campaigned to sever the NRA’s ties to a wide range of financial service providers, from insurance companies to banks.
The NRA did not respond to a request for more detail about its financial distress, but its most recent financial disclosure also shows it overspent by nearly $46 million in 2016.
The lawsuit decries pressure from state regulators in the wake of the Parkland, Florida massacre — including a letter asking financial institutions to heed “the voices of the passionate, courageous, and articulate young people who have experienced this recent horror first hand” — and from the governor himself. In April, Cuomo tweeted: “I urge companies in New York State to revisit any ties they have to the NRA and consider their reputations, and responsibility to the public.”
In its complaint, the NRA paints these actions as a “malicious conspiracy to stifle the NRA’s speech and induce a boycott of the NRA.” Cuomo and state regulators, the NRA alleges, were intent on “suppressing the NRA’s pro-Second Amendment viewpoint” and had engaged in “unlawful conduct with the intent to obstruct, chill, deter, and retaliate against the NRA’s core political speech.”
In the filing, the NRA reveals that its longtime insurer broke off negotiations this winter and “stated that it was unwilling to renew coverage at any price.” [Emphasis in original.] The NRA claims it “has encountered serious difficulties obtaining corporate insurance coverage to replace coverage withdrawn.” In addition, the NRA contends that “multiple banks” have now balked at doing business with it “based on concerns that any involvement with the NRA — even providing the organization with basic depository services — would expose them to regulatory reprisals.”
The lawsuit seeks an immediate injunction to block state authorities from “interfering with, terminating, or diminishing any of the NRA’s contracts and/or business relationships with any organizations.” Without court intervention, the complaint reads, “the NRA will suffer irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm if it is unable to acquire insurance or other banking services due to Defendants’ actions.”
Cuomo also did not respond to a request for comment, but has previously waved off the NRA’s lawsuit as “a futile and desperate attempt to advance its dangerous agenda to sell more guns.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amberjamieson/nra-financial-crisis-parkland
The NRA Says It's Suffered "Tens Of Millions Of Dollars" Of Harm Since Parkland
"If the NRA goes bankrupt...they'll be in my thoughts and prayers," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The National Rifle Association claims it has suffered "tens of millions of dollars" of harm after insurance companies and banks stopped working with them after the Parkland shooting.
The guns rights organization made the claim in documents filed in a New York federal court in late July, which were first reported by Rolling Stone.
The NRA is suing the New York State Department of Financial Services and Gov. Andrew Cuomo after the state agency encouraged financial services companies in New York not to do business with the gun rights organization after the Florida shooting.
The NRA argues in its lawsuit that it's been the victim of a "discrimination campaign" and that it has suffered harm to its reputation and marketing damages worth tens of millions of dollars.
"The NRA has suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages," the lawsuit read. "Such damages include, without limitation, damages due to reputational harm, increased development and marketing costs for any potential new NRA-endorsed insurance programs, and lost royalty amounts owed to the NRA, as well as attorneys’ fees, legal expenses, and other costs."
The hardline group also claims that if it cannot use banking services and receive donations from members then it "will be unable to exist as a not-for-profit."
"Simply put, defendants made it clear to banks and insurers that it is bad business in New York to do business with the NRA," said the organization in its complaint.
Back in April, the state financial services agency issued a memo calling on insurers, banks, and other financial companies to "review" their relationships with the NRA and other gun promotional organizations.
The memo names the Parkland shooting — where 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 — as one of the reasons to be careful of public safety.
David Hogg, one of the Parkland teens that became the face of the anti-gun violence movement March for Our Lives, tweeted on Saturday that the NRA is not in financial crisis but is "trying to fool us into believing this" because it wants donations.
On Saturday, hundreds of protesters — including several survivors of the Parkland shooting — marched on the organization's headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, for the National March on NRA protest.
The governor of New York said on Saturday that an insurance product being offered by the NRA — a liability insurance for instances of self-defense shootings called "carryguard" — is illegal in the state of New York.
"We put the insurance carrier on notice, they stopped that insurance product, and the NRA is not getting a commission from the sale of an illegal product. You know, what do you want me to say? My heart bleeds for them?" said Cuomo during a press stop in the Bronx.
"You're not supposed to be selling an illegal product in the first place, don't complain when you get caught with an illegal product," he declared.
On Friday, New York State filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and the governor called on other states to also ban the insurance program the NRA sells.
"If the NRA goes bankrupt because of the State of New York, they'll be in my thoughts and prayers. I'll see you in court," said Cuomo in a statement.
Here's an article about some of the inner turmoil facing the NRA right now and post insurrections they've faced.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...alists-pressure-nra-from-within-idUSKBN1KQ09H
Hardline U.S. 'gundamentalists' pressure NRA from within
About 100 protesters, many wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “NRA = Not Real Activists,” marched through the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Dallas in May to slam the powerful gun lobby as too conciliatory on gun rights and rally for their candidate for the board.
Adam Kraut, a gun rights lawyer, fell about 4,000 votes short of the 71,000 needed for election, but earned 5,000 more than the previous year, a sign of the growth of the Second Amendment purists within the NRA known to many as “gundamentalists.”
