If you aren't a member, you can't vote.
The only way changes can be made are by our voting.
This puts many of us in a Catch-22 situation.
I, for one, am NOT willing to rejoin membership of the NRA until they adequately demonstrate a meaningful change of both leadership AND direction. I'm not throwing good money after bad.
There are other gun rights organizations I'm perfectly happy to support, such as the Second Amendment Foundation or Gun Owners of America, to name a couple.
The NRA stabbed its members in the back and ex-members like myself have a long memory for such things. And I, for one, also know how exceptionally difficult it is to get enough of a leadership turnover in an organization to make fundamental changes for the better. Yes...I COULD join again. I COULD give them my support. And they MIGHT actually change after I toss my vote around. But I'm not stupid. I can see with my own eyes how things are going and what I'm NOT seeing is any significant, if any, demands from the current 4.3 million members of the NRA, all of whom presumably are paying membership dues of $45/$75/$100/$150 each for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years, respectively. Not counting lifetime members at $1,500 each. And an annual income of $282 million in 2021.
Any way you figure it, that's 4.3 MILLION VOICES that I'm NOT seeing being raised for significant and meaningful changes in leadership. And more than a QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS annually during all this nothing-is-going-to-change time that's been going on for what? A decade or so (that we know of)?
WLP has been their executive VP and CEO since 1991. Looking at the list of 67 (so far) NRA presidents, there have been 17 people. (16, if you count Carylyn D. Meadown as having served twice.) 17 presidents worth of people during WLPs time as CEO. And I can't even BEGIN to figure out how many different people and how long said people have served on the NRA board itself. I see there are 26 people listed in their 2023 BoD election results, 25 of which are there for a 3 year term and one for a 2 year term.
That's a whole lotta corporate inertia to work against with respect to joining and expecting my vote, or even untold other new votes, to actually overcome this twisted, inbred debacle and make anything good come of it.
All of these people in leadership positions that are potentially complicit in this fiasco...and millions of members NOT champing at the bit to change things on top of that?
Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent.
AND THEN there's the other added problems associated with making the changes themselves even if significant and meaningful leadership turnover for the better should happen. Namely, all these new people in leadership roles have to ALSO fight against the tide to actually MAKE those changes and KEEP those changes on the right track. They will literally bear the full responsibility for taking on scads of legal and fiduciary screw ups handed down to them.
SO NO. I totally get it with respect to members voting to fix things. But that's NOT going to be ME taking part of that. They have 4.3 million members, MORE than enough to get their act together THEMSELVES and make the required changes happen. If they can't do that, then doubling the membership to 8.6 million people isn't likely to help, either, if only because the vast majority of new people (basic human nature) are simply "along for the ride", as it were.
4.3 million people. $282 million annually. They've got plenty to straighten themselves out with and demonstrate they're worthy of people like me to rejoin membership.
www.ammoland.com
