Via NPR: Jury finds NRA, Wayne LaPierre liable in civil corruption case.
A Manhattan jury found three top executives of the National Rifle Association liable Friday in a lengthy civil trial that focused on alleged corruption and the misspending of millions of dollars.
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The executives were accused of misappropriating and mismanaging funds donated to the gun rights group’s members. According to James, their actions led to “the loss of more than $64 million in just three years.”
During the six-week trial, state lawyers alleged that LaPierre had spent over $11 million for private flights and approved $135 million in NRA contracts in exchange for yacht access and free trips to the Bahamas, Greece and other vacation hotspots, The Associated Press reported.
It is hard to look at these revelations and come to any other conclusion that LaPierre and his cronies knew an excellent grift when they saw it and to conclude that they were more than happy to stoke the fears of members to keep the dollars flowing.
LaPierre’s famous notion that the “only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” was an odious one that has proven to be largely untrue (see, e.g., Uvalde, TX).
The idea that an armed society is a polite one ends up also not to be true (see, e.g., the shooting at the Chief’s victory parade).
We can have a debate about the Second Amendment and we can acknowledge that gun ownership is not going away. But it would be a whole lot easier to take seriously that we have been involved in some lofty debate about rights if the NRA and its most prominent leader weren’t using millions and millions for private jets, clothes, and vacations.
If the NRA was a serious organization it would have been worried about safety and about shootings and about responsibility instead of recklessly trying to scare people into thinking that their guns were going to be taken away so as to induce them to send the NRA more money so that Wayne LaPierre could take a yacht to the Bahamas.
What if they had spent those millions trying to prevent shootings while still promoting gun rights?
What if they had taken seriously our obvious gun violence problem instead of promoting “constitutional carry” as if flooding the zone with guns is the solution?
Instead, if you look at their Twitter feed even today, it is obvious that their message is all we need is guns, guns, guns, Guns is all you need.
Sigh.
Clearly, the response to have a leader who cheated the organization out of millions and has led to a serious crisis is to double and triple down on the approach of that leader.
To me when a prophet shows himself to be false, perhaps it is time to reassess his prophesies.
And, by the way, maybe it isn’t such a good idea to let the same guy be in charge for multiple decades since it makes accountability one heck of a whole lot harder to accomplish. LaPierre has been the executive vice president/chief executive of the NRA since 1991 (note that the presidency of the NRA is a symbolic office).
