This in from Rocky Marshall, former NRA director and first-rate businessman who knows a LOT about finance and company survival:
The Late Great National Rifle Association R.I.P. by Former NRA Director Rocky Marshall
To NRA Members: IT IS OVER!
The NRA’s financials are spiraling rapidly towards insolvency, and the future appears bleak for the survivability of the NRA which may be forced into bankruptcy (for real this time) in the coming months. The next and final chapter for the NRA will be in a bankruptcy court where a Judge will likely appoint a “Receiver” to take control of the assets of the NRA.
The NRA has been thriving for over 150 years; but will likely not survive to the end of this year. This once great organization is now facing dissolution as the direct result of malfeasance by Wayne LaPierre and the impotent Board of Directors (BOD). Undoubtedly, key management personnel including Wayne Lapierre, Wilson Phillips, and others will likely face criminal charges for embezzlement, fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other charges.
The NRA in the coming months will not be able to pay outstanding bills or maintain staff to fulfill the mission due to the rapid decline of donations by members. In 2016, NRA revenues reached a peak of $367 million and currently is projected to receive $200 million for the current fiscal year 2022. The collapse in donations is directly related to the revelations that the NRA Management misused millions of dollars of donations for personal benefit. The misuse of NRA monies by NRA Management and the BOD has been reported as far back as 1998 when a complaint was filed by NRA Directors with the FEC.¹
A question that is often repeated is: “Why did the NRA BOD allow Wayne Lapierre and others to misuse the donations and defraud the members?” The most obvious answer is because a few key Directors were being paid. From 2002 through 2020, over $10 million dollars have been paid directly or indirectly to NRA Directors. A secondary issue is that NRA Directors were not informed and also routinely presented false information by NRA Officers and Management in order to hide the truth. During my tenure as an NRA Director, I was routinely denied access to information and also received blatantly untrue information from NRA officers. The NRA BOD has not provided proper fiduciary oversight of the NRA for decades. The NRA BOD could have easily stopped the fraud and mismanagement by Wayne LaPierre (and others) but instead chose to ignore the obvious illegal activities. The BOD audit committee (chaired by the current President Charles Cotton) approved transactions retro actively without BOD approval.
The current lawsuit from the New York Attorney General will likely not go to trial; but instead, will be superseded by a forced bankruptcy. The negative press reports from these legal filings will continue to drive donors away and revenues will decline. As a former Director for the NRA, I have researched the complaints by the New York Attorney General and found all charges to be true. I could not identify a single charge that was untrue or exaggerated. As has been reported, Wayne Lapierre has admitted to several of the charges in the previous bankruptcy trial in Dallas.
Historians and columnists will report in future years that the NRA was destroyed from within by the greed of NRA Management Wayne LaPierre, Woody Phillips, (and others) and also by the lack of oversight by the NRA Board of Directors. Collectively this group has destroyed the most valuable gun rights organization on the planet.
1. Weldon H. Clark Jr. FEC Complaint 1998 (https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/4865/00001F57.pdf)
NRA in Danger 
This was also true in the period 1991 through 2000.
“During my tenure as an NRA Director, I was routinely denied access to information and also received blatantly untrue information from NRA officers.”
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Ironically, I received in my “American Rifleman “ magazine just today a ballot to elect or re-elect a new board of directors.
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I hope something arises out of this. I’m a patron level life member and die-hard 2A activist (and one of the McDonald plaintiffs) and this sickens me.
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For the shooters, CMP has been adding more programs to its roster. A most recent example is Action Pistol and a complete 2700 (Precision Pistol) as part of the National Matches after NRA departed Camp Perry. CMP Games are very similar to Sporting Rifle, WA1500 is identical to PPC, IHMSA offers Silhouette, ASSA covers Smallbore. Plus, these options are cheaper and better than NRA Competitions Division.
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I am most concerned about what could happen to the Education & Training Div. Fallout severe enough to shut down or severely impact E&T operations could be a disaster for the firearms training industry, both civilian and LE. NRA Instructor training and credentials are the only widely recognized standard. Trainers’ insurance companies require it. Students expect it as evidence of competent instruction. Instructors depend on teaching materials from the NRA for many classes of varying levels. Hopefully NRA executives and BOD will recognize how critical E&T is and do whatever is required to assure its continued functioning.
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Like David Lawson, I hope that a reorganized NRA can emerge from bankruptcy and become a stronger, better organization. It breaks my heart to see what is happening.
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See my latest column at Ammoland.com on the Board of Directors election. I believe Rocky is absolutely correct, and we are soon going to be left trying to pick up whatever pieces of the NRA might be salvageable. It’s all a terrible tragedy, and would have been completely avoidable, with just a little bit of integrity and true leadership from the BOD.
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Thank you Jeff, will go to Ammoland. Will be looking for what is salvageable after the NRA sinks. Maybe the ILA will continue, or those veterans of DC lobbying will head to somewhere, like the CCRKBA or GOA?
2A can’t wait. ISRA getting some dinero from me for fighting that awful IL Pritzker and Dem Lege and their proto-tyrannical rush to infringe.
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Thank you, Mr. Marshall, for your honest and sadly most likely truthful outcome of what is coming for the NRA. If anything can be salvaged from the ashes of the carcass remains to be seen.
I got my latest magazine, with the list of names for the board. People who would hope that electing good board members that could somehow act against WLP and others are not seeing things with open eyes. The current board appoints a committee who then appoints the people that they want to be elected for the new board. And yet there are people who think that those on the list are going to act against the leadership, to change the direction of the NRA?
Why does the NRA even bother to have a board, the way that it is run? They don’t even lend an image of respectability to the organization. At this point, I think that bankruptcy might be the best option for the NRA, and then the leaders of the group will at least no longer have our money to use as their legal slush fund.
Speaking of the magazine, I quit reading the articles by the leadership a long time ago. All it does is anger me, when I see WLP write how “we” are doing so good, but we need to give more money to keep up the fight. How much money did WLP send to the election during the midterms to Michigan, where we saw a Democrat wave take the entire government, and tonight, the Empress of Lansing, Whitmer is going to give her State of the State speech where she will tell her horrible anti gun plan that will likely sail through the government and be signed into law, stuffing down our throats gun bans, red flag laws, universal background checks, and safe storage laws, all in the name of common sense gun safety laws. Yet the NRA was absent from Michigan in the run up to the midterms, because they did not have the funds to be active here, but they had enough to spend over a third of their budget on legal expenses for Wayne and company.
It was a good run but I hope it is about over, and at least some justice will be served. And there will be a lot of board members who will be looking over their shoulder for a long time, as well. You reap what you sow.
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Thank you for your candor, Mr. Marshall. I’ll still vote this year, just received my American Rifleman ballot. Well, I don’t know what else to say, except thank you NRAInDanger, and I’m giving a little bit to some state gun rights orgs, especially now for the ISRA, who’s fighting what looks like to me proto-tyrannical behavior by their Pritzker Executive and Dem Legislators. 2A can’t wait.
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Also makes me sick about this. How could WLP and his cronies have escapes the purview of the
“GOOD” directors. WLP needs jail time to think about what he did for this organization. Almost like he was making money and ultimately favoring the Anti Gun Crowd
Arnold Seitz. Long time Life member
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