National Rifle Association

Using a dying eagle and a flag as tinder wood for the guns since 1871.

Time to dodge some bullets Guns

Come and take them!

Militia movement Second Amendment Steven Seagal God, guns and gays

Shooting stars

Militia movement Mitch McConnell Art Robinson Enrique Tarrio

A not-so-well-regulated militia

Militia movement Three Percenters Posse Comitatus Eustace Mullins v - t - e

“”I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.

—Karl Frederick, NRA President, 1934

“”The NRA is a marketing organization, and its flagship product is fear.

—Michael Bloomberg

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is an American corporate shill political action group that has sold more guns than Sam Colt and Bill Ruger. It originally functioned (until the 1977 Revolt on Cincinnati) as a relatively moderate organization, sometimes said to focus on rifle marksmanship and not even mentioning the Second Amendment or gun laws (although the latter has been disputed). The History News Network has stated that once, as early as the 1930s, they basically concern-trolled about "bad" and "unreasonable" gun laws while presenting themselves as supporters of "reasonable" firearms controls and fear mongering about the "attempted dictation of anti-gun cranks and pacifists who are 'out to outlaw firearms'", thus watering down much proposed gun legislation. But... the NRA no longer represents hunters and collectors, having been taken over by investment groups which own large percentages of most firearms/ammo companies. Not surprisingly, it promotes ownership of guns in America at all costs (as long as the industry receives your costs, of course), and has a knee-jerk reaction against the mildest proposals for gun-control legislation, or even against the enforcement of existing gun laws.

They are not known for teaching their members how to properly debate (shout at) proponents of increased gun control, and as a result, most NRA members resort to clichés such as "guns don't kill people, people kill people", "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy/woman/toddler(?) with a gun", and other empty platitudes. Their ultimate goal is to bring about a world where it's socially acceptable to be armed at all times, and if a "citizen" circling your neighborhood with a boomstick makes you uncomfortable, you're a cuck who hates freedom. (Of course, if it was a good black guy doing the same thing with the same motive, the situation would be handled much differently.) Achieving a world where everyone is armed at all times is to have everyone buy guns, hence the NRA pushes hard for unrestricted gun-ownership.

The National Rifle Association of America should not be confused with any other National Rifle Association, such as the British, Australian, New Zealand or Indian National Rifle Associations which are all sports governing bodies, are definitely not "chapters" of the NRA of America and do not engage in overt political lobbying (although they may comment on legislative consultations as a stakeholder, just like any other membership organisation). The NRA of Australia had no involvement in the NRA-One Nation scandal in which a sting by Al Jazeera saw the NRA of America attempting to influence Australian politics.

Responses to shootings

After the Sandy Hook massacre, which claimed 20 children as victims, the NRA finally shut up… for a few days. Many naively hoped they had finally come to their senses, but the group used their next meeting to call for more guns to stop gun violence, and blamed the massacre on everything but guns, including mental illness, movies, and violent video games. While clamoring for a national mental health database, they naturally recoil at the thought of a gun registry, and to date, their National Firearms Museum (which glorifies violent movies) is still open for business. Their response to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was similar, although afterwards they faced companies who were severing ties with them, as well as a more unified protest by survivors of the shooting and gun control advocates. The NRA has enlisted the aid of Wolfgang Halbig, a conspiracy theorist who claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.

The NRA also has a 500+ entry-long list of people and organizations who have lent support to anti-gun initiatives. With luminary freedom haters such as the American Medical Association, PBS and Hallmark, and notorious anti-gun celebrities like... Sylvester Stallone, it's probably easier to say who's not on this list. Nixon at least tried to keep his list of enemies secret.

