The National Rifle Association is one of the biggest grassroots membership organizations in the country, and its support is rock-solid in conservative Texas—but an official just moved to keep the gun rights organization out of the Lone Star State.
The ruling turns on a technical part of bankruptcy law, but the reason the NRA is trying to flee the state where it’s currently incorporated is pure politics.
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The NRA, which advocates for the Second Amendment and teaches hunter safety courses, has been the liberals’ Public Enemy Number One for years.
It spent $55 million trying to elect Donald Trump president in 2016…and that was the last straw.
The attorney general of the state of New York, Letitia James, is a left-wing radical who wants to destroy Republicans and the Second Amendment by any means necessary. Last August 6, she filed a lawsuit to completely disband the Second Amendment and gun safety group as a nonprofit.
She accused members of the NRA’s board, especially its long-serving public spokesman Wayne LaPierre, of misspending $64 million over three years on personal items, including expensive dinners and vacations they said were business trips.
James also claimed that LaPierre gave high-dollar contracts to his friends and family.
In all, she claimed NRA officials’ actions amounted to a “waste and loss of millions in assets.” Their actions had even “contributed to the NRA reaching its current deteriorated financial state” and “undermine(d) its own mission.”
If what she’s saying is true, the guilty should be held accountable. But you don’t have to dissolve the whole organization…unless you have the Second Amendment in your sights.
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And James admitted she does “We are seeking to dissolve the NRA,” James proudly tweeted the day she filed her case.
#BREAKING: I filed a lawsuit to dissolve the National Rifle Association for years of self-dealing and illegal conduct.
The @NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse.
No organization is above the law.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) August 6, 2020
The NRA decided to make the same decision millions of others have made over the last several years: They left New York state.
The NRA filed for bankruptcy, not because it’s out of money, but so it can end James’ politically motivated lawsuit and move out of the state…to Texas. But U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale ruled against them, saying, “The NRA is a solvent and growing organization using this bankruptcy as a tool to win its dissolution lawsuit.”
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Judge Hale said it was up to him to decide “whether the existential threat facing the NRA is the type of threat that the Bankruptcy Code is meant to protect against.” “The court believes it is not,” he ruled.
Liberals celebrated the judge’s decision and railed against the NRA.
“In just five short years, the #NRA has gone from spending $54.4 million on federal elections to facing the strong possibility of a complete dismantling,” tweeted the center-left website OpenSecrets.org. Gun-grabber Shannon Watts who heads the “grassroots army” of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, laughed that the judge’s decision “comes at the worst possible time
for the NRA: right as background checks are being debated in the Senate.”
The judge’s decision will make it “onerous if not impossible for the NRA to effectively oppose gun safety”—she means gun control—“and lobby lawmakers while simultaneously fighting court battles and mounting debt.”
But supporters of the Constitution said they hope the NRA will prevail in court. “Texas stands with the NRA and we look forward to working with the Association on their plans to move to Texas,“ tweeted the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.
The NRA promised it won’t go down without a fight.
“The NRA remains committed to its members and our plan for the future. Although we are disappointed in some aspects of the decision, there is no change in the overall direction of our Association, its programs, or its Second Amendment advocacy,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.
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The decision, he said, “is ultimately about our members—those who stand courageously with the NRA in defense of constitutional freedom. We remain an independent organization that can chart its own course, even as we remain in New York to confront our adversaries.”
“The NRA will keep fighting, as we’ve done for 150 years,” he concluded.
"The NRA will keep fighting, as we’ve done for 150 years." –@NRA CEO & EVP Wayne LaPierre pic.twitter.com/eTgZqZn5Jx
— NRA (@NRA) May 11, 2021
The NRA is telling New York, don’t mess with Texas.
If you want to force the NRA out of business, it’ll go down with its proverbial guns blazing.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”