Does dissolution serve justice though? The NRA is the leading voice for Second Amendment rights and they have 5 million members giving, knowing that they'll use that money to advocate for moar guns. I don't agree with their goals, but their advocacy is mainstream political speech. If the organization is being corruptly managed, its officers should perhaps be prosecuted or sued or forced out, maybe you seek restitution if the organization hurt others, but I don't see how the 5 million members or the country at large is served by suddenly eliminating this major political voice. The NRA can be cleaned up. Corruption is not intrinsic to political advocacy for gun rights. Dissolution doesn't make sense as a remedy for malfeasance.
I belonged to a church where one of the church leaders stole a bunch of money. The church found it in an audit, confronted him, and turned the documents over to the DA. He plead guilty, was ordered to pay restitution, and spent a little time in jail and then a long time on probation. His wife was also implicated and also got some sort of plea deal for a lesser charge. Not once did the DA propose disbanding the church because of bad actors in the leadership.
Just to note Trump's family was forced to disband the Trump Foundation following the finding that they were misusing funds from it for the campaign and also for Trump businesses.
God, how fun would it be to use the Trump Foundation, as precedent to shut down the NRA. It just makes me all tingly inside.
It depends how badly the corruption goes. If this is pretty much the NRA's leadership forcing those people out will likely lead to dissolution anyway. Also this is just the beginning of the process. It's still possible that in a settlement deal or court mandated deal the NRA can survive.
Linked is a twitter thread summarizing many of the offenses committed by LaPierre and Powell. It really is worth your time and consideration. They bled the NRA dry to stuff their pockets and those of their cronies. It has no money left in the coffers to continue its intended mission. Disbanding would seem proper. I grew up in the woods of Central/Southeast Missouri. I hunted. I knew many families who absolutely depended on hunting (and fishing) to keep hunger at bay. I'm old enough to remember when the NRA was a wholesome organization, promoting gun safety, care, and instruction on hunting (as well as target shooting). It's disgusting what the organization has been turned into. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1291537690635239425.html
Thanks for the info. Very unsettling to hear that. I agree with yourself and others that there is nothing wrong with an organization that pushes the Second Amendment and represents the interests of gun owners. While I do believe this is politically motivated that doesn't disqualify the long record of corruption from LaPierre and his cronies that ultimately hurt those who they are supposed to represent.
As a side note, I'm old enough to have been told Carter was going to take our guns away. It's time to consider that LaPierre et al played on (inflamed) the concerns of NRA members with the ultimate aim of more fully padding his own pockets.
Interesting, your posts took me down a rabbit hole where I found a LiberalGunOwners subreddit. Don't really have anything to remark on, but it was an interesting find...and something I may look at participating on. https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/
I think there's actually been a rise in "liberal" gun owners. Growing out of the BLM movement there have been several black armed group showing up at protests and doing community policing. Here's one in Minneapolis. https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020...ota,death, peaceful protests became dangerous.
Grifters and Rubes https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ite-leave-absence-liberty-university-n1236204 Jerry Falwell Jr. takes indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University
"An Affront to Civil Society: Letitia James’s proposal to dissolve the NRA, a nonprofit organization, is alarming." ". . . Imagine if a Republican attorney general dissolved the NAACP and gave its resources to the Congress of Racial Equality, which has a storied past but a controversial present. It would rightly be understood as an attack on civil rights, not just a reorganization of funding streams." https://www.city-journal.org/letitia-james-proposal-to-dissolve-nra An Affront to Civil Society Letitia James’s proposal to dissolve the NRA, a nonprofit organization, is alarming. Howard Husock August 10, 2020 Every charitable organization in the United States should be alarmed about New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s legal action to dissolve the National Rifle Association—including groups that oppose gun rights and would repeal the Second Amendment, as well as those whose missions have nothing to do with guns. That concern has nothing to do with whether the charges James has levied against the NRA leadership are true. If NRA president Wayne LaPierre has misappropriated organization funds for personal use, a legal penalty may well be deserved, and he should be fired. But the penalty proposed by James—dissolution of the NRA—is alarming. A single state government would be acting not only against alleged misappropriation of funds but also an entire political constituency. James claims that she is not hostile to gun-rights advocacy, though she once referred to the NRA as a terrorist group. She would make gun-rights advocates whole by distributing residual NRA funds to organizations with a similar purpose. But who is to decide what organizations meet that test? Would such distribution be subject to the oversight of James’s office? No gun-rights group has anywhere near the history and influence of the NRA. Its “brand” is irreplaceable for those who care about its mission. It would be like dissolving the American Civil Liberties Union and distributing its funds to the National Lawyers Guild—a group with not dissimilar concerns but nowhere near the name recognition with the public or the political influence. More to the point, the NRA has a particular point of view that represents its donors, which is why contributions to such organizations are considered an expression of the First Amendment. Imagine if a Republican attorney general dissolved the NAACP and gave its resources to the Congress of Racial Equality, which has a storied past but a controversial present. It would rightly be understood as an attack on civil rights, not just a reorganization of funding streams. The disproportionate and historically unprecedented character of the NRA penalty matters here, too. Fraud and misappropriation of funds are common scandals in the nonprofit world. The leader of the United Way of America, for instance, was found to have used organization funds for his personal enjoyment. No prosecutor would have dreamed of dissolving the United Way. The Teamsters Union was convinced of outright racketeering and forced to operate under federal financial supervision. It was not dissolved, nor were its funds distributed to the United Auto Workers. An appropriate remedy exists for any illegal acts in which NRA leaders may have engaged. They should be charged as individuals—and it should remain up to the organization’s board whether to retain or replace them. The board would also be free to dissolve, if it believed that its name has been tainted, and to distribute its funds to any group of its choice. In America, with its deep tradition of independent civil society, it is not up to the government to decide how citizens associate or participate in political life. Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, and author of America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy.
