Opinion by Former NRA Director-Rocky Marshall.
Fairfax, VA – -(AmmoLand.com)- To NRA Members: IT IS OVER!
The NRA’s financials are spiraling rapidly towards insolvency, and the future appears bleak for the survivability of the NRA, which may be forced into bankruptcy (for real this time) in the coming months. The next and final chapter for the NRA will be in a bankruptcy court, where a Judge will likely appoint a “Receiver” to take control of the assets of the NRA.
The NRA has been thriving for over 150 years; but will likely not survive until the end of this year.
This once great organization is now facing dissolution as the direct result of malfeasance by Wayne LaPierre and the impotent Board of Directors (BOD). Undoubtedly, key management personnel, including Wayne Lapierre, Wilson Phillips, and others, will likely face criminal charges for embezzlement, fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and other charges.
The NRA, in the coming months, will not be able to pay outstanding bills or maintain staff to fulfill the mission due to the rapid decline of donations by members. In 2016, NRA revenues reached a peak of $367 million and currently is projected to receive $200 million for the current fiscal year 2022. The collapse in donations is directly related to the revelations that the NRA Management misused millions of dollars of donations for personal benefit. The misuse of NRA monies by NRA Management and the BOD has been reported as far back as 1998 when a complaint was filed by NRA Directors with the FEC.¹
A question that is often repeated is: “Why did the NRA BOD allow Wayne Lapierre and others to misuse the donations & defraud the members?”
The most obvious answer is that a few key Directors were being paid. From 2002 through 2020, over $10 million dollars have been paid directly or indirectly to NRA Directors. A secondary issue is that NRA Directors were not informed and also routinely presented false information by NRA Officers and Management in order to hide the truth. During my tenure as an NRA Director, I was routinely denied access to information and also received blatantly untrue information from NRA officers. The NRA BOD has not provided proper fiduciary oversight of the NRA for decades. The NRA BOD could have easily stopped the fraud and mismanagement by Wayne LaPierre (and others) but instead chose to ignore the obvious illegal activities. The BOD audit committee (chaired by the current President, Charles Cotton) approved transactions retroactively without BOD approval.
The current lawsuit from the New York Attorney General will likely not go to trial; but, instead, will be superseded by a forced bankruptcy.
The negative press reports from these legal filings will continue to drive donors away, and revenues will decline. As a former Director for the NRA, I have researched the complaints by the New York Attorney General and found all charges to be true. I could not identify a single charge that was untrue or exaggerated. As has been reported, Wayne Lapierre has admitted to several of the charges in the previous bankruptcy trial in Dallas.
Historians and columnists will report in future years that the NRA was destroyed from within by the greed of NRA Management Wayne LaPierre, Woody Phillips, (and others) and also by the lack of oversight by the NRA Board of Directors. Collectively this group has destroyed the most valuable gun rights organization on the planet.
Rocky Marshall
Former NRA Director – 2021
NRA Life Benefactor Member
1. Weldon H. Clark Jr. FEC Complaint 1998 (https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/4865/00001F57.pdf)
Weldon H. Clark Jr. FEC National Rifle Association (NRA) Complaint 1998