Category: Gun Rights Organizations

Not too long after Sebastian started blogging, the gun club he had just joined had a member call for a vote to change the bylaws to end the 100% NRA membership requirement that had been in place since the place was founded in 1958. Word got down to Fairfax and they were worried only if the member had unexpected success because it was dues for hundreds of members annually and about 1,000 or so votes in key districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That vote happened, and it turns out that NRA had nothing to really worry about because it went down in terrible defeat. The NRA membership mandate was left in place, in part with the support of Sebastian.

Well, this year, Sebastian led the effort to end the NRA membership requirement in order to be a member of the gun club. He did it from a position of practical arguments for both protecting member money and functional aspects of the relationship that no longer worked.

Only now the club is much bigger which means more money to Fairfax and more voter contacts they didn’t have prior to these people joining. You’d think Fairfax would care this year when more is on the line. But they don’t. Even the really local and regional NRA Board Members don’t care enough to reach out. (Yes, I can confirm some were notified well in advance of the vote.) Combine that lack of concern from the NRA leadership with the fact that the member discussion showed that NRA messaging is so insanely out of touch with nearly anyone under 50 or so, and the requirement fell to resounding defeat. Nearly 3 to 1 to remove any requirement to join the NRA.

The relationship lasted for 64 years, but ended thanks to Wayne’s leadership that saw them bouncing checks on gun clubs, the complete collapse of services to the point where someone recently fessed up there are email addresses they don’t know that anyone left in the department had checked in two years, and membership staff who can no longer handle working with clubs bringing them enough dues income to pay most of some salaries.

We’re not the only club to end this relationship and stop bringing NRA new members who otherwise wouldn’t join their organization. In Southeast Pennsylvania, I understand that Southern Chester County Sportsmen’s & Farmers’ Association did the same a while ago. I learned of several clubs around the nation of varying sizes who have ended their 100% requirements. Forum posts & online chats indicate clubs in Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Georgia appear to have all cut these requirements. And if you study the past issues of NRA publications that list “Gold Medal” clubs where the biggest hurdle is often that 100% membership status, the number has been dwindling. Even when the add new ones, they often just replace those who have ended their involvement in the program – a possible sign they ended their 100% requirements.

The good news is that plenty of the under 50 crowd who spoke to end the NRA rule did advocate for joining at least some other gun rights group. It’s not that we’ve lost the next generation of shooters from supporting the cause – it’s that they spoke out and said that the NRA no longer represents their more diverse views of the world and politics.

The members spoke tonight, and NRA leaders I have spoken with pretty much made it clear they had no intention of listening.

Before any anti-gun readers get too cocky, the message wasn’t good for you. The NRA was seen as too squishy, out of touch with current gun rights debates, and not representative of the guns they want to own and shoot. This was not a sign of a weakening gun rights movement. This was a move back to the roots – gun owners turning out locally and encouraging multiple fronts and ways to tackle state and national issues. Last night was the kind of true grassroots work that shows generations of people will come together for discussion on making the 2A movement stronger in the long term.

Ted Nugent has resigned from the NRA Board to be national spokesperson for Hunter Nation. God help them. If only this wasn’t because all the rats are leaving the sinking ship.

According to The Reload, Lloyd’s of London is dropping all coverage for the NRA’s Board of Directors through their officers and directors insurance plan. As Phillip Journey, NRA Board Member, told the outlet, “I mean, if Lloyd’s won’t insure you, who the hell will?”

Well, here’s another way to look at it: What does Lloyd’s of London consider less risky than the leadership of Wayne LaPierre, Carolyn Meadows, Charles Cotton, and Willes Lee based on the fact that they will offer policies to these alternative risks?

Pele, the Volcano Goddess of Hawaiian mythical culture.

That’s right, Lloyd’s was willing to sell insurance to the residents of Leilani Estates who lived on top of an active volcano with a habit of making the earth open up and spew red hot lava at people and property. The decisions by the current NRA leadership are more risky than your front lawn turning into the fire above every few decades.

