After Action Sitrep

The dust has begun to settle after the annual meeting, and our feeling is very, very good.

Before the meeting, we’d figured that reform would take another year. A year would mean another, much bigger, group of reformers running for the board, and winning enough seats to give reform a critical mass. The big problem being that NRA won’t last financially for another year, or even close to that. Its finances are down to the wire, and the “leadership” saw fit to make its last act the transfer of as much as that as possible to its attorneys.

But it didn’t take another year: reform is beginning here and now. The board elections saw five reformers (four running by petition only, normally a kiss of death) not just elected, but elected with very impressive vote counts — two of the top three, four of the top seven, and every one of them placing higher than the three former presidents who were on the ballot. The message was clear: Nominating Committee approval has overnight become less important than support for reform.

The members’ meeting reinforced that. We can’t help re-running the video of it, going back time after time to 31:27, when president Cotton (who the “leadership” had anointed as its next EVP) took a cheap shot at director Amanda Suffecool and the members exploded. The reformers then took the 76th directorship. Nor can we leave out the informal board “pre-meeting,” when director Jim Porter faced off with attorney Bill Brewer and sliced him up very fine. The report we’ve heard is that “leadership” told the directors each would have three minutes to speak (making sure each would have a “bumper sticker” type speech), but ten or so announced they were giving their time to Porter, and he used it with brutal efficiency.

Of greater importance was the impression being generated. Large groups of the board members were speaking out, directors who were respected for their level-headedness and moderation. Porter, Bachenberg, Heil, Suffecool, and others were lined up with the reformers.

 The board meeting — Bill Barr as president was not a win for reform, but he knows which way the wind is blowing and will adjust his sails. Bill Bachenberg as first VP–a great victory for reform. Second Vice President, another reformer, Mark Vaughan, whom NRA had some years back named its Law Enforcement Officer Of The Year, after he fired the shot that prevented a mass killing.

For EVP, a dark horse, Doug Hamlin, former head of NRA Publications. He’s a good administrator (which is the EVP’s real job) and we’re told is solidly in the reform camp. It sounds like he has a plan: his first day in the office, he fired John Frazer as General Counsel, appointed the solidly honest staff attorney Micheal Blaz to that post, and re-hired Joe DeBergalis to be head of General Operations. LaPierre had fired DeBergalis, who reportedly had fought with Bill Brewer.

Both of those moves show we now have an EVP/CEO who is after reform, and not inclined to be slow about it.

A new day has dawned! Update: Steve Gutowski agrees, at The Reload.