Sometime in the next few days, NRA members will receive magazine editions that contain one of the most important pieces of communications in any year: the official ballots for the Board of Directors.
This year, however, the centerfold ballot will be bracketed by two pages that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the civil war that has divided the organization through trials, chicanery and some shaky lawyering, is neither over, nor civil.
Shortly before leaving Las Vegas last week, I met with Buz Mills, owner of Gunsite Academy and longtime opposition member of the NRA Board of Directors. Since the resignation of former longtime strongman Wayne LaPierre, Mills has continuously worked to reform the organization he believes is essential to protecting our Second Amendment rights.
During our conversation, Mills showed me the ads that will appear on either side of the ballots in American Rifleman,American Hunter, America’s 1st Freedom, and Shooting Illustrated. The ads call for the endorsement of candidates that have pledged to operate what Mills and supporters call NRA 2.0 with three core operating standards: integrity, accountability, and transparency.
The two-page ads shown here will bookend the NRA official ballot to let voting members know the candidates that want to move forward for NRA 2.0. Image with permission.
As Mills says, standards that weren’t even options under LaPierre’s “leadership” -or, he adds, the “leadership” of what he calls the “cabal” that exemplifies the cronyism, waste, and corruption that New York Superior Judge Joel M. Cohen addressed last year when he mandated corrective measures the NRA needed to implement.
For Mills, this election represents the chance to actually purge LaPierre supporters from the Board of Directors. He and his supporters aren’t pulling any punches. In addition to the magazine ads, fliers and informational pieces have been sent to NRA members. And they’re considerably less diplomatic than the ads. One piece actually uses bright red type to respond to a piece asking members to vote for a slate of “strong effective leadership” that Mills calls the remaining members of the “LaPierre cabal.” His “edited” piece describes the board members asking for reelection the people that spent “years defending Wayne LaPierre.”
Instead, Mills encourages members to cast ballots for 26 reform candidates, effectively voting against candidates Bob Barr, Sharon Callan, Larry E. Craig, Isaac Demarest, Lawrence Finder, Jeff Fleetham, Carol Frampton, Joel Friedman, Sandra S. Froman, Tom King, Charles Rowe, Ronald L. Schmaltz, John C. Sigler, Danny Stowers, Dwight D. Van Horn and Blaine Wade.
In fact, Mills say Barr, Frampton, Friedman, Froman, King and Wade represent the “heart of the cabal”- and reminds members they’re also the group that wanted to retain the Special Litigation Committee which wanted to retain the Brewer Law Firm. That firm, Mills has maintained for years, not only failed to effectively represent the organization and its millions of members, but billed hundreds of millions of member dollars for what was essentially a long-form defense of LaPierre and “his cabal.”
Today, Mills says, the NRA exists at a crossroads “between danger and opportunity” -and it’s up to the members to finally “erase the last vestiges of Wayne LaPierre and his corrupt ways from the Association.”
Having covered the New York trial, read countless pages of internal NRA documents, depositions, transcripts and met and spoken with numbers of “involved parties” either currently or formerly involved in the National Rifle Association, it is inarguable that things were out of kilter well ahead of LaPierre’s surprise resignation as the New York trial got underway.
Subsequent to the trial, there have been some essential changes. And, despite attempts to categorize them otherwise, the majority of those changes were direct results of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ failed attempt to dissolve the National Rifle Association.
While she might not have achieved her ultimate goal- dissolution of the organization- she did what numerous reform movements had failed to do- oust LaPierre and bring some much-needed oversight to a management that had treated member dollars like unlimited expense accounts.
Not every member of the 75-member NRA board was corrupt, coopted or otherwise self-dealing during the LaPierre years. Court testimony, however, made it obvious that the members of the “cabal” Mills wants to excise from the BoD isolated “dissidents” -meaning anyone who disagreed with LaPierre- to the point that any reform efforts were ineffective.
Today, Mills reminds me, there’s an opportunity to return the NRA management and decision making to the place it should have rested all along: the members and their duly elected representatives.
If you’re one of those qualified to vote in this year’s elections, Mills doesn’t suggest you go strictly on his word, in fact, he wants voting members to learn more about candidates rather than than simply voting for the ones they know- or recognize.
Instead, he suggests you go to the website ElectANewNRA.com and learn more about the twenty-six reform candidates before marking and submitting ballots.
As it should be, Mills says, the decisions regarding who sits on the Board and helps decide the future of the NRA resides squarely where it should: in the hands of the membership.
As always, we’ll keep you posted.
— Jim Shepherd
