Member Response to NRA Lawsuit

hillbilly grandpa said:

What follows are some early thoughts on our current challenge/opportunity. They are not intended to be a finished piece. They are intended to be the beginning of a conversation about how we can seize the moment and go on the offensive.

In college I had a professor who could begin his lecture explaining how to estimate the amount of board feet in a given tree and end up explaining how to calculate the acreage in a township. Hopefully we can keep this thread on topic. The opportunity at hand is important in its own right. Let’s create some collective wisdom.

The Setup: Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, has filed suit seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association. She alleges that top officers in the organization have engaged in self-dealing and fraudulent activity in contravention to the organization’s stated purpose. She proposes to remedy these alleged violations by small group of individuals, who are accused of violating their trust with, and “stealing” from the organization’s members, by dissolving the organization in its entirety, and thereby disenfranchising the membership in toto.

Possible Responses: The NRA is a member organization. We’re approximately 5,000,000 million members strong. Given that the AG’s threatened action will affect us directly, I believe we have legal standing.

PR #1: The membership at large, not just the selective list who have bought the privilege of voting in NRA elections, should consider filing suit against the AG for recovery of damages that will be incurred by the members. If only 20% of our membership would ante up $10.00 that would forest a war chest for this suit and other actions outlined below. (1,000,000 X $10.00 = $10,000,000)

Damages might include, but not be limited to:
• Loss of subscriptions to valuable and educational publications
• Loss of instructor credentials
• Loss of income by instructors because of loss of credentials
• Loss of infrastructure for promotion of Eddie Eagle, that has provided training to over 32,000,000 young people
• Loss of infrastructure and resources underpinning the Safe Schools Assessment Program
• Loss of support staff essential to carrying out firearm safety and skills training at the local level.
• Loss of infrastructure and finances to support local facilities and organizations in promoting firearm safety and training.
• Your additional claim here.

By identifying and monetizing all the itemized losses suffered in each state, and grossing up for “pain and suffering” along with the cost of prosecution, we would arrive at the amount we would be suing for. It would be huuuge.

PR#2: It is a generally recognized business maxim that an organization is perfectly designed to produce the outcomes it is producing. Those outcomes attest to the efficacy of the design. Those outcomes do not indicate that the design isn’t working; they’re proof that it is. Don’t like the outcomes? Change the design.

When we look at the current operation of NRA national, and lament its multiple dysfunctions, we often tend to blame them on individuals. But the reason those individuals are able to behave as they do is because they have become masters at operating within the current design of the organization. The old saying is “you can’t beat a man on his own pool table.” That might be about to change.

The pending suit may accomplish from the outside what many, working through a stacked-deck organizational design, have been unable to accomplish from within. It may result in the removal of several top operatives in the organization. If so, that will be because the outside forces will create a different pool table with a different set of rules. New game, new design, different outcome.

Our suit would not create a different pool table. But it would add some more balls (no pun intended) to the table. Carom shots add to the complexity.

PR#3: This suit initiative could/should serve as the vehicle for beginning a 50-state grassroots NRA mobilization effort. We could create a new bottom-up infrastructure aimed at being inclusive instead of exclusive. A “constitutional convention” of these state caucuses could begin formulating guidelines and “rules” for the Renewed NRA, designed to achieve the outcomes we intend and desire. New design, different anticipated outcomes.

This reformulation might include new clarity about our mission and priorities, budgeting created to support the mission and priorities, and staffing based on the mission. Working committees and task forces could involve multiple members with varying expertise to undertake various assignments. They would report to a much smaller board with downline, as opposed to upline, accountability. The Renewed NRA could/should be designed to carry out its business/mercantile functions like a business, not a private piggy bank. By design the mercantile operations should support the fundamental visions of training and 2nd Amendment advocacy.

Over time it has become SOP to complain about NRA national, and frequently to lament about the unsavory state of affairs. And for good reason. They’ve been pretty bad, and we’re looking at somebody else’s pool table. The danger is that we lapse into burnishing our charter membership credentials in the “Oh, Ain’t It Awful” club and little else. To do so at this moment would be unfortunate.

Letitia James has handed us a tremendous opportunity to play on a different pool table, and to become “the organization within the organization.” As the soul of the organization we can transform the body. A caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis. If you break it open too soon there’s nothing inside but some black goo. But when the time is right, or as it says in the Bible, “in the fullness of time,” what emerges is a butterfly. The timing is right. We can be that butterfly.

“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”—Pope John Paul II.

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