The tide is turning against the NRA

[billh58]

(CNN)Nearly a decade ago, Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress demonstrated one of the most prolific records of legislating in the history of the republic. As a congressional staffer at the time, I would have never guessed that where they failed -- in any effort to take on the National Rifle Association and pass gun safety legislation -- a new generation of freshmen members of Congress would succeed. But this month, that's exactly what we're witnessing.

Tragically, the cost to American families and communities while we waited for this progress has been far too high. The vote by the House to approve the Bipartisan Background Checks Act comes just over one year after the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and six years after the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut.

-Snip-

This vote is the first meaningful response by the new Democratic majority to an epidemic that cost nearly 40,000 American lives just in the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

t's also the latest proof point of a tectonic shift in the politics of an issue that has for so many years vexed those in search of solutions.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/opinions/tide-is-turning-against-nra-and-in-favor-of-gun-control-legislation-ambler/index.html

The shift was a long time coming, but it has begun and there is nothing the NRA or GOA (or their apologists) can do to stop it.

[msongs]

1. gun owners kills tens of thousands of ppl in the USA every yr. wonder how many are NRA? nt

[billh58]

2. Don't have the stats,

but I've read that their membership has been declining.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I think the NRA is feeling the heat right now from all the mass shootings

and the Parkland survivors. When Mueller and the Dems expose their ties with Putin the NRA will continue to weaken.

[ForgedCrank]

4. the NRA is one of the most destructive forces in politics today

It's high time this money-grubbing organization be dismantled for the good of the nation

[jimmy the one]

5. New Yorker nra expose'

april 18, 2019 development regarding the new yorker's expose' regarding nra (Nutty Rightwingers, Armed):

april 2019:NEW YORK – .. in response to an article published by The New Yorker, in conjunction with The Trace, detailing how “a small group of N.R.A. executives, contractors, and vendors has extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget,” Everytown for Gun Safety has filed a complaint about the NRA’s tax-exempt status with the IRS, and is calling for federal and state investigations into the NRA’s operation as a charity.

Today’s call and IRS complaint are based on the available evidence, including:
1 Payments and other financial arrangements with executives and insiders at the NRA that resulted in millions of proceeds going to these executives and insiders;
2 Evidence that NRA employees and officers, including NRA President Oliver North, are paid by outside entities – such as public relations firms and insurance companies;
3 The revelation that the NRA Board of Directors Audit Committee “retroactively signed off on at least some of the NRA’s problematic [financial] transactions.”
4 Documentation reviewed by the New Yorker, which was purportedly prepared ahead of an emergency meeting of the NRA Board of Directors Audit Committee in July 2018 to discuss “whistleblowing reports,” listed concerns including, “NRA pays overbilled, deceptive, vague invoices to ‘preferred’ vendors and contractors” and “decisions are made in the best interests of vendors.”
5 Revelations that NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has an arrangement that – “provides for consulting services and personal appearances upon the end of his employment, at an annual rate that starts at his currently contracted final base salary and is later reduced” — effectively serving as a salary for life.
6 .. the NRA’s most recent public disclosures, for 2017, revealed the NRA Foundation gave a $5 million loan to the NRA. The New Yorker article indicated that a financial “audit from 2017 revealed that [the NRA] had nearly reached the limit of a twenty-five-million-dollar line of credit”
and the NRA was forced to “borrow almost four million from its officers’ life insurance policies….

Excuse me a moment, I'm having a sudden attack of schadenfreude. Jammerschaden too.

7 Mounting evidence that the NRA engages in political activity outside of its stated purpose as a charity focused on U.S. gun rights. These efforts reportedly occur in political systems from Russia to Australia and other points in between... ??? East to west or west to east?
https://everytown.org/press/everytown-files-complaint-about-nras-tax-exempt-status-with-irs-calls-for-federal-and-state-investigations-into-the-nra/

[jimmy the one]

6. Giffords lawsuit vs nra illegal donations

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) was sued in federal court {apr 23,2019} for allegedly failing to enforce campaign finance laws against the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Giffords, the nonprofit organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) after she survived an assassination attempt, sued the FEC for allegedly allowing the NRA to violate campaign finance law — including to help Donald Trump.

The new lawsuit mentions the word “Trump” thirty-five times. “Plaintiff’s complaints demonstrate that the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by using a complex network of shell corporations to unlawfully coordinate expenditures with the campaigns of at least seven candidates for federal office, thereby making millions of dollars of illegal, unreported, and excessive in-kind contributions, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to now President Donald J. Trump,” the lawsuit charged.
The lawsuit attempted to explain the scale of the alleged campaign finance violation.
“The illegal contributions to the Trump campaign alone are up to 9,259 times the limit set by Congress. Yet the Commission has taken no action on Plaintiff’s complaints,” .. “In light of this unlawful and unreasonable delay, Plaintiff files this action to compel the FEC to comply with its statutory duty to act.”
The lawsuit claims a “shell company” was created to bypass campaign finance law.

“By coordinating their advertising strategy in this manner, the NRA-PVF and the NRA-ILA have made up to $35 million in contributions to candidate campaigns since the 2014 election, in excess of the contribution limits, in violation of the source restrictions, and without the disclosure required under federal law. This includes up to $25 million in coordinated, illegal contributions to the Trump campaign in 2016,” the lawsuit argued.
Also on Wednesday {april 24}, the Associated Press reported on the infighting at the NRA.

