SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
For the first time, the NRA can’t buy their way out of this problem.
After a 30-year reign of terror and corruption, not even the NRA wants anything to do with their long-time leader, Wayne LaPierre.
In their opening arguments of the civil trial in New York—where a jury recently found LaPierre and the NRA liable for corruption—an attorney for the gun lobby said “The NRA is not this man” and called LaPierre’s resignation a “course correction.” No wonder they’d want one: The NRA is worse by every measure today than it was three decades ago when LaPierre turned the former sportsmen’s club into a radical political lobbying group. He is the architect behind the nation’s gun violence epidemic, leading the NRA’s reckless and profit-driven quest to put guns in the hands of as many Americans as possible that has stained its reputation beyond repair—all while abusing the meaning of the Second Amendment to selfishly line his own pockets. For his efforts, today, the NRA is broke, rudderless, and in serious legal jeopardy.
The NRA has lost over a million members. Membership dues are down by $14 million. And their lobbying influence has been waning since 2015.
Perhaps the only measure on which they’ve been successful is the amount of firepower pumped into our communities. Yearly gun sales are now roughly twice the level they were 15 or 20 years ago, and the tragic toll of gun-related deaths has skyrocketed with it. Under LaPierre’s watch, the number of gun suicides and gun murders reached record highs and active shooter incidents became drastically more common across the country-–-about seven times more common than in Canada, and 340 times more common than in the United Kingdom.
During this time, the NRA slowly lost the support of America. As gun violence shattered more and more families, public sentiment turned on them. A majority of U.S. adults now say gun laws should be stricter. About a third (32%) of parents with K-12 students say they are very or extremely worried about a shooting ever happening at their children’s school. And six in 10 Americans (61%) say it is too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country.
We’ve watched mass shooting after mass shooting devastate communities across the nation, from Orlando to El Paso to Boulder to Lewiston–each event and each death presenting an opportunity for the NRA to muster an ounce of courage and change the gun culture in this country that they single-handedly controlled. How did they respond instead?
On December 14, 2012, after a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six staff members at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, LaPierre coined his infamous "good guy with a gun” argument. A decade later when nineteen children and two adults were killed in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, the NRA held their annual convention across the state in Houston days later defending Americans' right to own a gun.
The NRA is no longer the political powerhouse it once was, but the damage done is irreparable. The notion of a course correction is so far from possible. No reasonable person with any ambition would want to take LaPierre's job and inherit the mess he leaves behind—the personal reputation and professional risk are too high.
We would send our thoughts and prayers to LaPierre—but, this isn’t just about him. The gun violence prevention movement and the survivors of armed violence cannot move on, and neither can he. Every empty seat at the dinner table. Every birthday-turned-anniversary. Every stolen milestone. He will always hold responsibility. The scars of his legacy are irreparable and his damage to the organization makes it unsalvageable.
We wish we could give LaPierre all the credit for the downfall of the NRA—but, proudly, the gun violence prevention movement played a role as well. Guns Down America has fought back against the NRA and LaPierre’s agenda since our inception, from leading the “murder insurance” effort that fined the NRA $7 million to influencing Wells Fargo to break ties with the NRA contributing to the steady decline in relevance and influence.
For the first time, the NRA can’t buy their way out of this problem. So as one last parting gift to the organization in decline, we’ll offer them a free piece of advice: Sell your gun range at HQ in Virginia—maybe you’ll be able to afford your legal fees.
"The NRA has lost its leader, its power, and its wealth," said one campaigner. "Today's trial verdict is one more nail in the NRA's political coffin."
Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and gun control advocates nationwide celebrated on Friday after a Manhattan jury found the National Rifle Association and the NRA's longtime former leader liable in a civil corruption case.
James, who launched the case in 2020, said on social media that "in a major victory, my office won our case against the NRA and its senior leadership for years of corruption and greed. Wayne LaPierre and a senior executive at the NRA must pay $6.35 million for abusing the system and breaking our laws."
After over three decades as the NRA's CEO, LaPierre stepped down in January. The 74-year-old cited health reasons but his resignation from the powerful gun lobbying group came just before the trial began, sparking speculation that he was trying to dodge accountability.
"For years, Wayne LaPierre used charitable dollars to fund his lavish lifestyle. LaPierre spent millions on luxury travel, private planes, expensive clothes, insider contracts, and other perks for himself and his family," James said Friday. "Wayne LaPierre blatantly abused his position and broke the law. But today, LaPierre and the NRA are finally being held accountable for this rampant corruption and self-dealing."
"In New York, you cannot get away with corruption and greed, no matter how powerful or influential you think you may be," she added. "Everyone, even the NRA and Wayne LaPierre, must play by the same rules."
The jury found LaPierre liable for $5.4 million but, because he already repaid some of it, he has to give the group $4.35 million. However, he's not the only executive involved in the case. Jurors also found that NRA general counsel John Frazer must pay $2 million, and former treasurer Wilson "Woody" Phillips violated his official duties. James wants the trio banned from serving in any leadership roles for charities that do business in the state—which will be decided by a judge.
"Jurors also found that the NRA omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated New York law by failing to adopt a whistleblower policy," according to The Associated Press. The AP noted that "another former NRA executive turned whistleblower, Joshua Powell, settled with the state last month, agreeing to testify at the trial, pay the NRA $100,000, and forgo further involvement with nonprofits."
