2021 NRA Annual Meeting

NRA’s website announces, first, that the 2021 Annual Meetings (note the plural) has been “cancelled and will not be rescheduled,” and then that “2021 Annual Members’ Meeting Registration Now Open” It’s to be held October 2 in Charlotte, NC.

Our copies of the October Hunter and the Rifleman make no mention of this. The bylaws long required that the Members’ Meeting be announced in two consecutive issues of the official publications. We checked our current bylaws, and they’ve been changed, probably last year. Now notice of the annual meeting only need be given in accordance with the laws of the state of incorporation (New York, of course).

Checking those laws, they are plainly written with small nonprofits in mind. (Which most are: Allegheny County, population 270,000, has 1,651 nonprofits. For every NRA or AARP in this world, there are a thousand book clubs, police groups, or social clubs). But even so, New York law requires mailing of a notice by mail, fax, or email. ” If the notice is given personally, by first class mail or by facsimile telecommunications or by electronic mail, it shall be given not less than ten nor more than fifty days before the date of the meeting; if mailed by any other class of mail, it shall be given not less than thirty nor more than sixty days before such date. If mailed, such notice is given when deposited in the United States mail. . . .” Today is nine days before the meeting date.

It will probably be like last year’s Members Meeting, a sham. It was held on short notice in Tucson, Arizona, in a hotel whose ballroom could only hold (with covid spacings) about 200 members. Preregistration was required, and we’re told friendly directors were allowed to sign up their friends before anyone else could sign up, so the webpage within a day was reporting full capacity, no more registrations allowed. Instead of the members in general being allowed to attend, ask questions, and vote on resolutions, the audience was a tiny group of LaPIerre-supporting directors and their buddies.

Doesn’t it occur to anyone that, when you have to put the fix in at your “members’ meeting,” someone is doing something wrong, very wrong? Or has the NRA board discovered it can run the NRA without the members, and without the bylaws?

Update: Yes, the fix is in again! The largest room in the hotel they chose can in theory hold 1,800 people, but that’s a pre-covid number. Six feet of social spacing and you’re probably down to 400 members allowed to attend. It’s just under twice the size of the 2020 meeting room, and that held 200. If you do plan to attend, go onto the NRA website and register right now!