As if the blood-drenched bodies of bullet-riddled schoolchildren piled up high in their wake weren't enough to faze them, the NRA defiantly held their annual convention in May 27, 2022 with dozens of other gun nut luminaries, all in spite of intense protests denouncing the lobby group in light of the Robb Elementary School shooting (which left more than a dozen schoolchildren dead in Texas^{[citation NOT needed]}), as well as the obvious tastelessness and insensitivity of holding a gun show almost soon after a tragic mass shooting. They even had utter gall to thank Donald Trump for "defending our Second Amendment rights". And as usual, Ted Cruz blamed video games for the Robb shooting alongside other wingnut boogeymen such as liberals and atheism during said convention. Unsurprisingly, the echo chamber applauded, but not gamers, who did not take kindly to ammosexual fetishists who try to dodge and deflect the blame on anything but themselves despite the already sky-high civilian body count they have amassed.

Single-issue voters

As seen during both terms of the Obama administration, "No new laws" somehow means "future gun control laws" for the NRA. This despite the fact that the related constitutional amendment purportedly allowing gun ownership does not explicitly define what "arms" are. (Suitcase nukes, anyone?) This contrasts with their stance during the Clinton years, when they advocated more vigorous enforcement of existing gun laws as an alternative to passing new ones.

Board member eyebrow-raisers

Wayne LaPierre in 2017

“”If you pull down the exhibit hall, that's not going to leave anything for the media except the members meeting, and you're going to have the wackos … with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots. And, and it's gonna, it's gonna be the worst thing you can imagine.

—What an NRA board member thinks of their core membership

The NRA has an insanely large board of directors (76 members!), and has included many questionable people on it, such as noted traitor Oliver North, a spokesman for gun manufacturer Glock (supporting accusations of the NRA having too-close ties to gun manufacturers), the perpetually batshit Ted Nugent, Larry Craig (of "I am not gay…" fame), and Grover Norquist (because no mainstream right-wing group is complete without a guy who really, really hates taxes).

The NRA's main talking head is Wayne LaPierre, a perennial member/vice president prone to conspiracy theory, groupthink, and pulling bullshit out of his ass. Despite his media reputation as the "craziest man on earth", he's actually a donnish businessman, just like any other fearmonger you can think of. Charlton Heston was a former president of the NRA, and was famous for his "cold dead hands" speech. Oliver North, hero of the far-right whose very name is "synonymous with corruption and disgrace", ascended to the presidency of the NRA in 2018. In 2019, North was ousted as president after he was accused by executive vice president LaPierre and the NRA Board of extorting the organization; LaPierre was also accused by North of making financial transgressions. Leaked documents revealed a "culture of fear" within the organization, where employees suffer with low wages and problems with the pension system while LaPierre enjoys lavish benefits and one of the highest salaries in the country for nonprofit organizations. Despite being so well paid, LaPierre reportedly billed $542,000 worth of clothing, travel and other expenses to to NRA's longtime advertising agency Ackerman McQueen (who, as of 2019, is part of a lawsuit against the NRA). He reportedly spent $39,000 in one day at a single Beverly Hills luxury menswear boutique. That's an interesting shopping addiction he picked up while working for an organization that became based on scaring their membership into thinking the "elites" would take away their guns.

Allegations of self-dealing among 18 of the board's 76 members, who are supposedly in charge of financial oversight, have also surfaced: $400,000 to one board member for outreach, $28,000 to another board member for writing articles for NRA publications, and payment for sales of ammunition to another board member for an undisclosed sum. The acrimony between NRA board members resulted in the organization severing ties with Ackerman McQueen, who operates the NRA's media outlet NRATV.

In August 2020, after analyzing the finances of the charity, the state of New York (where the NRA was incorporated) actually had enough of NRA's financial bullshit to sue to completely dissolve it in its entirety due to the widespread abuse of charity money, and asked LaPierre and other current and former executives to personally pay back unlawful profits. In the court document, LaPierre was accused of massively misusing NRA charity funds to illegally grift insiders and select vendors, and to also fund at least eight personal family vacations to the Bahamas, along with various other big game safaris and other private travel. Along with other executives, he used a "pass-through arrangement to conceal private travel and other costs that were largely personal in nature", thus "exposing the NRA to millions of dollars of potential liability for violation of IRS reporting requirements". LaPierre and other executives also failed to report to the IRS and/or miscategorized many other personal or out of pocket expenses, such as the lavish Christmas gifts he would often give senior executives every year. Washington, D.C.'s attorney general followed this up by suing the NRA Foundation and the NRA for misusing charitable funds to support wasteful spending by the NRA and its executives.

