Again, You don’t need the NRA to teach you to shoot. Most of their money is spent on lobbying and most or all of that is solicited funds. The people who are members of the NRA know what the organization represents.
What the organization represents is enriching the top officers of the organization. Do the members know that?
No, it’s a closely guarded secret known only to you and the NY AG.
Other countries that don’t have the Second Amendment nevertheless manage to have shooting sports, hunter education, etc.; what do you think is so unique about the US that we CANNOT have shooting sports without the Second Amendment?
The NRA, however, was founded to teach people to shoot. That was the original inspiration and reason for its existence, and its primary purpose for most of its history. That means endowed funds and assets built up over the last century were NOT necessarily given for lobbying. Even today, there seems to be a great gulf between the NRA membership and leadership. For example, polls consistently show a solid majority of NRA members support universal background checks, including for sales between private parties. When was the last time you heard the NRA itself advocate for that?
Well, by your own admission, much of the membership doesn’t know about the organization’s finances and how their membership monies are being used, so on what basis do you conclude that they know much about what the organization is lobbying for?
Yet, that is one of their objectives. You also don’t need them to fight against gun control legislation. But that is another one of their objectives.
If you believe in the free market then you’ve got to believe that the hoped-for demise of the NRA will create a vacuum that would be filled be a pro-gun/pro-gun rights organization which would hopefully be honest and not serve as either a slush fund for its leaders or a conduit for money to flow from who-knows-where (oh, let’s guess) to the GOP.
I am fast becoming a fan of the Legal Eagle channel on YouTube. He is an attorney who does a pretty good job of laying out the legal aspects of various issues. I get a sense he is liberal(ish) but he does seem to try to lay out the case for and against fairly (to my eye…I might be wrong). Reminds me of some of the legal eagles who used to post on this board.
Here is his take on the NRA case:
I thought I had read here that the NRA is mostly funded by the industry, and mostly represents the interests of the industry? Rights of ‘gun owners’ being a means to that end?
This is not true.
I’ve heard that, too, but this CNN article from 2015 notes that, while gun manufacturers do make significant donations to the NRA, they’re legally forbidden from funding the NRA’s Political Victory Fund (a PAC, or political action committee, which can make donations to political candidates and run ads during elections) – the PAC is apparently funded solely by individual donors.
However, the NRA also has a lobbying arm, the NRA Institute for Legal Action, and that group can and does receive donations from manufacturers.
Aye; he’s great. Excellent channel.
You’re creating a strawman argument. The 2nd amendment guarantees the right of gun ownership in the United States. It goes beyond sport shooting and hunting. What other countries do or do not is irrelevant to this topic. You are apparently arguing that the 2nd Amendment is unnecessary.
The people who are members of the NRA know it represents the largest political support of the 2nd Amendment.
It is unnecessary for four of their five objectives.
You’ve lost track of your original argument entirely. You argued that shooting sports and hunter education and marksmanship training was Second Amendment oriented and that its purpose (singular) was to promote and lobby for Second Amendment issues. The NRA’s own charter says you are wrong. The NRA has multiple purposes, most of which do not involve Second Amendment advocacy. The example of other countries is not irrelevant, because those other countries show it is possible to foster the shooting sports and have hunter education and marksmanship training even in the absence of a particular constitutional amendment.
Now THIS is a strawman argument. The NRA has (or, rather, had) substantial endowed funds and assets built up over the decades. The NRA’s charitable assets included funds donated to the organization for ALL of its purposes, not just legislative advocacy. (Remember, the institutional funds at issue may well include bequests made to the NRA before the NRA even had any legislative advocacy to fund.) The NRA leadership had/has a fiduciary duty as trustees of those charitable assets to use them for the purposes (plural) for which the NRA was chartered and for which the funds were donated.
Now, do you honestly believe that the NRA membership at large is aware of (much less approves of) the fact that their monies, the monies you think they gave for Second Amendment advocacy, was instead allegedly used to pay some expenses for Wayne LaPierre’s assistant’s son’s wedding? How did that wedding advance the cause of gun rights in the US? How about private flights from Orlando to Washington DC that detoured via North Platte, Nebraska, to pick up or drop of LaPierre’s niece and her family? (The NRA’s own current treasurer has testified that he did not know of any NRA business purpose in chartered flights to North Platte, but the membership is alleged to have paid for a number of them. I’m sure LaPierre’s grandniece [who as of 2017 still required a babysitter] enjoyed flying with her great-uncle, but I look forward to your explanation of why that’s an appropriate use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable assets.)
I’ve posted the money taken in from members and the money spent on lobbying. It’s clear that the NRA focuses on 2nd Amendment issues. For gun owners this is the main lobbyist to support. And yes, the membership is aware of what is going on right now.
The NRA’s own foundational documents list FIVE different purposes, only one of which is legislative lobbying on the Second Amendment. Unless and until the membership votes to change those documents, the NRA leadership has a legal obligation to spend monies and efforts on all five. That’s what being a trustee of charitable assets means: fiduciary obligations enforceable by law.
Also, does the membership approve of LaPierre and company looting the charitable assets to enrich themselves, and would they even be aware of it absent the New York AG’s office?
And yet people still join.
What you continually fail to understand is that gun owners in the US who want the freedoms secured by the 2nd Amendment will naturally gravitate to the NRA because it’s by far the major lobbying group dedicated to those freedoms.
Here is their mission statement:
Note the 1st one:
- To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially with reference to the inalienable right of the individual American citizen guaranteed by such Constitution to acquire, possess, collect, exhibit, transport, carry, transfer ownership of, and enjoy the right to use arms, in order that the people may always be in a position to exercise their legitimate individual rights of self-preservation and defense of family, person, and property, as well as to serve effectively in the appropriate militia for the common defense of the Republic and the individual liberty of its citizens;
I already quoted their mission statement in this thread. The Second Amendment is one part of one of the five purposes.
What is your point in quoting it back to me?
Given how simply and objectively wrong Magiver is, and how he has persisted in not even realizing the basis of his wrongitude, and how obvious it is to everyone else in the thread that he’s objectively incorrect, I’m not sure what’s accomplished by continuing to try to explain it to him.