The Future of the NRA

We finally have a ruling in NY's corruption case against the NRA, which presents them with a significant opportunity. 

Also, we let AI write a summary of this podcast in the style of other podcasts, and it turned out super overblown and melodramatic. Here it is: 

"Discover the seismic impact of the New York Attorney General's case against the National Rifle Association, where the powerful winds of justice have swept through the corridors of the NRA, leaving an uncertain future for Wayne LaPierre and his associates. As the gavel comes down, join us for a compelling narrative that weaves through the financial consequences, the potential for a court-appointed overseer, and the political shockwaves reverberating across New York's landscape. We analyze the Attorney General Letitia James' steadfast pursuit, compare it to other high-profile New York cases like Donald Trump's, and consider what this means for the NRA's path forward in a post-LaPierre world. 

Then, we pivot to the crossroads where the NRA stands today, poised between revitalization and obsolescence. Our discussion takes a hard look at the challenges ahead, emphasizing the urgent need for the organization's leadership to enact decisive reforms and redefine their mission to captivate a new generation of gun enthusiasts. We critically evaluate the NRA's strategic positioning, suggesting a bold reversal: to become immovable in their core gun rights advocacy while evolving in their cultural and educational outreach to align with technological advancements and shifting societal interests. Tune in as we offer a blueprint for the NRA's survival, with insights on appealing to a broader audience and securing a place in the future of American gun culture."

Transcript

Isaac: 0:00

We finally have a ruling from the anti-corruption case that the New York Attorney General has been running against the National Rifle Association, and we've also got some thoughts on the future of the NRA as well. Welcome back to another T-Rex talk. Today we're going to be covering a bunch of different stuff related to this case sort of, but mostly the NRA in general. But the news is as follows they have found Wayne LaPierre and a couple of his guys, only one of whom still work with the NRA. They all left the NRA before or during the curse of the trial to make it look a little better. That's my assumption. But they have found him and a bunch of the other guys guilty of some level of corruption. And Wayne LaPierre was found. He has to pay about $5.4 million in damages to the NRA money that he took out and used for personal purposes. But he's already paid back about a million bucks, so it's a little less than that. He's also been removed from office. He cannot work at the NRA. That's the judge's ruling. And then Woody Phillips is the former treasurer of the NRA. He has to pay back $2 million in damages, but all of this money is going back to the NRA.

Isaac: 1:25

This isn't necessarily exactly what the Attorney General wanted, and there were a bunch of other charges that the jury threw out and there were some things that the judge didn't even allow at the beginning. And now that we have a ruling, obviously there's a whole bunch of journalists and a whole bunch of Twitter people trying to make political hay out of this thing, but technically that is where it started. So the Attorney General of New York this is Letitia James. She's been gunning for the NRA for a long time. I think it was a big part of her campaign when she ran for Attorney General. Getting rid of Donald Trump and getting rid of the NRA were on her talking points a bunch. She has called the NRA a terrorist organization and she called for the judge to dissolve the organization in its entirety. Well, obviously the judge didn't do that and the judge didn't push for quite as many things as possible, but the judge could still ask for more stuff. One of the big things that the NRA has to be concerned about at this point is, as Wayne is paying stuff back, it is possible that the judge will put some sort of overseer, a court-appointed observer, to be on the board, be in some of those meetings and to report back to the court on whether or not they are, you know, following the bylaws and keeping up with any other ruling stuff like that. That is something that will be determined, I believe, in July.

Isaac: 2:49

So, even though those Twitter people are crowing that this is a major, major accomplishment, a death-dealing blow to the NRA, there was considerably less damage to the NRA than I actually expected, because there has been a huge amount of very politically motivated court activity in New York recently. The obvious example is probably the Donald Trump trial also. So they had happened under Letitia James' watch, where he's got to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars, I guess, to the state of New York because he defrauded some banks by, you know, signing a contract with them and then fulfilling the terms of the contract to the bank's complete and total satisfaction. The bank even showed up, sent people to the trial to testify on behalf of Donald Trump. But the court has said no, that's not how this works. The government decides what everything is and Donald Trump is a fraud who has to pay a whole bunch of money back to the government. So that is happening.