The NRA's legal troubles have cost the organization $100 million. In reaction, LaPierre whined about "the power of weaponized government" and compared investigators to commies. Citing a "corrupt political and regulatory environment" in New York, they filed for bankruptcy on January 15, 2021, and high tailed it for Texas. Showing that this whine was perhaps merely projection, on February 23 2024, a jury found that NRA top executives indeed mismanaged its charitable funds, and ordered LaPierre to pay back the NRA $4.3 million in damages (as well as levying a $2 million damages verdict against Wilson Phillips, the NRA's former CFO).

Exaggerated political power

NRA membership figures or random number generator?

The NRA has long been viewed as a mighty Goliath in American politics; politicians feared their piles of lobbying money and the wrath of their four million-strong membership base. However, in the aftermath of the Aurora and Sandy Hook massacres, their self-proclaimed political influence and membership figures have fallen under scrutiny.

While the NRA claims to be able to elect politicians they support between 71% and 86% of the time, third parties have pegged their success rate at a hilariously abysmal 0.83%. The NRA's membership figures are also suspect, as they usually claim about 4 million members, but reports from insiders (as well as outsiders reading between the lines) suggest that these numbers are greatly inflated. The NRA has a very loose definition of "membership" that includes gun purchasers automatically enrolled as a promotional gimmick, as well as subscribers to their magazines and long-dead members. The best guess as to their true size is at most 3.1 million.

On top of this, the NRA is suffering internal strife, with a large disconnect between what its official leadership wants (it being far too cozy with the gun industry) and its own membership base. As a result, not only is it spending its lobbying money ineffectually, but it can no longer even count on its own members to vote in support of its policies.

In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the NRA has suffered from significant pushback. The amount of money it had donated to Florida lawmakers was brought to media attention and fell under heavy scrutiny. Then-Governor Rick Scott, who had been revealed to be in their pockets for some time, did not help matters. When asked for a statement following the shooting, he said that the time for a conversation about gun control was in the future; when asked about perpetrator Nikolas Cruz's ease in obtaining a weapon, he dodged the question and said an investigation was underway. Surprising no one and unmatched in tastelessness, the NRA retaliated against the student activists who survived the shooting after they held a town hall against Republican lawmakers, claiming the students wanted more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners. As a result of these skeletons in their closets and their feeble attempts to brush it all under the rug, numerous corporate sponsors announced that they would sever ties with the NRA, who, true to form, spat out the same drivel about how their law-abiding members were not at fault, criticizing everything from the police to the number of doors on the building to even the school's preparedness in handling a school shooting, but refusing to acknowledge the role of guns in the massacre.

Activities that aren't (too) political

The NRA supports firearms education for both children and adults, and occasionally makes contributions to the Boy Scouts of America and other organizations. Despite their highly politicized nature, their education programs are usually sound in both concept and execution, and generally do a good job teaching the fundamentals and importance of firearms safety. This, of course, does fuck-all to reduce the proportion of gun crime.

