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NRA Board of Directors update: Just an apparently minor news item you will not read elsewhere. (I usually do not report minor scandals, but this is too good to pass up).
The NRA Board is ‘incestuous’, in that Wayne ‘La Pew’ Pierre’s hand picked Nominating Committee chooses the annual Board election nominees. But one can also get one the ballot by petitioning with the signatures of about 650 eligible voters.
(It used to be 250, but the Board upped the amount, to prevent the unanointed from getting on the ballot.) That sounds easy, but the members are spread across the country
And such petitioners rarely win. In fact, this year, crazed and senile Marion Hammer, the terror of Florida, denounced him and other petitioners are disloyal to the NRA
For the last 3 years, ‘reformer’ Adam Kraut has been trying to get on the Board. He is no liberal. He wants the NRA to be less compromising, but also better managed. He failed each time.
Adam is Neal Knox’s son, who lead the last revolt against La Pew in1996, nearly winning the 2/3’s needed. With PR firm Ackerman McQueen’s (‘Ack-Mac’) help. La Pew won the day, & expelled Neal and his rebels. One of their causes was removing Ack-Mac’s control.
Four of the 14 reformist Board members have resigned since the April annual elections, one quietly, three in protest against La Pew’s massive corruption, waste and self-dealing. The Hatfield–McCoy feud appears won.
Candidates losing in April are in line to replace those 4, till the next election. Jeff Knox has now refused a seat. He says he would create more disruption (which was the goal of his campaigns). Knox is essentially saying that the Board is now not reform-able.
2. Understand the implication of the firing of Ack-Mac. It created the modern NRA, to a large extent. In 1871-1977 the NRA existed, as it still pretends, for gun safety, sports shooting, competitions & training youth to shoot (for military service).
(Now these are a tiny fraction of their operations.) They supported the Gun Control Act of 1968, after three assassinations (JFK, Bobby and MLK).
In fact, they avoided controversy, in part to receive grants from major foundations. The Ford Foundation funded a ‘recreation center’ in Raton, NM, now the country’s largest firing range and gun shop. It which still operates, under the guise of ‘the Whittington Foundation’.
(It’s a 501c3, so donations are tax deductible, unlike to the NRA itself. 501c3’s are religious, educational, charitable, and scientific organizations. & sporting events, like the Special Olympics. But how a gun dealer and training facility for killers is tax deductible?)
In 1977, in the so-called ‘Cincinnati Revolt’, the Board was taken over by ‘reformers’ who wanted to turn the organization into what it now is - a political organization for preventing any gun control (as well as the lobbying group for gun manufacturers).
(Illegal activities for a non-profit, BTW.). They moved the HQ to the DC suburbs, and hired Ack-Mac, to bypass NYC PR firms, who knew nothing about the gun culture.
Ack-Mac transformed the NRA’s image and function. They brought it La Pew, and transformed a quiet introvert to the facade of a brash and ardent leader
They also brought in Ben Hur actor Charlton Heston, and wrote his most famous publicity stunt, “From my cold, dead hands.” They also started and ran NRAtv, now defunct.
Ack-Mac created the NRA’s ludicrous pretense of being the country’s “top civil rights’ organization”, meaning the right of all Americans to murder anyone they wanted. They brought in the legal experts to write new laws such as ‘stand your ground’,
which means that if you feel you are being threatened (don’t we all?), you can legally shoot the other person. This has infested 25 states, so far.
Their biggest victory was completely changing the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. They deluded Anthony Scalia and four other Justices (admitted, not difficult to do) with a false narrative of the legal precedence of gun laws, and the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment.
In fact, after Prohibition, many states & the Feds had many anti-gun laws, upheld by the courts. But now, the Amendment means what the NRA wants it to mean. Ironically, the specific law struck down by the 2008 Heller case was one of the same laws the NRA once promoted.
3. One suspects that La Pew and his Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight are egotistical enough to believe that the future is bright without their Puppet Master. They apparently still believe themselves to be Gary Cooper in High Noon. But what the country sees is Yosemite Sam.
@ThreadReaderApp unroll, please.
