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Welcome to the banana Republic

The attorney general of New York took action Thursday to dissolve the National Rifle Association following an 18-month investigation that found evidence the powerful gun rights group is “fraught with fraud and abuse.”

The level of self dealing and near looting looks almost Clintonesque to be fair. But it’s this:

The turmoil at the NRA also could have political ramifications ahead of the 2020 elections. The NRA spent tens of millions of dollars in 2016 to support then-candidate Donald Trump — a role it appears it will be unlikely to be able to repeat given its current financial condition.

Gosh, that is a surprise.

The AG of NY is a D.

31 thoughts on “Welcome to the banana Republic”

  1. Most american gun owners seem fed up with the NRA really, it has supported recent federal gun control actions and mainly addresses industry concerns – such as supporting import bans and restrictions. I wonder what the response from the non-industry membership will be.

  2. The US became a banana republic when the effort was made to make Hillary president – her sole qualification being that she was the wife of a previous president. Or maybe it was earlier when she was appointed Secretary of State on the same vacuous grounds.

  3. Politicians who attack the NRA don’t last long.

    It’s a stunt. Her political career is over.

    WAIT! This qualifies her to be Bidens VP !!!

  4. Just read the charges against the NRA. Seems like a perfectly normal charity to me. What’s the problem?

  5. Eh. The NRA has long had problems. They only became a gun rights advocacy group (vice a ‘hunter’s rights’ advocacy) because the activist portion managed a coup and they’ve been wobbling between ‘Fudd’ (yeah, no one needs an AR-15 for hunting) and ‘shall not be infringed’ since. And over the last 20 years the SJW component has gained power in them.

    About a year ago there was a big internal shakeup that amounted to another coup and they’ve been drifting ever more towards ‘reasonable accommodations’ (ie, capitulating over and over) for a long time despite clear signals from their donors that, as far as we’re concerned, we’ve already made all the reasonable accommodations and compromises we’re willing to make.

    That’s on top of the waste, fraud, and abuse the organization has gained a reputation for. Donations going to enrich board and executives while the org pushes ‘compromise’ over and over.

    So the NY AG is probably grabbing on to a political opportunity the NRA itself handed to her.

  6. So Much For Subtlety

    Aren’t flame throwers legal in America? I remember Elon Musk selling some. And why not? America does not have a flamethrower problem. It does not have a gun problem. It has an Urban Inner City Youth problem. That is, too many young Black men shooting each other. They do so with pistols. Of the some 11,000 gun deaths every year some 400 or so are committed with long guns – rifles of all sorts. Some 7,000 are committed with pistols, mostly illegal. But the Left is only interested in persecuting White Republican-voting deer hunters.

    Machine Guns? Why not? If Gamecock owned a Bren gun the risk to anyone else would be roughly zero. You can buy and sell them in the US (which enough paperwork). They are virtually never used to kill people. RPGs? Again, why not? The only time I have heard of one being used in a crime was the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Good thing France has so many gun laws.

    America does not need gun control, it needs Yoof control.

  7. So Much For Subtlety

    Britain is no better off. Look what happened to Jimmy Savile. There ought to be no punishment without conviction in a court of law. He was never even charged. But the state took all his money anyway.

    Look at the framing of the three men accused of killing Stephen Lawrence.

    Or the way child sex laws are used to frame anyone who stood next to Margaret Thatcher rather than people who actually admitted sexual abuse of children like David Bowie.

    We have seen the Electoral Commission do just this to persecute people whose political views they do not like.

  8. “That is, too many young Black men shooting each other.”

    Too many?

    They’re just cleaning up the ones Planned Parenthood missed.

  9. m’Lud – had you considered rebranding yourself “William Lud”. (Or Douglas, Henry or Ginger)

  10. Mr Reagan screwed up and signed the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986.

    Mostly good, but a provision says no new automatics can be sold. Hence only pre-86 guns are transferable. Making pre-86 guns extremely valuable. A stupid POS M3 grease gun sells for $20,000. I could make one in my garage it’s so stupid simple. Full autos are less complex than regular guns.

    “If Gamecock owned a Bren gun the risk to anyone else would be roughly zero. You can buy and sell them in the US (which enough paperwork). They are virtually never used to kill people.”

    Because they are simply too valuable. No one is going to commit a crime with a $10k-$80K gun.

    I shot an M16 for qualification in the Air Force. Still wish I had flipped it to full auto just to see.

  11. I understand you can own fully automatic guns (“machine guns”) in USA: you simply have to pay a $200 Al Capone tax per item.
    Supposedly, it was the Branch Davidians alleged ownership of 5 such guns, and their failure to pay the $1000 claimed that led to the Federal authorities incinerating them, and their families.

    Perhaps some leftponders would like to comment?

    But my comment is simpler: what business is it of the AG of NY what happens in USA? He may have some minor jurisdiction in his state….

