What You Need to Know About the State of the NRA Ahead of Their Annual Convention

This week, the NRA will convene its annual convention in Dallas, Texas, where we can expect them to insist with increasing levels of desperation that everything is going great for the organization, actually. But as members of the reality-based community will recognize, that couldn’t be further from the truth. As the devastating string of defeats the NRA has suffered already this year makes clear, it’s no longer immune from accountability — and the gun industry has lost the shield they’ve relied on for decades. 

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the NRA’s 2024 convention:

CONTINUED LEGAL PERIL:

• The convention comes just months after the organization and several of its current and former officers were found liable on nearly every count in the Attorney General of The State of New York v. NRA trial.
  • The trial centered on allegations by New York Attorney General Letitia James that NRA leaders, including CEO Wayne LaPierre, improperly diverted millions of dollars from the non-profit to benefit NRA executives — including private charter flights and multi-million dollar retirement packages.
  • There’s still another phase of this trial to come: In July, State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen will decide whether any of the individual defendants should be permanently barred from serving on the board of any charity in New York and whether an independent monitor should oversee the NRA’s finances.
• In April, the NRA settled in the District of Columbia’s suit, which accused the NRA Foundation of improperly funneling millions of dollars to the NRA.
• The Daily Beast reported that the NRA’s latest tax returns show the organization at “rock bottom,” with political spending crashing and legal expenses at an all-time high. 
• During the New York trial, the Washington Post reported on the NRA’s various troubles that will leave them “staggering” into the 2024 elections.

INTERNAL CHAOS AND DIVISION:

• The organization has yet to name a new permanent leader after longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre resigned in January.
  • During his 30-year term as NRA CEO, LaPierre served as the public face of the gun lobby and a key figure in the NRA’s embrace of far-right extremist ideology.
• Earlier this month, the NRA announced the results from their recent board elections — and several candidates who ran on replacing current leadership and instituting internal reforms were elected, teeing up a messy fight between the 76-member board as the organization prepares to select a new leader.
• Phil Journey, who received the second largest number of votes of all 25 people elected in the NRA’s board election this year, recently appeared on a podcast and said that this convention “has the potential of being another Cincinnati,” referring to the 1977 “Revolt at Cincinnati,” which saw a group of gun extremists oust the entire NRA leadership with the goal of steering the organization towards its current “guns everywhere” agenda.

BATTLING POLITICAL IRRELEVANCE:

• The NRA was the largest outside spender in President Trump’s 2016 election, spending more than $30 million to benefit his campaign — but by 2020, amid financial woes and declining influence, NRA spending for Trump was cut nearly in half, dropping to $16.6 million in support of his failed re-election campaign.
  • Current and former NRA officials have recently acknowledged that the NRA won’t have the same financial resources for the 2024 election and may decide to focus on races other than the presidential.
• In 2022, the first federal gun safety bill in 30 years was passed with bipartisan support — despite NRA objections. Senator John Cornyn, the lead Republican negotiator for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, dismissed their opposition, saying “In the end I think they simply — they have a membership and a business model that will not allow them to support any legislation. And so I understand where they’re coming from, but I think most people will not allow any outside group to veto good public policy.” 
• In the 2023 Virginia elections, Everytown alone outspent the NRA nearly 10 to 1 in their home state.
  • Our gun sense candidates and Moms Demand Action volunteers won key victories up and down the ballot, flipping the House of Delegates and ensuring a gun sense majority in the Virginia legislature. Moms Demand Action volunteers now make up nearly 20% of the Virginia House Democratic caucus.
• This downward spiral has seen the NRA become a liability for candidates and legislators in swing states — it’s become so toxic that many are viewing their once prized ‘A’ rating as a scarlet letter. 

“The NRA is trapped in a doom loop of its own making, but rather than change strategy, the organization is doubling down on its extreme ‘guns everywhere’ agenda,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “Between a messy leadership election, growing legal bills, and their waning political relevance, the NRA is scraping at rock bottom while the gun violence prevention movement grows stronger by the day.”

To speak with an Everytown expert, please contact [email protected].