With opinion polls showing U.S. public support for more gun control growing in the wake of mass shootings in recent years, the NRA is facing internal pressure from this little-known force that is demanding that the leadership concede zero ground to gun-control advocates.
Its rise has rattled the NRA leadership and threatens the association’s ability to hold on to moderate supporters and to make compromises that might help fend off tougher gun control measures, according to some of the two dozen gun-rights activists, policy experts and gun-control advocates interviewed for this story.
“Generally, they have a disproportionately huge amount of power in the gun-rights movement,” said Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist.
The NRA has faced divisions before. An internal revolt at the 1977 meeting in Cincinnati turned the polite, sport-shooting organization into a bare-knuckled political lobby that today claims five million members and is closely aligned with the Republican Party, funding pro-gun politicians. The NRA, which spent $30 million to support Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, is often viewed by gun-control advocates as implacably opposed to tighter gun laws.
The NRA leadership has put up obstacles to Kraut’s election, both with bylaws that make it harder for candidates not put forward by the nominating committee to get elected to the board, and by enlisting a senior member to campaign against him.
Marion Hammer, a past president of the NRA and one of the group’s most successful lobbyists, denounced unsanctioned candidates in a column on the website Ammoland just as Kraut appeared on the 2018 ballot. Though Hammer did not name Kraut, he was one of only two non-approved candidates to run.
“Once again the NRA is being threatened by the enemy within,” Hammer wrote. “It is time to wake up and stop it before it begins.”
Neither the NRA nor Hammer responded to requests to address the influence of the gundamentalists and the criticism that these activists and other gun-rights groups directed at the lobby.
SOCIAL MEDIA PRESSURE
The Dallas protesters, almost all white men, included bearded outdoorsmen and buttoned-down libertarians. Some said they hid their T-shirts while entering the conventional hall for fear that NRA security would ban them.
Kraut, 31, who says he grew up in a house without guns but as an adult taught his father how to shoot, practices firearms law in suburban Philadelphia and also hosts a video blog called The Legal Brief on The Gun Collective, a YouTube channel.
He has campaigned for the NRA to push for even more expansive gun-rights laws. He wants to change NRA bylaws, such as imposing term limits for board members and mandatory meeting attendance, to renew its leadership.
“Some members feel it (the NRA) doesn’t go far enough to defend what we believe to be the core of the Second Amendment,” Kraut told Reuters.
One of Kraut’s most prominent supporters, Tim Harmsen, who led the pro-Kraut march through the convention center, has 770,000 subscribers to the Military Arms Channel on YouTube, where he criticizes the NRA for being weak on gun laws.
“We’re going to continue to apply pressure (on the NRA) every way that we can through social media and we’ll be there again next year,” Harmsen said.
These hardliners deeply cherish their right under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. They oppose any form of gun control, saying criminals will find ways around gun laws, which only strip lawful gun owners of the right to self-defense and protection against state tyranny.
The gun-rights purists are outraged by any concessions the NRA makes in the wake of mass shootings, even if they are made to avoid stricter gun control laws. Opinion polls such as a regular Gallup survey show growing support for gun control in recent years. Within that trend, support for gun control typically spikes immediately after mass shootings, then falls closer to pre-massacre levels within a few months.
After a shooter killed 58 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas last year, the NRA supported federal regulation of bump stocks, accessories that the gunman used to fire his semiautomatic rifles more quickly. The Justice Department then ordered an effective ban that is close to being finalized.
Amid nationwide protests that followed a Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people in February, the NRA endorsed strengthening background checks for gun purchasers and emergency protection orders that allow law-enforcement officials to temporarily take guns away from people deemed dangerous.
“For us, some of the things that come out of NRA headquarters are just outrageous and abhorrent,” said Jeff Knox, a Kraut supporter whose father, Neal Knox, led the “Revolt at Cincinnati” in 1977. “It’s: Holy cow, what are these guys thinking?”
https://www.motherjones.com/politic...ina-cause-a-leadership-shake-up-at-the-nra-1/
Did Alleged Russian Spy Maria Butina Cause a Leadership Shake-up at the NRA?
On May 7, the National Rifle Association released a curious press release declaring that Oliver North, the key player in the Iran-contra scandal and an NRA board member, was “poised to become” the group’s president. Earlier that day, Peter Brownell, then finishing his first term as NRA president, had announced that he would not seek a second annual term in order to devote more time to his family business, a firearms retail company.
This changing of the guard—and how it happened—was odd. For fifteen years, the NRA leadership had followed a specific pattern: an officer was elected by the board to serve two consecutive annual terms as second vice president, then two as first vice president, and, finally, two as president. But the Brownell-to-North transition broke this orderly process. North at the time was serving in neither vice president position. And his ascension was a surprise—even to North. The day of the move, North told NRATV, “I didn’t expect this to be happening…This was very sudden.” (North also remarked, “A coup is being worked against the president of the United States and every conservative organization on the planet.”)