Godless leftists

In response to the "left" pointing out that prayer and belief in a deity wouldn't solve mass shootings, the NRA tried to expose the "godless left" by stating, "These saboteurs share the same fanatical fervor to tear apart the foundations of America as the terrorists who threaten our very survival. And together, they march hand-in-hand toward the possible, purposeful destruction of us all." They even went as far as to call certain "leftist" media "false prophets" and "infidels of freedom", along with several similar claims about the "left" and their so-called attacks on American values.^{[dead link]} The reality-based community (and people outside of conservative Christian fundie echo chambers in general) were less than impressed with this rhetoric.^{[citation needed]}

Nutty fruitcake hillbillies

Ironically, some NRA leaders also have very low regard for their own members as well, particularly the most radical Second Amendment hardliners. In 2021, NPR obtained secret recordings of a conference call made in 1999, where NRA leaders discussed plans for their national convention in light of the Columbine High School massacre. During the call, Wayne LaPierre and a former NRA president named Marion Hammer were worried that some of the proposed changes to the convention would attract the "nuts", "fruitcakes", and "wackos ... with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots."

Национальная Стрелковая Ассоциация: From Russia with love

Torshin in 2013

The FBI has been investigating whether Russia illegally funneled money through the NRA to help Trump get elected. Specifically, Alexander Torshin (Алекса́ндр Порфи́рьевич То́ршин) and Maria Butina (Мария Бутина), the only two people from the Russian Federation that are lifetime members of the NRA, were being investigated.

On July 15, 2018, Butina was charged with "conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation, and was ordered held without bond." At her detention hearing, the FBI alleged that Butina had extensive contacts with the Russian FSB spy agency, and that she exchanged sex for business (presumably espionage) purposes, including an ongoing relationship with a Republican operative. In 2019, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. In 2021, Butina was rewarded with membership in the Russian Duma for her services to the nation.

Torshin is a former Russian senator and longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, and has been accused of having ties to Russian organized crime. Torshin is currently the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia. Torshin attempted to meet with Trump Sr. and met with Trump Jr. at an NRA event.

Things the NRA and their supporters blame gun violence on

• Abortions
• Atheism: “Taking God out of our culture ... is at least partly to blame for the violence we see today."
• Culture of violence — Hypocritically stated in 2018 by then-NRA president Oliver North, who helped to market the violent video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II in 2012; North not only served as a military consultant for the game, he also portrayed a younger version of himself in one level.
• Doors in schools — too many of them
• Evolution
• "Family values" decline
• Liberalism
• Marilyn Manson
• Media
• Mental health — other people do often bring up mental health, but it's likely only a scapegoat and further stigmatizes this group
• People — "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."
• Pornography
• Religion in schools, lack thereof
• Ritalin (a drug for treatment of Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder)
• Schools
• Television
• Unhealthy eating: “Mark my words...if you really studied the slovenliness and the zombie-like conduct of these murderers, you go back to their diet and examine what they’ve put into their sacred temple, and it’s all garbage.”
• Unstable loners — Wait, isn't that the NRA's base?
• Trench coats
• Video games — Ironically enough, they did have an officially licensed video game for the PlayStation 2 entitled NRA Gun Club,' though the game is presented more as a shooting gallery "void of violence and blood".
• Women — "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him."

Racism

In spite of their rhetoric of firearms support when it concerns white people, the NRA is pretty enthusiastic about taking away firearms from black people. From historic events, such as supporting the Mulford Act (for no other reason than to take away guns from the Black Panther Party) all up to the present day, where they campaign by using the Black Lives Matter movement as an argument for the legality of firearms.

In summary

“”Frank: Ooh, shit, I'm not going to go [to the rally]. It's going to be a bunch of nuts with guns. Too dangerous. Charlie: Wait, hold on a second. What's going on? I thought you were into guns. You know, why have you been on TV talking about all that shit? Frank: I bought a stake in Gunther's Guns. I got everybody angry and scared. They bought the guns, I made a fortune. Dennis: Oh my god, this is crazy. So you don't give a shit about the gun issue at all? You're like the NRA! Frank: Yeah, little tiny bit.

—It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, "Gun Fever Too: Still Hot"

See also

For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about NRA.

• Dana Loesch, NRA's spokeswoman as of 2017
• Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
• Gun Owners of America, which may be even nuttier
• Trump-Russia connection
• Fun:National Lightsaber Association

External links

• The Onion does it best.