Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/06/new-york-sues-to-dissolve-nra.html
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Dissolved in acid?
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OMG somebody just asked if disbanding the NRA was unfair to its members. Are they not the victims here?
Wow.
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The are some of the victims here- victims of fraud.
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You can hear the Trump people rushing to make ads.
'THEM DEMOCRATS IS COMIN TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AND LEAVE YOU UNPROTECTED FROM THE ANTIFA HORDES!"
It’s never a bad time to do something like this, but one might make the argument that a couple months before a divisive election where Democrats need fence-sitters might not be the best time…
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A reasonable alternative to nuking it from orbit.
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I’ve seen the summary of her answer re: why there are no individual criminal charges, but it still does not make a lot of sense. If the conduct is/was bad enough to warrant this kind of action & statement (and I have no doubt that it is/was), then it seems…odd to not have accompanying criminal charges.
The lesson should be clear to all the boys and girls, though: stick to white collar crime, it pays pretty well and the downside ain’t all that bad.
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Hooray!!!
GOP next plz
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Because of course he has to inject himself into this:
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It’s more than a little odd.
Asked why she is seeking to dissolve the organization rather than charge individual offials [sic], James said that the misconduct was such that “they’ve destroyed the assets of the corporation” and that it effectively served no purpose other than to support the abuses.
It’s effectively dead before it starts. They will be able to show that the organization is not destitute. They will have millions of Americans tripping over each other to donate more. The judge will probably ask if this were the Red Cross, would her opinion of dissolving the organization be the same.
The NRA has the means to take this all the way to SCOTUS. She must in some way feel that making a fuss about the NRA at this point in time is a good thing. I am not sure that I agree.
I think Biden is probably not happy about it. He should be expecting a “Do you agree the NRA should be dissolved?” question sometime soon.
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Fyi there’s 2 typos in the post. “Riven” and “offials”
That said, i certainly hope the NRA goes the way of the dodo but that’s not really going to stop shenanigans around the firearms industry and their lobbyists.
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I guess the next step would be relocating Texas back to Mexico?
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Could part of it be setting up a follow-up federal RICO case by a Biden administration against individuals by first defining the NRA as a known corrupt and criminal organisation? James doesn’t say that directly, but she does imply that the org itself now only exists as a vehicle for fraud and theft by the leadership, who no doubt ordered underlings to commit criminal acts toward that end.
Another brain-dead suggestion from the Very Stable Genius. Any high school student understands why an industry lobby is based in cities where the nation’s banking and political power resides, and anyone who’s followed the history of the NRA knows that arms industry executives are more important to them than a bunch of Second Amendment gun nuts living out in the boonies.
If he was actually a progressive he’d see this as an opportunity. But alas…
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I was wondering that and also whether they coordinated with the DC AG who filed similar suit today. Surely they were coordinated, so perhaps that was done to spread out the caseload and bring separate forms of charges.
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They have plenty of material to show they do things other than defraud. The politicians themselves know how much they spend, because a lot of the money goes straight to their campaigns.
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This must be generating plenty of calm reasoned debate in right wing circles.
It’s basically trolling by the NY AG. It’s not likely that the organization will be dissolved entirely, even if the entire leadership is blatantly breaking the law. They’ll find a scapegoat and push some bogus doubt and get off with a slap on the wrist.
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The Virginia DA should also file suit to get the NRA HQ out of the state. Located out by Dulles International, it’s the political beeline to DC.
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I’m not sure of what strategic advantage it would be to handle this piecemeal, though. She’s got plenty of state law at her disposal, and apparently plenty of evidence of criminal (her words) behavior.
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Cue the calls to dissolve the Democratic party for never concretely defined corruption.
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Yes, but my point is that the NRA still isn’t defined or widely perceived as a criminal or corrupt enterprise in the same way that the Mafia is. Perhaps this is an attempt to do so, so that Biden’s AG could then go after the LaPierre and his cronies for their participation.
I’m really just speculating, since I agree it’s odd. It does seem like kind of a backward way to get to the individual crooks, but looking at the RICO Act’s history there have been non-Mob cases where the feds (though not state AGs) first had to show that a regular corporation was in fact a criminal vehicle. Maybe these state attorneys are taking a page from the investigations against Biff and attacking a toxic entity from as many angles as possible.
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