This development puzzled NRA watchers. North had not been in the line of succession. He was not prepared for the position and said he would need weeks before he could assume the post. Brownell was the first NRA president in a decade and a half not to seek a second term, and the first vice president, Richard Childress, was passed over. Childress claimed that because of his own commitments he could not even serve as interim president. That job went to the second vice president, Carolyn Meadows. The NRA had been known as an outfit with a strict hierarchy. But now all that was being thrown aside in what North called an “unexpected” and “sudden” action.
What wasn’t publicly known at the time was that on April 25—two weeks before this seemingly hasty NRA leadership makeover—FBI agents in tactical gear raided the apartment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian who three months later would be charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly serving as a secret agent for the Russian government in the United States. For years, Butina and her mentor, Alexander Torshin, a Russian official tied to Vladimir Putin, had hooked up with the NRA and other conservative groups, allegedly as part of what the Justice Department called a covert influence operation. Butina, who ran a gun rights group in Russia, and Torshin, who has been accused of money laundering (a charge he denies), had attended NRA events and other right-wing get-togethers, and during the 2016 campaign used their NRA contacts to try to arrange a meeting between Putin and Donald Trump. (It didn’t happen.) During this operation, according to prosecutors, Butina relied upon the assistance of conservative consultant Paul Erickson, her romantic partner and an active NRA member.
Did the FBI investigation of Butina lead to Brownell’s quick retreat from the NRA leadership? The NRA did not respond to a request for comment. And neither did Brownell. “He’s not taking calls,” the receptionist at his company says.
Brownell did have history with Butina. In 2015, she organized a trip to Russia for an NRA delegation that included Brownell, top NRA donor Joe Gregory, and David Clarke, then the Milwaukee County sheriff. During that jaunt, the NRAers met with Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister, who had been sanctioned by the Obama administration in 2014 in retaliation for Putin’s intervention in Ukraine. Rogozin led the ultra-right party Rodina, and his government portfolio included a matter of particular interest to this delegation: the arms industry. He had the task of overseeing Russia’s military-industrial complex and rejuvenating the nation’s weapons-making business.
While Brownell, then the NRA’s first vice president, and his NRA colleagues were in Moscow, they visited the headquarters of ORSIS, a private arms manufacturer. Accompanied by Butina, they watched a video extolling the ORSIS T-5000, a highly accurate sniper rifle that had been identified by the Pentagon as a threat to American troops. They toured the company’s manufacturing plant and observed rifles being made. They also test-fired ORSIS rifles at an on-site shooting range. The firm presented the NRA group with watches bearing the company’s logo. Weeks later, the company produced a promotional video showing the NRA delegates gushing over the T-5000. The video was posted on YouTube. That is, Brownell and the others, who had been escorted to the ORSIS offices by Butina, were helping ORSIS sell a rifle that worried US military planners.
During that visit, Brownell and the NRA delegation met Svetlana Nikolaeva, the president of the parent company of ORSIS. (She appears in that promotional video with the NRA crew.) In what was likely not a coincidence, Nikolaeva’s oligarch husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, provided financial support to Butina, according to private testimony Butina gave to Senate investigators this year before she was charged. (One document filed by federal prosecutors maintains that Butina has “ties to the Russian oligarchy.”)
The Butina case has been an embarrassment for the NRA, which has yet to comment on it, and, more important, it has raised questions about interactions between the gun lobby and Russia, including the possibility of Russian sources funneling money to the NRA. (According to a BuzzFeed report, Butina and Erickson engaged in financial transactions totaling nearly $300,000 that were flagged by banking investigators as suspicious.) A previous NRA president, David Keene, who was part of that delegation to Russia, enthusiastically pledged his assistance to Butina and her Russian organization. And Brownell was smack-dab in the middle of the NRA-Butina connection.
If Brownwell’s departure as top gun at the NRA was not related to the Butina case, then the gun lobby was quite fortunate he was gone by the time this scandal exploded.
https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/nra-money-thoughts-and-prayers-meme_us_5b6573b9e4b0de86f4a1bfd9
NRA Gets Trolled With 'Thoughts And Prayers' Over Reported Financial Woes
The National Rifle Association is reportedly falling on hard times.
According to a Rolling Stone article published on Friday, the organization claims it may soon “be unable to exist” due to an ongoing legal battle with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and the state’s financial regulators.
Many Twitter users have balked at the NRA’s assertion, which it made in a court filing. Comedian Chelsea Handler suggested it could “ask some of the Republicans they donated millions to for a loan.”
Other tweeters, meanwhile, sarcastically shared the “thoughts and prayers” trope that is often trotted out by political leaders following mass shootings:
Join me in sending thoughts and prayers to the @NRA. https://t.co/molJ9HOfV2
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) August 3, 2018
Allow me to be the first to offer my thoughts and prayers.https://t.co/rwYjNhdlSe
— Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) August 3, 2018
The @NRA is in deep financial trouble.
Sending my "thoughts and prayers."https://t.co/HbD8AzsubZ
— Stephen J. Cloobeck (@sjcloobeck) August 3, 2018
Don't worry, @NRA! We're sending you our thoughts and prayers. https://t.co/k8Km4ehSMs #NRA #ThoughtsAndPrayers
— Jacopo della Quercia (@Jacopo_della_Q) August 4, 2018
Click on the articles to see the hyperlinks to their sources.
