I went to my first NRA show in 1980. It was held in Philadelphia (of all places) and featured an appearance by a Presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan. I don’t recall his speech attracting much attention, I also don’t recall that there were any vendors promoting ‘tactical’ products or any of the other crap which currently provides the gun industry with its marketing mantra about how and why guns are needed for personal defense.
That was then, this is now. The last time I went to the NRA, which was the 2014 Indianapolis gathering, you would have thought we were one step away from having to defend ourselves from an ISIS invasion or from a complete and total disarming of the American population, or both. No matter where you looked, there was endless signage exhorting everyone to prove their patriotism by making sure that liberals, gun-grabbers and all sorts of other left-wing radicals (including the African-born occupant of the White House) would never get a chance to take away ‘our’ guns.
At some point during the Indianapolis hoopla I wandered into the business meeting where the now-deposed head of the NRA-ILA, Chris Cox, was giving a speech. And here was the sentence that I remember most of all: “The 5 million members of the NRA will not allow Michael Bloomberg to lie his way, buy his way, or bully his way into taking away our Second Amendment rights!” The reason I remember this line was because the week prior to the show, the New York Times carried an article which claimed that Mayor Mike had decided to ante up $50 million to promote gun-control programs, chiefly through investing in the growth of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, founded by Shannon Watts.
Yesterday the Washington Post took some time out from celebrating the doomed Presidency of Schmuck-o Trump to interview Shannon Watts, the headline reading: “The NRA is weaker than they’ve ever been.” Which, if anything, is something of an understatement given what has happened to the boys in Fairfax over the last couple of years. America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ has gone from getting the red-carpet treatment at the White House to shutting down its media channel, losing Board members and spending what little dough it has in the bank account to defend itself from legal threats all over the place. You think the investigation into the NRA‘s non-profit status being conducted by the state whose Governor wrote the infamous Clinton plan to regulate the gun industry isn’t a serious threat? Think again.
In the olden days, the only reason the NRA was considered such a powerful force was that the other side, the gun-control side, didn’t have any kind of financial or organizational clout. But once Mayor Mike decided to move into the business of growing a gun-control movement, I knew that the NRA‘s dominance in the public discussion about guns would quickly come to an end. And I didn’t have to be any kind of self-appointed genius to figure that one out. I simply made a quick comparison between the achievements and experiences of Mike Bloomberg versus Wayne LaPierre.
Mike Bloomberg took a $10 million partnership payment from Salomon Brothers in 1981 and created an international media company which today has locations worldwide, employs more than 20,000 and may have annual revenues in excess of $10 billion bucks. He’s probably worth more than $50 billion, which makes Wayne-o’s alleged financial excesses look like chump change.
On the other hand, Wayne LaPierre has never worked in the private sector and his experience in building any kind of organization adds up to zilch. When he took over the NRA in 1991, he pushed the membership from 2.5 to 3.5 million; in the process he entirely used up the organization’s financial reserves. So much for Wayne-o’s business acumen.
If the NRA stops trying to lead the alt-right and goes back to representing the legitimate needs of hunters and sport shooters, this would be a very good thing. Going up against Shannon and Mike is something they better avoid.
Nov 06, 2019 @ 10:27:09
I hope you’re right, Mike. I wish the NRA would go back to its traditional roots – I might even re-join if it did. But under Wayne-o and his junta that won’t happen because they don’t give a fig about shooting sports, gun rights, hunting, etc. They had long ago discovered that the gun issue is a rich meal ticket which they can exploit. That’s what they truly care about and they’ll milk it for all it’s worth, for as long as they can.
Then, the deluge.
Nov 07, 2019 @ 09:00:55
I’m thinking of writing a book on this subject and if I do, I’ll interview you for it.
Nov 07, 2019 @ 09:35:16
The American Rifleman had that “The Armed Citizen” column when I was a kid way back in the Pleistocene (actually the sixties) as I recall reading the stories in my old man’s stack of magazines. He, like Mike, is a Life Member Who Wrote A Big Check and Got the Baseball Cap. So the NRA’s role has long gone beyond hunting and sport shooting, even before that seventies coup d’ etat. But the whole country has become more polarized and the gun vs. anti-gun movement with it. As someone associated with this site once asked me, to paraphrase slightly, “what do you mean by middle ground?”
I think it was a colossal tactical and strategic blunder to wrap the NRA flag around the political far right and Mr. Trump, but one cannot unmake that omelette. We have to figure out how to get more eggs and not drop them on the floor..As far as the NRA, until the Board can be changed which seems unlikely, I am pessimistic about the organization. I think Wayne-O, MikeB, and Shannon create a toxic stew of anger that feeds the checkbooks of both the gun and anti-gun movements.
Nov 08, 2019 @ 12:02:08
Spoken as a true American “Going up against Shannon and Mike is something they better avoid.” Or is it…a true American Coward?