"The NY Attorney General’s Effort To Dissolve The NRA For Self-Dealing Is A Self-Indictment": "Those same political supporters, of course, would be justifiably outraged by any clear action of the administration to dissolve liberal organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Misconduct or crimes by its officers would not leave it as a criminal enterprise. Like the NRA, Planned Parenthood is one of the most effective groups defending a constitutional right." https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/...he-nra-for-self-dealing-is-a-self-indictment/ excerpt: James would later call the NRA a “terrorist organization,” a claim which is common among internet trolls, but this was the top New York prosecutor engaging in legal trolling. That is what makes the NRA complaint a tragic irony. If taking power to benefit yourself rather than your organization is the measure, the complaint is a self-indictment. James’ demand to dissolve the NRA in order to pander to voters undermines the case presented by her office. While dissolution is simply absurd, James shows us absurdity and popularity can often move hand in hand in New York politics. Many organizations have suffered dubious spending by officers, ranging from political parties to nonprofits to universities. None were disbanded. Union and religious leaders are often accused of lavish spending on their travel or other job perks. Few have been prosecuted. The National Action Network of Al Sharpton paid him more than $1 million in compensation in 2018 and another $500,000 for rights to his life story. While it is based in New York, James has not tried to dissolve it or other organizations. Other cases seeking dissolution undermine the case against the NRA. Five years ago, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tried to dissolve the National Children Leukemia Foundation after finding that 1 percent of around $10 million in donations went to cancer victims, including almost no money spent on its “Make a Dream Come True” program. Its president turned out to be a felon who ran the organization out of his basement. A settlement was reached and the charity was voluntarily shut down. The NRA is not run out of a basement, and it spends large sums of money on its firearms lobbying and training programs. It is, by any measure, one of the most successful advocacy groups in our history. It has more than 5 million members and is the largest and most influential gun rights organization in the world. Whatever complaints can be raised over the spending habits of its officers, the NRA is undoubtedly a successful enterprise. Indeed, many lawmakers have denounced its influence in Washington, since low scores from the NRA can mean defeat for politicians who face close races. James is not disregarding the implications of a Democratic official seeking to destroy one of the most powerful conservative groups in the country in an election year. By contrast, she seems to revel in that image. She knows liberals are thrilled by the idea of disbanding the NRA. She is now revered as a hero by those who view no problem in her past declaring the group a terrorist organization and now trying to dissolve the group as a fraudulent organization. It has been a political campaign in search of lawful rationale for years, however, the allegation is not as important as the target. Those same political supporters, of course, would be justifiably outraged by any clear action of the administration to dissolve liberal organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Misconduct or crimes by its officers would not leave it as a criminal enterprise. Like the NRA, Planned Parenthood is one of the most effective groups defending a constitutional right. Trying to dissolve an organization engaged in political speech should not occur absent overwhelming proof that it is a criminal enterprise, which is why this has never happened with a group like the NRA. James may point to the voluntary dissolution of the Donald Trump Foundation, a small and mostly inactive nonprofit, or the dissolution of Ku Klux Klan groups in the 1940s, but there is little comparison with the NRA in these cases. Many liberals celebrating the lawsuit against the NRA condemned Trump for trying to declare the radical movement antifa a terrorist organization. They were as right then as they are wrong now. I recently testified for the Senate to oppose such a designation for antifa. While I have been a vocal critic of antifa and its tactics, it is a dangerous power for the government to openly wield against organizations engaged in political speech. more at the link
For the two Op/Ed's above seem to forget that ACORN was dissolved after legal issues with their voter registration drives and furor from Right Wing politicians and over severely edited videos by James O'Keefe. ACORN was a major group involved in addressing housing and other issues also with a large budget and history. If the concern of both Turley and Husock is that the size and political importance of an organization matters to whether it should be dissolved they seem to forget about ACORN. Also they are essentially making a too big to fail argument which I'm not sure is a convincing argument given all the problems with allowing other organizations with major problems to just continue. Also for the Howard Husock piece some over the top alarmist rhetoric. "including groups that oppose gun rights and would repeal the Second Amendment," That's ridiculous. Whether the NRA exist or not wouldn't repeal the Second Amendment. That would take another amendment to the US Constitution.