And Trump wasn’t the only Republican listed in the lawsuit. The lawsuit also named Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Montana state auditor Matt Rosendale, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2018.
“Taken together, these facts demonstrate an elaborate scheme for the NRA to unlawfully coordinate with the candidates it supports for federal office, including Donald J. Trump, Thom Tillis, Cory Gardner, Tom Cotton, Ron Johnson, Matt Rosendale, and Josh Hawley, while evading detection of its violations of federal law concerning the coordination of advertising communications through common vendors,” the lawsuit argued.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/nra-busted-giving-trump-9259-times-legal-limit-bombshell-campaign-finance-lawsuit/

[billh58]

7. Thanks for the updates Jimmy

The most subversive organization that supports domestic terrorism is fast approaching it's demise.

[jimmy the one]

8. Wayne & Ollie, the odd couple

You're welcome Bill, and here's another one hot off the presses, starring wayne da pain lapierre-head & his former sidekick colon-ell Oliver North!:

April 26, 2019 INDIANAPOLIS — Turmoil wracking the National Rifle Association is threatening to turn the group’s annual convention into outright civil war, as insurgents maneuver to oust Wayne LaPierre, the foremost voice of the American gun rights movement.
The confrontation pits Mr. LaPierre, the organization’s longtime chief executive, against its recently installed president, Oliver L. North, the central figure in the Reagan-era Iran-contra affair, who remains a hero to many on the right.
Behind it is a widening crisis involving a legal battle between the N.R.A. and its most influential contractor, Ackerman McQueen, amid renewed threats from regulators in New York, where the N.R.A. is chartered, to investigate the group’s tax-exempt status. With contributions lagging, the N.R.A. is also facing an increasingly well-financed gun control movement, motivated by a string of mass shootings.

Mr. North asked Mr. LaPierre to resign on Wednesday, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. He said he had also created a committee to review allegations of financial improprieties that threaten the N.R.A.’s status as a nonprofit organization.
But Mr. LaPierre, in a stinging letter sent on Thursday night to the N.R.A.’s board, accused Mr. North of threatening to leak damaging information about him and other N.R.A. executives unless he stepped down.
“Yesterday evening, I was forced to confront one of those defining choices — styled, in the parlance of extortionists — as an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Mr. LaPierre wrote. “I refused it.” {will he get a dead horse head in his bed?}
It is not clear whether Mr. North has the board support to oust Mr. LaPierre, who has led the N.R.A. for decades. Previously, the presidency has been a ceremonial position, though Mr. North.., has asked for it to be a paid post.
The crisis has led to the splintering of a more than three-decade relationship between the N.R.A. and Ackerman, which crafted such memorable lines as Charlton Heston’s proclaiming that his gun would have to be pried “from my cold, dead hands.”

“All of this is painful for me,” Mr. LaPierre wrote. “I will not judge Col. North, but must report what many of you already know: He has contractual and financial loyalties to AM.”
Mr. North, for his part, wrote, “We are facing a serious crisis,” adding, “To date, my repeated efforts to inquire about the propriety of management’s financial decisions have consistently been rebuffed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/business/nra-wayne-lapierre-oliver-north.html

Might have to see a doctor, I'm getting chronic schadenfreude-itis.

[billh58]

9. Two anti-American misfits

fighting over blood money from the sale of lethal arms to terrorists.

[jimmy the one]

10. Ollie bites the dust!

apr 27, 2019: INDIANAPOLIS—In a surprising move, Oliver North announced that he has been ousted as president of the National Rifle Association, going on the offensive to warn that the powerful gun rights group is in “clear crisis.”
In a letter read by the group’s vice president {lapierre-head} to kick off the second day of the group’s annual meeting, North said that he will not be renominated to serve as NRA president as infighting and controversy have taken hold at the gun rights group’s annual meeting.
“Please know I hoped to be with you today as NRA president endorsed for reelection. I’m now informed that that will not happen,” he wrote.

North, who has been in the job six months, went on to attack the NRA law firm that filed a lawsuit against its leading ad firm. “There is a clear crisis” at the NRA regarding financial allegations.
.. longtime NRA lawyer, Steve Hart, has been suspended. The dual departures of long-time high profile NRA insiders with knowledge of the organization's legal troubles come just days after the gun-gun group took shots {at} North in the days leading up to its much-watched national meeting keynoted by Trump—the first sign of a internal shake up.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oliver-north-will-not-seek-reelection-as-nra-president-amid-investigation?ref=scroll

Question is does Ollie now have cold dead fingers? hahahaha
Followup is who will be the next charlatan heston to be king of the Nutty Rightwiners, Armed?

[jimmy the one]

11. The scandal that just keeps on giving!

apr 27, 2019, saturday: .. as the NRA struggled to handle its internal divisions, an external threat emerged this weekend in the form of a new investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
"The Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James has launched an investigation related to the National Rifle Association (NRA),"
"As part of this investigation, the Attorney General has issued subpoenas."

Initially nra members were elated, conflating 'subpoenas' with being 'submachine pistols'.

The NRA has received a document preservation notice in connection with the investigation being undertaken by the New York attorney general, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The NRA responded to the announcement of the investigation by pledging its cooperation.
"The NRA will fully cooperate with any inquiry into its finances," said William A. Brewer III, an outside lawyer for the NRA. "The NRA is prepared for this, and has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance."
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/27/717808885/oliver-north-says-he-will-not-seek-a-2nd-term-as-nra-president

Sure, like you haven't scrubbed & sanitized & deleted.