Intelsat 1 – A 1965 Satellite

The work to even get something ready to launch in 1965 was a massive risk. Not that it’s risk free today, but there are decidedly fewer exploding videos of space-related matter these days compared to those years. Yet Lloyd’s thought, yes, this is a risk we will insure! The current NRA leadership? Nope, too risky!

But to NRA, this is all just fine. They’ve just set aside just $5 million to cover all 76 directors. That doesn’t seem like nearly enough to me, but that’s just my opinion. People willing to speak off of the record to The Reload admit there isn’t much hope in finding coverage so this is likely the only solution moving forward.

NRA’s bylaws do not permit Board members to be paid, but that’s been ignored outright, or done via state associations: NRA makes a grant to a state association, which conveniently pays the board member. A lot of folks are surprised by how compliant the NRA Board has been, but I suspect in many cases that’s being accomplished with the threat that those Board members may be required by the NY courts to pay some or all of that money back. Imaging if you had to pay, say, ten years of back salary? It would financially ruin most people. You’d probably be willing to listen to someone who came along telling you they could help you avoid that eventuality.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years is never to underestimate people’s ability to live in their own reality if the actual reality is too threatening for them. It’s human nature. But human nature is why we have institutional controls to prevent this kind of situation.

I’m a big fan in non-profit of a strict “no compensation for board members” rule. Board members should only be reimbursed for reasonable expenses associated with their service to the corporation. Not too long ago, my club implemented such a rule via board policy, and we did have a director with a landscaping contract. He did a good job. Our new outside contractor is slightly more expensive. I hated to vote in favor of ending that. But it had to be done. At some point, we need to get that in the bylaws so it can’t easily be undone by a future board.

You create systems that are resistant to corruption, so clued-in members have certain processes and procedures they are accustomed to which make graft more difficult. If a future board starts dismantling those systems, it should raise a red flag.

I fully endorse John Richardson’s ballot. Vote for Owen Buz Mills, and that’s it. Write in Frank C. Tait, Wayne, PA, and R.B. Rocky Marshall Jr, Boerne, TX. The rest of them need to come to their senses and show Wayne and Bill the door, and start reestablishing trust and competence in the Association.

One of my primary objectives as a new club president is to devolve a lot of the Board’s responsibility. The primary mechanism in civic organizations to accomplish this is the committee.

Younger people these days are so unfamiliar with civil society, I often worry about even using the word “committee.” Does it have good connotations? Governments have all kinds of committees, subcommittees, blue ribbon panels, etc and they don’t get anything done. At least not anything of value. Maybe we need a better word for it. We could go all corporate and adopt “team,” but I think that carries a lot of bullshit along with it these days too.

Our club was functionally a one, two, or three man show for a number of years. Sure, we had committees, but they were themselves generally one man shows, and those were often Board members. Until very recently, power was firmly rooted in three to four people at most. The rest of the Board was relatively powerless when push came to shove. Now we’ve devolved a lot of that power to the Board, and I’d like to devolve it further still.

Successful organizations aren’t a cult of personality. Successful organizations have processes. A successful organization is a machine that you can plug people into, and mechanisms are in place to keep the machine running even if the operators change. This is a very difficult task in a volunteer-driven organization. The distribution of power is a way to develop new leadership, and ensure when people step out, there’s other people who can step in. It also doesn’t hurt to ease members into the leadership culture.

This year we’re going to give an actual Annual Report to the members that goes beyond just totals for the year. People aren’t going to volunteer for a black box. If an organization has processes, people have to see where they might be able to pitch in. So you have to be open about things. Any civic organization should be open about its operations. Beware leaders who seem to like hiding things. Sometimes you do have internal matters, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

Speaking of culture: organizational culture is not an accidental thing. It is deliberate, and one area that can’t be separated from leadership. The leadership of an organization sets the culture. If they don’t, actors (sometimes bad actors) will come in and do that for you.