  12. Wayne LaPierre is reputed to being paid $1 million a year.

    That’s the only thing I can think of about the NRA that bugs me. There is absolutely no reason to pay him that much.

    I get emails from him soliciting money. NFW. I pay my dues. Else, you can eat s#|+.

  13. Reading some of the press on this, some of James’ assertions may be true.

    ‘Alleges Widespread Fraud, Mismanagement, Lavish Spending’

    ‘Fraud’ is bogus. Mismanagement and lavish spending may be true, but they aren’t actionable. NRA pays LaPierre too much. So fvcking what?

  14. So Much For Subtlety

    Would I be happy for Nigel Farrage to take a million pounds a year to get us out of the EU? Oppose immigration? Defend gun rights?

    Absolutely. It is only about the pension of a local town clerk after all.

    The NRA has done an absolutely spectacularly good job defending gun rights. If only we had something like them in the UK.

  15. The NRA tries to represent what amounts to competing interests and desires all across a six-million-member constituency. That constituency isn’t monolithic in its desires. And so, in the eyes of many, the NRA has strayed at times. You can’t make everyone happy.

    It also has had its share of leadership issues. What org of that size hasn’t?

    But the fact remains that it is a hugely powerful lobbying body that generally does a good job of protecting our interests. We’re a diverse and varied mass of people, and the NRA has a strong influence on how our elected officials act towards gun issues. There are now a few upstart organizations seeking to compete with the NRA, but they’re nowhere near as influential.

    If you’re an American gun owner who is concerned that the 2nd Amendment is being given short shrift, the NRA remains your own particular union organizing hall.

    Between Twitter censoring an actual Trump campaign tweet this week, and this long-expected legal attack on the NRA, the Democrats seem intent on losing the next election.

  16. >Tim the Coder
    August 6, 2020 at 10:28 pm

    I understand you can own fully automatic guns (“machine guns”) in USA: you simply have to pay a $200 Al Capone tax per item.

    Not quite.

    The $200 ‘tax’ applies to NFA (National Firearms Act) items like SBR’s (Short Barrelled Rifles – barrels less than 16in long) and suppressors.

    Automatic weapons have their own set of restrictions.

    There is a registry and no new automatic firearms can be added to that registry. This makes automatic weapons too expensive (since only those in private hands before 1986 could be registered so the supply is limited) for the vast majority of people to own.

    There are limited exemptions for production of automatic weapons *for the government* and the acquisition of automatic weapons for a limited class of Federal Firearms License holders (collectors and dealers).

    The rest of us need to find someone willing to sell one of their grandfathered weapons, at great expense, and then there’s a lot more than $200 worth of paperwork and investigations that will go on before the transfer is approved.

  17. Wonky Moral Compass

    @SMFS

    We do (https://nra.org.uk/) and there’s also a UK Practical Shooting Association. Both organisations are quite active in fending off attempts to make licensing laws even more strict.

  18. We do (https://nra.org.uk/) and there’s also a UK Practical Shooting Association. Both organisations are quite active in fending off attempts to make licensing laws even more strict.

    That’s on the target shooting side.

    On the hunting side we have BASC who unfortunately seem to be in appeasement mode at the moment, especially regarding the use of lead shot. They also claim to be standing up to the pigs’ overreach in demanding written GP reports when renewing licences, though I’ve seen precious little happening there. (I’m a member of BASC, and not impressed with their inaction.)

  19. “There are limited exemptions for production of automatic weapons *for the government*”

    Was it the French Resistance who said “a knife gets you a pistol, a pistol gets you a machine-gun, a ….”?

  20. The UK NRA is nothing like the American NRA really. They are the government approved sporting body, and by law are not supposed to lobby. Most seem to think they are asleep at the wheel of even doing that actually, and there is definitely some truth to it.

  21. Agammamon, this harassment of NRA by New York state has been going on for years. I should have thought NRA would have already taken steps to incorporate in another state. Unless they have zero fear of any successful action by NY.

    I saw an article that said that Democrats see James’ move as dumb as some Republican state AG suing Planned Parenthood. The backlash will far outweigh any political gain that could have been had.

    So maybe the suit has the NRA smiling.

  22. Dennis, On The Front Lines Fightin' Them Chlorinated Chickens

    Agammamnon pretty much nails it. Anyone who has been paying attention is unsurprised by this development, and most wouldn’t be surprised if NY’s AG has solid evidence of large scale corruption.

  23. @Tim the Coder
    “Supposedly, it was the Branch Davidians alleged ownership of 5 such guns,”

    It’s thought that someone may have been using a bump-fire adapter on a semi-automatic rifle. Or may not have been using one. Or the sound of what was believed to be automatic weapon fire was reported. Or it wasn’t. And then it all gets a lot less clearer than that.

  24. “most wouldn’t be surprised if NY’s AG has solid evidence of large scale corruption”

    ???

    Like what?

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