Isaac: 3:50

And then the hilarious thing is, of course, the court has stated, even though Letitia James promised to get rid of Trump using any and all means at her disposal if elected Attorney General. She has stated repeatedly that this is not a politically motivated thing. This is just actual, legitimate, regular, criminal fraud stuff that Donald Trump committed. And then the governor of New York has said the opposite, has said commercial real estate developers, please understand, we are not gunning for you. This is not a normal fraud trial. This is 100% politically motivated and we will never come after you. Please do not leave the state of New York. She probably said that because New York is already losing about a quarter million people a year At least it has been for the last couple of years and relatively large businesses. Remington is a very large employer in New York state and they are moving to Georgia as soon as they possibly can. That is gonna be a pretty big hit. Maybe not for New York itself, but it's gonna be a pretty big hit to all of the people in that town who work for Remington and a bunch of them will probably move to Georgia. But a lot of them will also lose their jobs and if they can't make ends meet in New York as taxes go up and crime goes up and everything else goes up, they're probably gonna move somewhere else as well. That's why the governor wants people to not move away from New York.

Isaac: 5:14

Now back to the NRA and the corruption charges. They probably don't surprise a lot of us. In fact, in some ways I thought that they were gonna talk more about other stuff that we've heard about from the NRA Lots of meddling with board members and stacking the board and various other things related to contracts and conflicts of interest and stuff like that. Now, I don't know how many of us on the podcast have paid super close attention to their board meetings and their bylaws and the exact adherence to their own standards and charter and stuff like that, but it doesn't surprise us when there is a lot of meddling and what I would call sort of bad faith action. And then there's also some actual bad action as well. But fortunately, all of that money is going to be paid back.

Isaac: 6:01

Wayne LaPierre is out permanently and well now what? For the next few weeks, there's gonna be a huge amount of crowing and exulting on social media and legacy media alike, people claiming that they have finally destroyed the NRA. They have finally shown the corruption inside of the NRA. They have finally proved that the NRA isn't really a human rights or civil rights organization. It is just a money laundering operation for a guy who has now been punished and is giving all that money back to the human rights or civil rights organization. And I would say that a lot of this rejoicing from the gun control crowd, from the anti-gun folks, shows that they really don't understand how nonprofits or gun rights organizations work any better than they understand guns themselves. Because Wayne LaPierre was their greatest ally, because he destroyed basically everybody's trust in the NRA. He forced some of the most principled people out of the organization and then obviously he was pulling money out of the treasury for his own personal gain and he brought a lot of bad press to the organization without the really good results. So they should be sad that he is gone Under his watch.

Isaac: 7:15

Over the last several years of some of these allegations and issues, the NRA has lost about a third of their members and almost half of the revenue that they used to pull in. So there's a lot of reasons on why that might be. It could be the membership is dying off, but it could be dissatisfaction at what the NRA was doing and lack of trust at all of the allegations all sorts of things that now, in many ways, the NRA can put behind them, might be able to put behind them, but the left is still rejoicing nonetheless. Giffords is saying on their Twitter feed now that you can see how bad the NRA really is, you should join us, which I don't understand. If I'm disappointed that the NRA wasn't using its money well to fight for gun rights, I'm not gonna join the Giffords group.

Isaac: 8:08

David Hogg, as usual, believes that the NRA has suffered a crippling mortal blow, even though the judge actually just awarded them back $6 million demand that they follow their charter. Probably not a mortal injury. No, if the NRA is dying, it's going to be because of stuff that happened largely before this ruling this idea that the NRA is now completely crippled because it has lost the leadership of a man who has proven himself to be a corrupt leader who was enriching himself from their coffers. If anything, the NRA has just lost a significant parasite, regained some of the missing funds and now has an opportunity to demonstrate a fresh start and rebrand with a new leaf. But will that be too little, too late?

Isaac: 8:58

There's a lot of stuff that has happened in the last few years while they were losing members and while they were losing money, gun Culture 2.0 has really really moved on. There's a whole bunch of other gun rights organizations the NSSF has done a lot for hunting, ngr has done a lot for constitutional carry, goa and FPC have had a ton of legal victories as well of their legislative stuff. And then YouTube and Instagram have really replaced the gun magazines for content in a pretty big way. So, yeah, the NRA has a lot of ground to make up, not just trust to rebuild, but a lot of stuff that they would have to do to regain the sort of position that gun control advocates believe that they still have. And as critical as we have been of modern NRA, I do think it is impressive.

Isaac: 9:49

This is an organization that has been around since 1871, and they have done a ton of stuff. They have their range officers stuff, they have certifications, they have clubs, they have events. They have a giant industry trade show. Still. They have published many magazines over the years, produced lots of video. They even produced a lot of video on Instagram and YouTube, so it isn't like they got completely left behind on purpose. They were trying to do that.

