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wayne lapierre
Good Riddance to Wayne LaPierre—and Hopefully Soon the Entire NRA
For the first time, the NRA can’t buy their way out of this problem.
Mar 05, 2024
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.
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'Major Victory': NY Jury Finds Wayne LaPierre Liable in NRA Corruption Case
"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."
Feb 23, 2024
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 toThe 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."
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‘Good Guys’ with Guns Are Fucking Useless in Stopping an Armed ‘Bad Guy’
A new DOJ report on the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter.
Jan 22, 2024
Remember those twisted words by Wayne LaPierre, then leader of the National Rifle Association, just days after the
mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012? Standing there proudly up on the stage, he said: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
This January LaPierre resigned from his NRA leadership position ahead of the trial on charges of corruption by the State of New York. But his words after Sandy Hook sadly live on despite repeatedly being shown to be total bullshit. Glaringly so in the review of the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by the Department of Justice (DOJ), released on January 18.
DOJ’s 575-page report, available in English and in Spanish, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter. Failings causing preventable death. Failings in providing adequate emergency medical care to wounded victims after law enforcement finally entered the classrooms. Failings as dozens of trained officers stood idly by without a leader armed to the teeth with their own AR-15-style firearms.
Here are the opening words by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta at the news briefing where the DOJ report was officially released, remarks following those by Attorney General Merrick Garland:
The Attorney General just gave a sense of the detailed timeline we have laid out, and the cascading failures that occurred over the course of the 77 minutes between when law enforcement arrived on the scene and when they finally entered the classroom. But we also know the pain—and the failures and missteps—did not end when law enforcement finally entered the classrooms and rescued the survivors.
It continued at minute 78, when it became clear that because there was no leader, there was no plan to triage the 35 victims in classrooms 111 and 112, many of whom had been shot. Victims were moved without appropriate precautions, victims who had already passed away were taken to the hospital in ambulances, while children with bullet wounds were put on school buses without any medical attention. In the commotion, one adult victim was placed on a walkway—on the ground outside—to be attended to. She died there.
As difficult as the vivid words in the report are to ignore, I am not naive. If history is any guide, some in Congress will mightily try to discount the DOJ report, continuing to block any subsequent movement on meaningful gun-control measures. Republican lawmakers in solidly Republican states, as a detailed article in The New York Times describes, are fraid their voter base would vote them out of office if they show any hint of supporting gun-control measures. Those Republicans are waiting for the report to fade away in the news cycle to collect dust.
But then, the victims of the gun carnage in Uvalde, and those before, deserve more than letting the report die buried in dust. They deserve someone taking the debate to the naysayers in Congress and state legislatures armed with hard facts about the effectiveness of gun-control measures, framed by the realities of having none in a gun-friendly state like Texas where the brutal carnage within Robb Elementary School happened. Yes, there is an association between lack of gun regulations in a state and the occurrence of mass shootings, as I describe below.
Here are some of the arguments I would make today replying to some of the naysaying comments (bolded below) common among members of Congress downplaying any need for gun control:
Gun control does not work and won’t reduce gun violence.
Wrong. Take requiring gun licenses, as required in a minority of states today. In his review of studies, Garen Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, writes in Health Affairs that license requirements for gun purchases “have repeatedly been associated with reduced rates of [gun] violence.” This body of research is clear.
Furthermore, Michael Siegel at Boston University and his research team found, as reported in Law and Human Behavior, that requiring one to get a permit to purchase firearms was associated with a 60% lower odds of a public mass shooting occurring in a state, controlling for state characteristics like population. Other researchers found the same thing.
Why? Because licenses to purchase firearms typically entail in-person applications and background checks involving multiple databases and, among other things, taking a gun safety course. Basically a more comprehensive examination than standalone background checks singularly taken at the point of a firearm sale.
Congress already passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) in 2022. Nothing more is needed.
Okay, but the BSCA basically only includes more funding for mental health initiatives.
Well, mental illness is the cause of most gun violence, especially mass shootings.
I agree mental troubles underlie many suicides, by firearms and otherwise. And extreme-risk or “red-flag” laws encouraged via funding in the BSCA have been shown to reduce suicides.
But research repeatedly finds that psychiatric disorders, as a comprehensive review by Rand Corporation concluded, are not the principal driver alone across the spectrum of firearm violence. And that includes not being a predictable factor in mass shootings. Sure, after a mass shooting, politicians and media search hard to find a motive and signs of mental troubles; retrospective interpretation to justify mental illness alone as cause. Retrospective interpretation, I submit, many of us not owning a gun would fail.
But an assaults weapon ban is going too far. Based only on the threatening appearance of guns, nothing more.
Maybe the 1994 ban automatically expiring in 2004 was based too much on physical appearance instead of functionality. But today, as criminologist Thomas Gabor and former ATF agent Julius Wachtel have each argued, a ban can be based on objective ballistic lethality, scoring firearms on components including caliber, muzzle velocity, firing rate, ammunition capacity, loading mechanism, and ability to add accessories that increase lethality.
Wachtel in his 2015 article in The Washington Post describes one extreme lethal ballistic feature about AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles. With “their most common calibers—7.62 and .223—these weapons discharge bullets whose extreme energy and velocity readily pierce protective garments commonly worn by police, opening cavities in flesh many times the diameter of the projectile and causing devastating wounds.” Hence, a herd of law enforcement personnel at Uvalde afraid of the weapon in the shooter’s hands milled around aimlessly for over an hour before doing anything.
And such carnage Wachtel describes was visited upon the children and teachers in Robb Elementary School on that fateful day in Uvalde, Texas.
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