In recent years, the N.R.A. has run annual deficits of as much as $40 million. Revisit mikespiesnyc’s report, from 2019, on the organization’s internal crisis.
This winter, members of the National Rifle Association—elk hunters in Montana, skeet shooters in upstate New York, concealed-carry enthusiasts in Jacksonville—might have noticed a desperate tone in the organization’s fund-raising efforts. In a letter from early March, Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s top executive, warned that liberal regulators were threatening to destroy the organization. “We’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the N.R.A.
For more than three decades, Ackerman has shaped the N.R.A.’s public identity, helping to build it from a niche activist organization into a ubiquitous presence in American popular culture. Ackerman produces the N.R.A. magazineand has devised its most successful ad campaigns, including one called “I’m the N.R.A.,” for which it recruited gun owners, including the actor Tom Selleck and the basketball star Karl Malone, to pose with their weapons.
In its early days, the N.R.A. was more interested in shooting than in politics. It was founded by two former Union Army officers, who returned from the Civil War dismayed at having been outshot by their Confederate counterparts and hoping to inspire a culture of marksmanship in the North. For more than a century, the N.R.A.’s primary concerns were hunting, firearms education, and gun safety.
Ackerman McQueen provides the N.R.A. with public-relations work, marketing, branding, corporate communications, event planning, Web design, social-media engagement, and digital-content production. It wields great influence over the N.R.A.’s initiatives and is involved with nearly all of the group’s divisions, with the exception of its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, where, according to former employees, Ackerman’s messaging sometimes undermines the group’s efforts.
Neal Knox, an influential board member, also urged LaPierre to fire Ackerman, and he agreed. But half a year went by with no apparent action, and Knox warned LaPierre that he planned to have him removed from his post. The following spring, Knox stood for election as an officer, a higher tier of board member. According to the affidavit, Tony Makris, the president of Mercury Group, enlisted the actor Charlton Heston to challenge Knox for the position.
The N.R.A.’s tax filings suggest that the advancement team generates only a small portion of revenues, with the “vast majority” of contributions coming instead from “millions of small individual donors.” Still, Schropp’s department spends lavishly; his annual compensation has grown to more than six hundred and twenty thousand dollars. “I was doing fund-raising dinners where wine was pouring freely, and going to dinners with other N.R.A.
In 2017, visitors to the N.R.A.’s annual meeting, at a convention center in Atlanta, noted a huge banner that ran nearly the full length of the building. It was there to promote a newly launched program called Carry Guard, for members who wanted to protect themselves with firearms. The program offered military-style training, overseen by former Special Forces members, and liability insurance to cover policyholders who had shot people in self-defense.
On May 11th, the N.R.A. sued the D.F.S. and the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, claiming that the department’s actions had caused “tens of millions of dollars in damages.” The group’s lawyers—led by Bill Brewer, McQueen’s son-in-law—framed the dispute as a First Amendment issue, arguing that Cuomo and the D.F.S. had conspired “to deprive the N.R.A. and its constituents” of the “right to speak freely about gun-related issues.” In an amended complaint, the N.R.A.
Cummins explained to the board that Ackerman and other venders were generating enormous expenses and getting paid through multiple entities, in a way that obscured payments. One such arrangement involved a company called Membership Marketing Partners, which provides direct-mail fund-raising. In 2017, the N.R.A. paid M.M.P. nearly twelve million dollars. At the same time, it directed almost eight hundred thousand dollars to a firm called Allegiance Creative Group, for “fundraising counsel.
The memos frequently note a lack of transparency around questionable payments to individuals. Mike Marcellin worked at the N.R.A. for almost twenty-three years. As a senior employee, he oversaw the organization’s relationship with Lockton Affinity, an insurance administrator that worked on Carry Guard and other N.R.A.-branded insurance products. In 2016, Marcellin retired from the N.R.A. and started a private consultancy.
Powell has a close relationship with Makris, dating back to at least 2011. That year, the two men travelled together to Patagonia, for a photo shoot for one of Powell’s catalogues, in which they are pictured smoking cigars and gazing at the sunset. The accompanying text describes an idyllic two-week fishing and hunting trip: “Bags of Cubans, bottles of Scotch, enough red meat to appease any man, and certainly enough fresh air to make you wonder why you settle for the norm to begin with.
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