Isaac: 10:17

And then, of course, there is the political arm. That's the main thing that their enemies talk about, the fact that they have the NRA Institute for Legislative Action that has done a bunch of lobbying over the years. They have PACs and they have funds and they do a lot of campaign donations. They even have the Civil Defense Fund, which does pro bono legal work for folks. I think it may be restricted to NRA members but I can't remember the exact details but court cases that have to do with self defense, firearms, various other gun related cases. I mean this is a lot of stuff for a single organization to do and they've been doing most of this for about 150 years. Yes, there have been some major, major missteps that also go way back, a lot of political compromise that has happened, with various politicians going all the way back to, well, at least 1934. But there has been nevertheless a huge amount of stuff that has been done education, cultural work and general things that have been accomplished. And so the NRA is this very big cultural institution which is now at a crossroads.

Isaac: 11:27

The question is what does the NRA do now? What does the NRA do? Maybe first and foremost to ensure to the judge that they have turned over that new leaf and they don't need a special court appointed advisor to sit on the board, and you know, actually that sounds like it would slow things down almost as much as having Wayne there. Technically, there are elections for new board members happening right now, but usually less than 10% of NRA members participate in that election and vote on people that they would like to have on the board. And technically, the board doesn't actually have to meet until mid-May, so we're going to have to wait and see what happens. And then, of course, I should point out that even though Wayne LaPierre is out first out by resignation to make things on the court case go better, but now he is permanently barred from being the CEO. He's gone, but there are a ton of his friends on the board. He's been manipulating and stacking that board for a very, very long time, so kind of anything could happen.

Isaac: 12:34

If the board downplays all of this, I would say that the NRA is dead. If they say, well, you know what? It was just a few million dollars and it all got paid back and we had no idea what was going on and everything is fixed and everything being back to normal is enough, then I would say obviously nothing's going to change and it is a dying organization. Now there already is an official response that is not super promising. It makes Wayne LaPierre the scapegoat. It makes NRA the victim. It's a pretty classic spin move. But it doesn't sound like.

Isaac: 13:12

The announcement doesn't make it sound like they are excited to be going in a wildly different direction as a group, and that is, I think, really their only hope at this point. If they would like to continue the legacy that they have and if they would like to continue to, you know, gain membership or, I don't know, just for a start, stop losing members, they're going to have to have a pretty significant new direction. They have an amazing golden opportunity to show this new direction and to explain why there wasn't one for the last 40, 30 years. They could actually put all the dead, dull, stagnant, compromised, dodgy, corrupt past behind them and strike out with big goals in mind, and they should really take this opportunity. The recovery of a few million dollars and the removal of Wayne LaPierre is not enough to prove that we're going to see this new direction.

Isaac: 14:08

The board needs to clean house and demonstrate that they're going to institute a sea change, not just because they got to do that for the judge, but also I think they got to do that if they want any new members, if they have any desire to inspire confidence and capture the interests of the wider gun culture and, you know, the next generation of gun owners people who are not going to support the NRA just by default, but actually need to want over. There's a bunch of stuff that they have to do. They got to get hardcore in a hurry, and they could do this by filing some really hardcore lawsuits against states that are removing firearm freedoms, like firearm policy coalition is doing. They need to take a really no compromise stance on everything, like gun owners of America has been doing. They need to put a stop to the expensive access politics that they've been doing with just carrots and focus on applying actual pressure with the stick, like the NADR is doing. And they're going to have to do some collaborative work with all of those other gun organizations to demonstrate that they no longer think of themselves as the only game in town. And maybe I'm not saying they have to do this, but maybe they should bring back some of the folks who were forced out by Wayne and his buddies as a demonstration of this new direction. I don't know if that would be Chris Cox or Ollie North.

