NRA admits donations looted by current and former officers

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/26/nra-admits-donations-looted-by-current-and-former-officers.html

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The hell you say…

Shut up…

No way, really…

and all the other exclamations used to suggest shock.

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Likewise, the extent of the NRA’s corruption will only make its core supporters love it more.

@beschizza it turns out there is a third option which is already happening. A new grifter will come along. Listen to the NPR podcast series No Compromise. The hardcore have already fled the NRA over the corruption and a Bundyesque family of Christian Dominionists has created an astroturfed new gun movement that has filled the power vacuum. These are people who feel civilians should be allowed to own nukes (yes, really) and feel the NRA was too soft on guns, as well as being disillusioned by the corruption.

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“fetch my fainting couch! I feel a pearl-clutching coming on!”

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Will check the podcast

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Cold, dead fingers.

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Step 1: remove their tax-exempt status. Step 2: bury the remains. Step 3: repeat with subsequent organizations that fill the void.

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When Ollie North complains that there’s too much corruption and financial shenanigans, it’s time to send in auditors in hazmat suits.

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So they’re doing us a service after all?

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That’s one of my local public radio journalists, Lisa Hagen! Yay!

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Isn’t there something called the RICO statute that covers this sort of organization-wide crime?

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Do the Nakedly Racist Arseholes now Need Rubles Again?
Remember, if you go far enough Left you get your guns back.

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Yeah, there’s some of that. But Evil isn’t magic. There’s a rich loamy fertile soil of assholes out there, but Evil still has to put in the work to cultivate that manure; it takes thousands of people going into the office every day to generate Facebook propaganda, defend gun murderers in court, do lunchbribes on politicians, etc. The more time and money Evil’s management spend embezzling and biting each others’ throats out, the less of that work gets done.

Yeah, that’s not encouraging. I don’t know if a network of loosely-coordinated terror cells will ultimately be as good at influencing legislation, but it might well be good at organising terrorism.

You could imagine an outcome where the US actually gets meaningful gun control laws, but only at the cost of decades of political violence dragging gun culture to the fringe.

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I didn’t want to be “that guy” but remembered this NPR article

Which is great context for more recent reports on lavish spending IMHO.

(Thinking about that plotline on the Wire where the docks guy gets dragged down the rabbit hole trying to save the union - at least that’s noble, not… pure greed at the expense of your country or your world)

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I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!

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The sad thing is that saving the NRA could be noble.

What I mean by that is simply that a gun rights organization doesn’t have to be about gun sales and gun rights at the cost of everything else. It could be about protecting the right of law-abiding, responsible gun owners to own guns while at the same time allowing for reasonable restrictions and educating its members. For instance, a sane and reasonable gun organization would (in my opinion, at least) be against open carry and would have protested the shooting of responsible gun owner Philando Castile.

Instead, we have the NRA, which promotes open carry and basically ignored Philando Castile’s death.

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I know the perfect replacement for their leadership, who is shortly going to be looking for a job. Much of the rank and file NRA love him already, and he does love attention.

The real upside is that he loots and destroys everything he touches. Put him in charge and the NRA will be a smoking ruin within months, the lawsuits will be miles high and, with luck, we can then move the orange grifter on to obliterate some other right wing juggernaut.

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See, for instance, the Socialist Rifle Association.

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That was the takeaway from the podcast, for sure. In fact, the Dominionists are actively hostile to Congress, going so far as to wage email and phone harassment campaigns against the most conservative and most pro-gun members for being too soft. It’s bizarre. They have essentially zero lobbying power, but huge populist power on Facebook. As you say, they seem very likely to generate a whole lot of terrorism in the next 20 years.

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And body armor.

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