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Originally Posted by Onkel Neal
No, we don't need them.
I sympathies with the NRA's stance on protecting 2A but they are a huge organization that has its own interests as priority 1.
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The NRA has functioned as mainly a laundry for funneling conservative funds towards candidates, causes, and political entities related to non-gun aspects in an effort to skirt the restrictions of campaign finance laws; the NRA's usefulness as such a medium has been highly diluted by the rise of PACs, so the organization has been suffering both financially and as a political influencer; the PACs can make more funds available to candidates/entities/issues than the NRA since they are not as restricted by campaign finance laws or reporting requirements and lobbying law restrictions; add to this the more, if you'll for give the expression, liberal interpretations of the standards (i.e., corporations are people) related to PACs in recent court decisions and it is easy to see why more conservative donations and dollars are going elsewhere than the NRA; in the past no one, liberal or conservative, in the judicial system would have contemplated a move such as holding the NRA to account, but the power has shifted away from NRA and there probably won't be much as much broad support to defend the NRA as there would have been previously...
The NRA claims a membership of 5+ million members, although several researched investigations indicate the claim may be exaggerated by as much as 1 million non-existent members. The actual clout of the NRA in relation to the actual number of gun owners is also staggering: roughly 25% of the US population owns guns or roughly 80+ million people; the NRA claimed membership of 5 million is only about 6% of the total, so their other claim as being the representatives of the 'majority' of gun owners is pretty weak given that about 94% of gun owners seem not to be in the NRA fold...
The ability of the NRA to exert as much political clout as in previous times is also in question since a good many of the laws they opposed have, in fact, been passed over their objections, and not just by the actions of governing bodies (state legislatures, local governments, etc.), but, also, by direct action by voters in the form of initiatives and referendums; the NRA just doesn't have the same gravitas it used to possess...
The issues with NRA malfeasance in its managerial/financial leadership is nothing new; rumors and reports of excesses and possibly criminal financial activity have been around for years, but nobody dared to make direct accusations; this
Politico article of almost exactly a year ago described the weakening of the NRA, its internal problems, and the efforts of other gun rights groups to capitalize on the NRA's woes and decline:
Rival gun groups look to fill the NRA's void --
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...bbyist-1466701
Quote:
As the National Rifle Association flounders, some upstart pro-gun groups see an opportunity to become the nation’s most influential gun rights organization.
The groups say they’re attracting new members and raking in donations. They’re hiring additional staff to work on grassroots advocacy and lobbying. One is going so far as to discuss at a conference in September how to fill the void left by the NRA, which has struggled to address internal squabbles and accusations of financial mismanagement.
“There are a lot of NRA members that don’t like the infighting, don’t like all the lawsuits, don’t like some of the spending that’s been talked about in the press,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the pro-gun Second Amendment Foundation. “A lot of them — they want to defend gun rights, they’re not going to stop defending gun rights, they’re just looking at other places to do it.”
Several of the organizations vying to unseat the NRA as the nation’s top gun advocate are considered more aggressive advocates of the Second Amendment and include the Gun Owners of America and the National Association for Gun Rights, as well as the more moderate Second Amendment Foundation. Their moves come as Congress and President Donald Trump are discussing new gun restrictions after mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, as well as an upcoming presidential election for which turning out gun owners will be a top priority for Trump’s campaign.
“As an organization, we don’t use Gucci-loafered lobbyists in Washington, D.C. in $200,000 wardrobes to grease the palms of weak-kneed politicians to vote right,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, referencing the NRA chief executive’s purported lavish spending. “Instead, we activate our members to do that lobbying for us and for them. That’s the power in a grassroots lobby and NRA lost that a long time ago.”
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Again, the NRA situation is nothing new; what is new is the NRA is now open to attack not only by gun control advocates, but, increasingly, gun rights advocates who were once the bread and butter of the NRA...
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