Executive Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin and new board member Jeff Knox say NRA must return to its original mission.
The National Rifle Association’s (NRA’s) new leadership is asking a New York state judge to allow it to continue reforms it says began before the state’s attorney general kept her campaign promise to bring the gun rights advocacy group to court.
In February, a New York jury found Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s former executive vice president and CEO, liable for the misuse and mismanagement of millions in charitable funds and ordered him to pay $4.3 million in damages.
Other NRA officials were ordered to pay restitution and one agreed to testify for the state in the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
State Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen will decide whether the NRA can file for bankruptcy, be assigned a trustee or special master to oversee its operations, or be allowed to resume operations on its own.
According to January court documents, the venerable Second Amendment organization has been bleeding members and cash over the past several years. Total NRA membership peaked at 5.2 million in 2018. By 2023, that had dropped more than 25 percent to 3.8 million.
Likewise, annual dues dropped more than 50 percent to $83.3 million in 2022 from a high of $175.6 million in 2013.
Doug Hamlin was elected to replace Mr. LaPierre as the NRA’s executive vice president and CEO during a May 20 board of directors meeting in Dallas. He told The Epoch Times that NRA leaders have learned from the scandals that brought down his predecessor.
Mr. Hamlin said the NRA has new leadership and a new outlook, with a new slate of officers who are committed to transparency and accountability. This includes a whistleblower program to encourage people to report problems and a chief compliance officer who reports directly to the board of directors.
He said that the traditionally media-shy organization is turning over a new leaf.
“The fact that I’m having this conversation with [a reporter] is something that may not have been happening over the past five years,” Mr. Hamlin told The Epoch Times.
He said that even with its losses, the NRA is still the largest pro-Second Amendment organization in the United States.
“It’s been difficult. But I think our demise has been greatly exaggerated,” he said.
‘Course Correction’
Board member and longtime critic of NRA leadership Owen Mills agrees with Mr. Hamlin. He was one of the board members who raised the alarm about what he considered improper spending and a lack of financial accountability under Mr. LaPierre’s leadership. However, he said that the NRA has turned a corner.
In a June 27 deposition filed with the New York court, Mr. Mills stated that NRA leadership has implemented corrective actions and can be trusted to resume operations.
“I think with the course correction that began in the late teens with our new officer slate, that we are on the correct path. I think that we’re past the issues we had before,” Mr. Mills said in the deposition.
Some board members don’t agree.
Reform
Newly elected board member Jeff Knox said the NRA’s descent began when the organization shifted its focus to politics from shooting sports and gun safety. Mr. Knox leads the Firearms Coalition and has been involved with the NRA for most of his life.
“[The NRA] grew, in my opinion, into a fundraising organization that used gun rights as the lever to fundraise. Shooting sports became an afterthought,” Mr. Knox said.
Mr. Knox is one of four new board members, along with Kansas District Court Judge Phil Journey, NRA life member and activist Dennis Fusaro of Virginia, and Rocky Marshall, founder and CEO of Frontier Truck Gear from Boerne, Texas, who were placed on the ballot by petition from NRA members.
They ran as the reform candidates. All are longtime NRA members. A couple of them are former board members.
Mr. Knox said he would like to see the board pared to 10 or 15 members with nonprofit or corporate board experience. Unlike Mr. Mills, he said he wants the board restructured and operations resumed under third-party oversight.
“So (the court) can see that, yes, we are staying on the straight and narrow. I think that there’s still potential for the wrong-headed amongst us to try and take us down the wrong road again,” Mr. Knox said.
Mr. Journey is a former board member who was just reelected. He is the creator and director of RestoreNRA.com.
He didn’t respond to an email request for comment. However, information on his website says RestoreNRA.com is a legal fund “set up to directly pay the legal fees incurred in [pursuing] this effort to rescue, reform, and restore the NRA.”
“I am asking the New York court to appoint an independent Special Master to restore the NRA so that it is done by NRA members for NRA members,” Mr. Journey wrote on the website.
Mr. Knox said the NRA began as an organization to teach marksmanship and gun safety and focused on hunting, self-defense, and shooting sports. He said the NRA needs to get back to that middle ground.
“We need to be focused on providing our members with value-added for their membership, both in the political realm and in the practical realm,” Mr. Knox told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Knox said the evolution of the NRA began with its initial support for the National Firearms Act of 1934 and, 34 years later, with the Gun Control Act of 1968, both of which the NRA now opposes.
Then, as now, NRA members were generally law-abiding citizens, said Mr. Knox. He said the laws were sold as crime-fighting tools that NRA members expected to have little effect on their lives.
“We found out that it didn’t make anything better. And that it was easier for [law] enforcement groups to go after us than it was for them to go after bad guys,” Mr. Knox said.
“We’re an easier target.”
Because of that, many NRA members began to push for more political action.
‘Uphill Battle’
At the 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati, a contingent of Second Amendment hardliners spoke up. Labeled the Cincinnati Revolt, that meeting shifted the focus, although the momentum after the meeting pushed the NRA too far, Mr. Knox said.
Mr. LaPierre was elected CEO in 1991. Outspoken and not easily intimidated, he was simultaneously praised by NRA members for his dedication and criticized by detractors for his abrasiveness.
As the NRA’s membership, funding, and influence grew, so did allegations of out-of-control spending. At the 2019 annual meeting in Indianapolis, the then-president of the NRA, Oliver North, questioned Mr. LaPierre’s leadership and the organization’s financial accountability.
Mr. LaPierre stymied Mr. North’s effort, but he couldn’t stop the wave of mistrust and disillusionment from NRA members. Current members say they support the organization’s mission.
Several of the more than 70,000 NRA members at a gathering at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas last May told The Epoch Times they are willing to give the NRA a chance to redeem itself.
Mike Runnels of Big Sandy, Texas, said he had heard some issues raised about Mr. LaPierre but didn’t know the details. He said it’s vital to have an organization to defend the Second Amendment so he will keep his membership.
“I’m gonna still believe in what its intention is, and that is to preserve our Second Amendment rights. But it’s gonna be tough, it’s gonna be an uphill battle,” he told The Epoch Times.
Dom Ford, a retired U.S. Marine from Keller, Texas, joined the NRA a few years ago. He said he feels personally responsible for defending his Second Amendment rights. While he expressed some concern over the scandal, Mr. Ford said he would give the NRA a chance to prove itself.
“If something comes to a really significant head, then I’ll walk away, but right now, I trust the brand. I’m willing to see, you know, what kind of significant changes in management occur,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Knox pointed out that while the NRA lost 1 million members, other gun rights groups gained only about 100,000.
He said this leaves about 900,000 gun owners unaffiliated. The NRA’s leadership must find a way to draw those members back, he said.
“If we’re going to survive, we’re going to need the support of our members, our former members, our future members, the industry, and especially our donors,” Mr. Knox said.
“I hope that we can earn that trust.”