During the 2016 presidential election cycle, the NRA was awash in cash. They ponied up $30M, in fact, to help elect Donald Trump.
Oh, the difference four years can make! On April 25th, NPR reported that CEO Wayne LaPierre informed the NRA board that certain dramatic cost-cutting measures would be necessary.
Then… Get this! LaPierre proceeded to blame the shortfall on the COVID-19 pandemic!
It seems a group of NRA members seeking to reform the organization — called “Save the Second” — has called bullshit on LaPierre’s sick excuse for making staff cuts, slashing remaining salaries 20% across the board, and restricting hourly employees to four-day work weeks.
An email to the CEO from Save the Second stated...
“Mr. LaPierre, if your organization was squeaky clean and ethically ran, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”
(Yep, ran, not run, as would have been proper. But, we all get the message.)
LaPierre has been receiving extra scrutiny and criticism since internal conflict within the gun lobby and financial woes starting coming to light more than a year ago. And, oh, Lordy! Have the law suits been a-flyin’! And, oops... now, it looks like the organization’s non-profit status is also in jeopardy.
Even the firearm industry’s go-to bank, Wells Fargo, now defines its relationship with the NRA as “declining.” All this, coming on the heels of revelations about the dapper Mr. LaPierre’s propensity for compulsive, high-end shopping sprees and other extravagances — at NRA-member expense, of course.
The pandemic did necessitate the cancelation of the group’s annual convention and a number of fundraising events. However, NRA TV went dark long before the virus outbreak. I miss you, Dana Loesch, you wicked Vixen! Meanwhile, the organization’s political arm is being investigated by the Justice Department for being a “foreign asset” — for the Russians; who else? — during the 2016 election campaign.
Longtime NRA observer, Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of the political science department at State University of New York at Cortland, stated:
“The NRA’s real problem is they had real existing financial problems before this happened. It simply does not bode well for their impact on the upcoming election.”
Holy crap! What are those poor Second Amendment extremists supposed to do now? Just sit there while the Democrat coronavirus hoax-sters come and take away their guns?
Rand Bishop (Gimpy Ol’ Norman) is the author of the memoir, TREK: My Peace Pilgrimage in Search of a Kinder America. Part One of Bishop’s new serialized satirical e-book novella Option (D): Dosing Donald is now available in Kindle edition.