Isaac: 15:29

I don't know if this is a great idea, but it would be a pretty good mea culpa and there's going to be some hesitancy to a completely new direction because you know there are a whole bunch of people who do donate to the NRA just by default and there's a bunch of the existing donor base that likes the old style and flavor of the NRAs. They're going to have to keep doing some hunting content. We're going to keep some of the familiar faces around, for sure, but I don't know how long this actually goes for. It's very uncomfortable to point this out, but the people who support the NRA by default are pretty old and kind of dying. This is the most straightforward thing that the NRA could actually do. They could actually quantify exactly how many of their donors are going to die in the next five years and what that will do to their revenue stream. It's very uncomfortable to think about and to talk about, but some super basic market research and an actuarial table or two would get this done. And I would say, if they don't already know this, somebody else at the NRA probably needs to be fired. But regardless of what those statistics actually look like, they absolutely positively need new members, not just to make up the third that they have lost recently, but to get some folks who are I don't know like my age, who are going to at least be around for a little while, or hopefully younger. And if they're going to do that, then they have to really demonstrate an actual desire to get stuff done. They're going to have to show some guts, they're going to have to show some teeth and they're going to have to give people more than just duffel bags. And again, they do have to appease that judge. Their legal team has a better idea of this than I do, but, yeah, there should be a massive course correct between now and the next time they talk. So even though I don't know what the judge wants specifically, I think I do know what gun culture 2.0 wants.

Isaac: 17:30

I'm not the end all be all expert on this. I'm mostly speaking to this as a potential NRA supporter. I think I'm kind of the next group of people that the NRA should look like. I'm not a 65 year old duck hunter who enjoys the pocket knives, the duffel bags, and I'm just going to sign the check because of the warm, fuzzy feeling it gives me that the NRA is doing its job, because it has for the last 150 years. But I'm also not the 20 year old edgy gamer with many call of duty campaigns who thinks that the NRA is joke and doesn't have any money anyway. I'm kind of in the middle. I do have some money, but it's not a lot. So I want to make sure that I'm giving it to the people that are really getting the work done. I want to see a significant return for my donation, but if I see that I'm far too busy to do that research over and over and over again, I'm going to continue giving to the same group that is giving the results relatively consistently and hopefully I'm going to be around for a few decades. So I'm kind of who the NRA should target and I'm speaking from that perspective. Now I also, you know, work for a gun company and have been heavily involved in watching gun culture 2.0 for a long time, and I'm working as hard as I possibly can to develop gun culture 3.0. So maybe I do have a little bit more inside baseball. Maybe I'm not the perfect example, but I will say that if the NRA could get people like me on board, that would be a promising sign in a lot of ways.

Isaac: 19:07

And ultimately, there's really only one thing, one fundamental thing, that they need to change to do that. For the last 150 years the NRA has always had a two-pronged approach, and that's great. It's extremely effective. On the one hand, they've done a huge amount of cultural and educational work across a wide base of the population and on the other hand, they have their political activism, both the donations and the lobbying. This is great. These two things are extremely effective to do in concert together, and the way that they've developed their strategies is good too. They have this two-pronged approach. Some things are principled and set in stone and do not change and they stick to those principles, and then other things are changeable. They do have to adapt and improvise and overcome as stuff changes. Having these two strategies both simultaneously running is also a good thing.

Isaac: 20:09

However, my contention is that the NRA has got those strategies exactly backwards. It is the political side that has been completely blown by the wind and completely adaptable to whatever it is that politicians and various people want. That's the side that has been completely guided by pragmatism and principle has taken the backseat or, in some cases, been kicked completely out of the car. Then on the other side, the cultural and education side. That is where stuff has been immovable and completely fixed in stone, culturally locked in amber from the ancient past. If you will, this is T-Rex. I have to throw in a Jurassic Park image when I have the chance that cultural and education side has refused to change, even as technology and various other things have made it really obvious that it should.

Isaac: 21:04

So all that the NRA really has to do is take these two prongs of attack and these two strategy building techniques and flip them. They just have to get these two sides right. The rights don't change and where they come from doesn't change, and no one should ever pretend that they do. And then the tools that people should have and the skills that they should work on and the things that they're interested in, those things do change and you shouldn't pretend that they don't. I realize that these are deep, fundamental things that the NRA would have to change, but it wouldn't change a whole lot of their day-to-day or their structure and, honestly, they've got nothing to lose.

Isaac: 21:49

The Left already thinks that they are, you know, a terrorist organization that rejoices in the spilled blood of children. So their press can't get any worse. And they're already hemorrhaging members and money, so that can't get any worse. They should do something bold, they should do something extremely courageous and they should demonstrate that that's going to be the way that they're going to act moving forwards. I'm honestly not super optimistic about their future. I think it's very likely that there are a bunch of board members who don't want to do the hard work of this gigantic rebrand and pivot, but if they do want the organization to stick around and have some kind of cultural influence and some kind of political victories at all, I would say this is their only play.