Reports From January NRA Board Meeting

We’ve been collecting reports from observers, and here is a summary:

There were about 20 spectators, and about 1/3 of those were staff, or directors’ spouses. The spectator section was about one-quarter full, when in past years it was packed. 25 directors, a third of the board, was absent.

President Charles Cotton’s address was mostly aimed at rival pro-gun groups, which after Bruen have filed and won challenges all over the country, while NRA has been MIA there. He said around 200 suits have been filed by the other groups, but that Bruen was NRA’s case, as it sure was, and that the other groups are just building on Bruen’s foundation.

VP Willis Lee gave a lively presentation, and said that they’d keep up with efforts to relocate HQ to another state. VP David Coy spent his time denouncing the NY Attorney General’s “scurrilous vendetta.”

Wayne LaPierre gave the usual presentation, and the board gave polite applause at the end. In presentations at previous meetings, they’d given him a standing ovation before he started, but not this time. He said that NRA would appeal to the Supreme Court the dismissal of its First Amendment lawsuit against NY (which means lots for $$$ for the Brewer firm, which lost at the trial level and on appeal).

LaPierre said NRA membership is at 4.3 million (that figure is high by our estimates), which he admitted was “not the highest ever.” No, even that number would mean a decline in total membership of 1.2 million, at a time when it should be increasing with Biden & Co. helping to boost it. (This also means annual-dues paying membership must have fallen disastrously. That class of membership is something under half of the total, the other part being life members who will pay no dues in 2023. If peak total membership was 5.5 million, annual dues payers would have been 2.7 million or so. All of the decline in memberships would have been in this class, meaning it fell from 2.7 to 1.5 million, almost cut in half. There went NRA’s dues revenues).

LaPierre also said that he’d be proposing a “conservative budget” for NRA, and blamed inflation (how would that hurt contributions?) and the economy — rather than himself. The budget is already cut to the bone — 2022 was $207 million, down from $350 million four years before — and “conservative” can only mean cut still further.

He expressed hope that the NY litigation will be done by the “end of summer” (he didn’t say how it would end; obviously without him as EVP) and then NRA can get back to funding its regular programs (rather than its attorneys). That is, of course, unless NRA is ruined financially before then.