Gabby Giffords Sues NRA For Illegal Trump Donations
A gun control nonprofit founded by former Representative Gabby Giffords sued the National Rifle Association on Tuesday, filing a federal lawsuit alleging that the gun rights group carried out an illegal, multimillion-dollar political coordination scheme that went on for years to the benefit of Donald Trump and other Republicans.
It could also be a landmark case for U.S. election law. Giffords' nonprofit—also called Giffords—had previously targeted the NRA in a number of complaints to the Federal Election Commission.
Those complaints, first filed in 2018, went unanswered by the agency for so long that on Monday a federal judge granted Giffords the right to sue the NRA itself—opening a door that campaign finance reform advocates say had been locked for too long.
Tapes: NRA Called Its Members "Hillbillies" and "Fruitcakes"
In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, the leaders of the National Rifle Association gathered on a conference call to discuss damage control and their upcoming conference in Denver, set to take place just miles away, and days after the deadly shooting.
NPR obtained tapes of that call and revealed their contents on Tuesday in a bombshell report. On the tapes, senior leaders at the NRA can be heard describing their most loyal and activist members as "hillbillies" and "fruitcakes" that the organization needed to be guarded against.
Thirteen people lay dead at a high school in Colorado. More than 20 were injured. Images of students running from the school were looped on TV. The NRA strategists on the call sounded shaken and panicked as they pondered their next step into what would become an era of routine and horrific mass school shootings.
"Everything we do here has a downside," NRA official Kayne Robinson says on the tapes. "Don't anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are. We are in deep shit on this deal. And so anything we do here is going to be a matter of trying to decide the best of a whole bunch of very, very bad choices."
Re: Tapes: NRA Called Its Members "Hillbillies" and "Fruitcakes"
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, the leaders of the National Rifle Association gathered on a conference call to discuss damage control and their upcoming conference in Denver, set to take place just miles away, and days after the deadly shooting.NPR obtained tapes of that call and revealed their contents on Tuesday in a bombshell report. On the tapes, senior leaders at the NRA can be heard describing their most loyal and activist members as "hillbillies" and "fruitcakes" that the organization needed to be guarded against.
Thirteen people lay dead at a high school in Colorado. More than 20 were injured. Images of students running from the school were looped on TV. The NRA strategists on the call sounded shaken and panicked as they pondered their next step into what would become an era of routine and horrific mass school shootings.
"Everything we do here has a downside," NRA official Kayne Robinson says on the tapes. "Don't anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are. We are in deep shit on this deal. And so anything we do here is going to be a matter of trying to decide the best of a whole bunch of very, very bad choices."
"On the tapes, senior leaders at the NRA can be heard describing their most loyal and activist members as "hillbillies" and "fruitcakes" that the organization needed to be guarded against." -snip
laughcry
But the rest just shows how the NRA is aware of the gun problem, but publicly wants to pretend there isn't a problem.
NRA Confirms They Were Hit With Ransomware Attack
The National Rifle Association, defender of gun-loving maniacs everywhere, has confirmed that it did, in fact, get hacked by cybercriminals last year.
On Friday, the organization's political action committee submitted a filing to the Federal Election Commission confirming the attack. The PAC made the filing to the FEC in an effort to explain a recent financial discrepancy.
A ransomware gang calling itself "Grief" bragged to the digital underworld last October about compromising the gun lobby's servers and stealing sensitive internal documents.
NRA Membership Down 1M After Corruption Scandal
The National Rifle Association keeps shrinking. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told attendees at the gun-rights group's most recent board meeting that the organization is down more than a million members since allegations of financial impropriety were leveled against LaPierre and other members of NRA leadership in 2019. The NRA is now smaller than it has been since 2012.
The drop in membership has driven a stark decline in the NRA's revenue. As a membership organization, the revenue of the NRA comes from membership dues. Losing over a million members has caused revenue to drop 32% resulting in an $11M budget shortfall for the organization. This shortfall is after the NRA took out a $23M line of credit to cover the lost revenue.
Accounting for the lost revenue and the outstanding line of credit, the budget shortfall is actually closer to 52-percent. Meaning the organization is facing revenue collapse.