Welcoming the jury's decisions, Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement that "we're two months into 2024 and the NRA has already managed to lose this trial, their longtime leader, and whatever political relevance it had left."
"This verdict," he added, "confirms what we've seen in recent elections, in state legislatures, and in the halls of Congress: The gun lobby has never been weaker and the gun safety movement has never been stronger."
The normalization of gun violence has already created a generation of youth who does not know a world absent the fear of mass shootings, schoolyards have become combat zones.
“I saw someone get shot and I saw blood splatter everywhere and they just fell off their chair,” described the unnamed young cousin of “Trisha” who was slaughtered during the Lewiston, Maine massacre. Children are victimized in every conceivable way because of America’s love affair with guns. “Why do people do this? I was more worried about am I gonna live . . .,” wondered 10-year-old Zoey Hutchinson after being grazed by a bullet in the October 25, 2023 Lewiston, ME mass shooting. Zoey was at the local bowling alley with her mother for youth night. Fourteen-year-old Aaron Young, who also attended the youth bowling night was killed, alongside his father during the massacre. Those incidents contributed to the more than 1695 children and teens killed in the U.S. in gun related incidents in 2023.
Gun violence has become an epidemic in the U.S. with children dying in record numbers due to homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. Inadequate laws, and conflict resolution strategies and skills, inadequate and inaccessible mental health services, and a proliferation of access to firearms have all come together to create a perfect, deadly storm. Until we develop and employ effective strategies to address conflict resolution strategies in homes, schools and communities, and ensure access to mental health services, we will continue to see a rise in the gun violence that is robbing a generation of the innocence of childhood and youth.
On September 5, 2023 a father in Lithonia, Georgia emerged from a gas station to find his 7-year-old son dead from a gunshot. It is unclear whether the gunshot was self-inflicted, or whether it was at the hands of the victim’s 6-year-old sibling, who ran from the vehicle moments after the gunshot was heard. The father had left an unsecured firearm in the vehicle with his two children inside unsupervised. In April, 2023 a Memphis, Tennessee 12-year-old boy committed suicide after shooting his sister who also succumbed to her injuries. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, and an analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality statistics gun deaths among U.S. kids rose 50% from 2019 to 2021. Centers for Disease Control data statistics show that boys account for 83% of gun deaths among children and teens.Children aged 12 to 17 account for 86% of gun deaths among children and teens.And, astonishingly, 184 children aged 5 and under were killed in gun violence incidents in 2021.
The disparities in firearm-related child and teen deaths do not end with differences in gender. The 2023 State of America’s Children report indicates that Black males are as much as six-times more likely than White males to be victims of homicides. In fact, in 2021, 46% of all firearm-related deaths among children and teens involved Black victims, even though only 14% of the U.S. population under 18 was Black. By comparison, only 32% of firearm-related deaths involved White victims, 17% Hispanic, and 1% Asian victims. The disproportionate impact of gun violence in the Black community, and involving children is wreaking havoc on those communities, particularly on Black male children. Black communities have a rate of attrition due to gun violence with which it can scarcely contend. In 2021, 84% of gun deaths involving Black children and teens were homicides, and 9% were suicides. Versus 66% of gun deaths involving White teens being suicides, and 24% homicides.
In 2020 and 2021 firearms contributed to more deaths of children and teens in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness, and at a much higher rate than our peer nations. More than any other cause, even surpassing deaths due to motor vehicles, which had long been the number one cause of child deaths. The child firearm death rate in the U.S. has doubled from a low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021.
Child and teen deaths continue to rise in the U.S. and continue to garner interest on a national and world stage. Yet, we fail to make significant progress enacting common sense laws for the protection of children. “The U.S. remains stagnant on enacting adequate gun violence prevention measures.” This stagnation results in “the loss of young lives and (leaves) holes in families and communities that can never be filled. We cannot afford to continue to normalize the exceedingly persistent public health crisis of gun violence.” On February 14, 2024 a shooting injured four students at Atlanta’s Benjamin Mays High School. This occurred against the backdrop of a bill supported by the Georgia Senate to authorize a tax-free holiday for the purchase of guns and ammunition. Passage of bills of this nature do nothing to address the alarming trend of increasing child homicides, suicides, and massacres.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 656 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2023. Instead of more cops on campuses, we need increased presence of school counselors. Instead of expulsions, we need more experiences that match children with their interests in school programming, to keep them in school and engaged. Instead of juries and arrests, we need jobs, to meet children at the very basic needs they are trying to address through gun violence.
The normalization of gun violence has already created a generation of youth who does not know a world absent the fear of mass shootings, schoolyards have become combat zones. In 2023, there were 137 shootings, 42 deaths, and 94 injuries in K-12 schools in America. Children born since the Columbine massacre have seen the incidence of and gun violence (including school shootings) steadily increase. Every year 19,000 children and teens are shot and killed or wounded and approximately 3 million are exposed to gun violence. “I never thought I’d grow up and get a bullet in my leg. It’s just like, why?” asks Zoey. How many more children must kill or be killed before America wakes up and addresses the gun violence epidemic that is plaguing the nation?