Luxury spending, internal strife leave NRA staggering into 2024 election
In 2016, the National Rifle Association endorsed a Republican presidential candidate with a spotty record of supporting gun rights — then helped catapult him to the White House with a recordsetting $31 million of campaign spending.
“Donald Trump didn’t get a lot of help from major Republican institutions, but he did from the NRA,” NBC political guru Chuck Todd said as
Trump declared victory on election night. “This is a big night for the NRA.”
It was a crowning achievement for the gunrights lobby, capping decades of power brokering in Republican primaries and statewide races and setting the stage for the NRA to wield outsize influence during Trump’s presidency.
But as the former president stages his political comeback, the NRA has tumbled from power. Internal feuds, corruption allegations and an onslaught of litigation have ravaged the group’s finances and public image. Longtime chief executive Wayne LaPierre stepped down on the eve of a New York civil corruption trial expected to last until midFebruary, with prosecutors claiming that he and other NRA leaders cheated donors by squandering millions of dollars on personal expenses. On the stand, LaPierre has confirmed various luxury trips and other perks charged to the NRA over several years, including private jet travel to family vacations, helicopter flights for NRA executives attending NASCAR events, and hair and makeup services for his wife when she attended NRA events.
D.C.’s attorney general is also alleging that the group misused charitable funds.
The NRA has never faced a more perilous moment: It is hemorrhaging money and members, uncertain about the next generation of leadership and facing the possibility of court-ordered oversight, all at a time when gun-control groups are gaining strength amid frequent mass shootings. As Trump again closes in on the Republican presidential nomination, some current and former leaders concede that the organization is too depleted to spend significantly on his campaign.
“The presidential race is always important, but the NRA has finite resources and needs to maximize its impact,” said David Keene, a longtime board member and former president. “The money we have might be better spent on closely contested, down-ballot races.”
Yet the NRA’s struggles do not signal doom for the gun-rights movement as liberals have long predicted.
Its legacy endures in a Republican Party that casts even modest guncontrol proposals as attacks on the individual’s constitutional right to self-defense, and in Trump’s MAGA movement, where the NRA’s hostility toward government bureaucracy is deeply internalized.