So what’s the lesson here? NRA has a lot of problems that are frankly familiar to me on a smaller scale. Though my club thankfully didn’t have the massive grifting. But I served on a Board where we were a rubber stamp before a power vacuum changed the dynamics. That power vacuum empowered the Board as a body to step up, and things have gotten better. Not perfect, but moving in the right direction. Like NRA, my club also has an overly large Board. What I’m saying is there can be hope. NRA has a leadership problem. The Board are sycophants, sure, but you’d be surprised how much toxic leadership can hold sway over a Board. From my point of view NRA needs to be rid of two people: Wayne LaPierre and Bill Brewer. Wayne because he’s hapless. I don’t believe Wayne could successfully run a Boy Scout troop. Bill Brewer because he’s correctly identified Wayne as a guy who will believe anything, and pay him anything. I don’t believe Brewer has the best interests of NRA at heart, and if we’re rid of Wayne, but Bill gets to name Wayne’s replacement, we just replaced Ack-Mac with a worse parasite.

The rot often seems to run all the way through, but I can promise you it does not. Toxic leadership is a cancer. The first order of business in enacting a turnaround is to remove it. From there, health will probably improve.

It seems that more of the various groups that have splintered off into pushing some kind of reform at NRA have ultimately come to back Judge Phillip Journey’s efforts to challenge NRA’s legal moves.

I’m not 100% sure that I think his approach is ideal, but I’m also looking at the fact that there don’t appear to any petition candidates at all.

In fact, via voting the best options I can see other than writing someone in (which won’t likely be enough, but it won’t likely hurt) is to bullet vote from the list of candidates for Owen Buz Mills as the only one on the list to drive him to the top of the results. Because even though others might win seats, they care desperately about how “popular” they are and where they come into the rankings. Rank the dissenting board members high and you are still sending a message.

Back to the legal issues at hand, I don’t have any great insight there. On one hand, I tend to believe the bankruptcy legal experts who were watching this case closely not for anything to do with NRA, but the unique circumstances around it. They are pretty pessimistic. On the other hand, I also see that Judge Hale specifically addressed what NRA should expect – a not so subtle nod to stripping leadership & possibly Bill Brewer of power – if they try to refile, which opens the door to refiling. I do think there’s truth that the trial resulted in disclosures that make it more likely the NY AG can push for dissolution. I also think the fact that the federal court did weigh James’s attacks on NRA as a political foe into account when trying to decide if they deserved bankruptcy protection from her office signals to other courts that going in this direction is going to set a very bad precedent.

Either way, it’s about which court you think would give NRA the fairest shake. Neither one makes me comfortable which is why I’m more open to a legal strategy that is simply summed up as: “Whatever Wayne LaPierre, Carolyn ‘Burn the Records’ Meadows, Charles Cotton, and Willes Lee oppose is what I probably support.”

I went ahead and threw a few bucks at the effort. I’m not going to press the readers to do so since I don’t know if there are good answers in any of this, but I think it’s important to share it’s out there.

Ultimately, one reason I’m on board with the effort to try and save the NRA from people like Wayne is because we have a huge resource in our community that NRA has moved away from both tapping as a resource and supporting – gun clubs. Not commercial gun ranges, but non-profit, volunteer-run gun clubs. NRA’s support of clubs has gone downhill in the last 20 years. Part of that is because they were really behind the times in the shift to newer shooting sports that were taking off which reduced the amount that rising club leaders needed to build connections there or learn about resources. But they didn’t manage to connect with these people on any other level when it comes to club support.

As much as NRA has dropped the ball on this, they still have the institutional knowledge (within the volunteer organization as a whole, even if not always on staff) and name recognition to rebuild this resource and start offering more things that are relevant to clubs in need. As much good as I do think some groups are doing on the legal fights, no other group has tried to step into this space. Yet, if no one does, once these ranges are gone, they are gone for good. And that’s forever a loss of a Second Amendment habitat for growing new shooters.

From NRAInDanger:

When a bankruptcy judge who has been on the bench many years, and “seen them all,” says conduct shocks him, you’re hearing it from an expert.

Go read the whole thing.