In the ‘reasonable conversation about guns’ thread, BobLibDem said the following:
I have heard that a number of times from people on the left since December. What I’ve yet to see is any convincing evidence of this.
If the NRA has 4 million members paying $25 annual dues, they get $100 million from their membership. Do they get enough additional funding from gun manufacturers to tip the scales? It’s possible, but I’d sure like to see some evidence.
And from out here, much as I dislike it, the NRA and its members seem to be in a very effective and intense symbiotic relationship. Sure, the NRA emotionally manipulates its members, but the members seem to like the manipulation, and they keep calling their Congresscritters. I don’t see anything going on with the NRA that really requires a major role by gun manufacturers to explain it. The intensity of the pro-gun crowd suffices.
I’m sure the gun manufacturers don’t have any problem with what the NRA does, but I don’t see any evidence that they’re the ones calling the tune.
I could be wrong, but if so, I’d really like to see some evidence.
It’s my impression that the NRA has, in recent years, essentially moved away from what their membership wants toward doing more and more lobbying on behalf of gun and ammunition manufacturers.
Many members are not really aware of that… Yet.
The thing is, if they get a large chunk of money from manufacturers, that far outweighs the $25 they get from Joe NRA member. They can afford to lose a member here or there. They COULD NOT afford to lose the chunk of money from the manufacturers all at once.
So really, it is not about how much money they currently get from members - it’s about what the NRA is currently doing with that money - are they doing things the members want? Or doing things that the manufacturers want? And are the majority of members even aware of the kind of lobbying the NRA is doing on a day-to-day level?
What point? That NRA members are a small subset of gun owners? Not everybody who has a gun pays any attention at all to politics, and not everybody’s a joiner. (Mensa has only 110,000 members worldwide – its potential membership (by definition) is 2% of the global population, or 140 million.)
Now, it would be significant if there were some rival and more rational, less gun-control-averse organization of gun owners and its membership outnumbered the NRA’s, but that is not the case.
OK, I see from your link that the NRA has derived at least 13% of its income in recent years from gun manufacturers through ads and sponsorships. Plus an undetermined amount through the donated $1 per gun royalties from some manufacturers that might add another few percent to that.
That’s more than nothing, but it’s a long way from substantiating a “gun industry controls the NRA” claim.
Where did you get that number? It’s not at all consistent with the info in the link. For example:
The link says about 10% (20.9 million) comes from ads.
It says that up to 52.6 million in some years has come from direct contributions from gun manufacturers and corporate allies. That alone would be approximately 25%, and cumulatively 35%.
It then lists unspecified amounts coming from portions of individual sales. It then lists unspecified amounts coming from industry donations to the NRA Foundation.
13%? That’s bullshit. Why do people engage this particular link in such a silly fashion? If you don’t like it, find some other evidence to help flesh out the details. I found it through a quick internet search, but it can’t be the only info out there.
Your link doesn’t say that. It says that up to 52.6 million has come in direct contributions since 2005. That’s about $6.6 million per year, or ~3% of its 2010 revenue.
And you continue to hit new ones. Do you think that extra $1500 will give you any more of the NRA’s ear than a regular membership would? Nobody at the top levels of the NRA know who you(or any other $1500’ers) are, because you don’t contribute enough to catch their attention. If any of the gun or ammo manufacturors said, “You’ll get your usual if you kick Bricker out right now” there would be a cancelation notice in the mail before he left the building.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. That isn’t very clear.
I do note that the article does state very clearly that less than half of the NRA revenue comes from membership fees. It ought to be pretty easy to find out how much (in terms of dollar amount) comes from membership fees, and compare that to the total revenue.
Until someone can provide clarifying detail, I note that the article is very clear about the fact that the majority of their revenue does not come from membership fees.
Then the percentage of intelligent people that belong to Mensa doesn’t really matter because they don’t claim to represent anybody. The NRA, on the other hand, claims to represent who, again?
Actually, not even that. Here’s a quote of what it says:
$52.6M is the upper estimate, but there seems to be some very large error bars associated with this data point. I’m also suspicious that the lower limit is exactly $20M but the upper limit is $52.6M. Without knowing anything else, the wise move would be to take the average and set it at $36.3M.
Okay, I just went to their 2010 IRS 990 form. Of a total revenue of 227,811,279, member dues were 100,531,465. Program fees were an additional 6,552,336.
So the article is accurate in stating that less than half of their revenues come from membership dues and fees.