Even Lawfare is arguing that James's lawsuit is a bad idea: https://www.lawfareblog.com/attempt-dissolve-nra-threatens-democratic-norms The Attempt to Dissolve the NRA Threatens Democratic Norms By Alan Z. Rozenshtein Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 1:02 PM On August 6, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the National Rifle Association, alleging corruption by longtime executive vice president (and day-to-day head) Wayne LaPierre and his inner circle, and complicity by the NRA board. In addition to seeking the removal of the NRA’s leadership and tens of millions of dollars in restitution and damages from the official and the NRA itself, the lawsuit seeks to dissolve the NRA on the grounds that, because of this corruption, the existence of the organization is no longer in the “public interest.” The NRA is one of the most controversial and polarizing organizations in U.S. politics and is particularly reviled by the left. I personally can’t stand it, and I don’t agree with either its policies or its legal interpretation of the Second Amendment. But that said, it’s a mistake to celebrate the lawsuit, even given the cartoonish level of corruption alleged in the complaint. While there’s a strong case for removing the NRA’s leadership and fundamentally reforming the organization itself, James’s attempt to dissolve the NRA in its entirety is a violation of key democratic and rule-of-law norms and should be troubling to people who value these norms no matter one’s place on the political spectrum. There are two distinct norms that the lawsuit threatens. The first is that the state should preserve, to the extent possible, the free exchange of ideas and an open political arena. That doesn’t, of course, mean that the NRA, or any other political group, is above the law simply because it’s engaged in politics. But it does mean that a lawsuit threatening to destroy any major political group should be held to a high standard. In particular, the government should bend over backwards, even while it enforces the law, to preserve the institution if at all possible. If the allegations in the complaint are true (and they have been supported by years of investigative reporting), James is absolutely right to hold the NRA and its leadership accountable. But the priority should be reform, not dissolution. To seek dissolution, especially out of the gate, is to ignore the millions of Americans for whom the NRA is a vital avenue for political participation. It is true that James is within her legal rights to seek dissolution. The law under which she is operating is immensely broad, and permits the attorney general to seek to dissolve a nonprofit if it “has exceeded the authority conferred upon it by law, or has violated any provision of law whereby it has forfeited its charter, or carried on, conducted or transacted its business in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner, or by the abuse of its powers contrary to public policy of the state has become liable to be dissolved.” But the very breadth of the law is what underscores the need for the norm—which is, after all, an unwritten rule of conduct for government officials—of prosecutorial discretion. As written, the statute permits the attorney general to seek dissolution any time a nonprofit’s leaders engage in serious fraud. But seeking such a radical remedy every time that occurs would clearly go beyond what the legislature intended, and what good public policy countenances. The breadth of the law only makes sense if paired with discretion on the part of those who enforce it. Nor does precedent support dissolution. Responding to questions after announcing the complaint, James cited two prior instances where her office had sought to dissolve nonprofits that had engaged in fraud and financial mismanagement. The first, the Federation of Multicultural Programs, which provided disabilities services, had been warned repeatedly by state officials for five years before it was shut down. And in any event, it was not a leading national political organization. The second, the Trump Foundation, was, as Jonathan Turley notes, "a small and mostly inactive nonprofit." James has not established that the NRA is beyond reform. The complaint argues that, because the NRA board is in the pocket of LaPierre, asking it to reform the NRA would be “futile.” This may well be so. But this does not, by itself, justify dissolution. (It’s notable that, on the same day as James filed her suit, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia also sued the NRA and its associated foundation, which is incorporated in the district. The Washington suit seeks many of the same remedies as does the New York suit but without dissolution of the foundation.) Why not replace the board? The complaint devotes an entire section to the several “dissident” board members who were hounded out of the organization for trying to reform its finances. (Oliver North comes across as an unlikely hero after briefly serving as NRA president, trying to reform the organization’s finances, and being ousted by LaPierre.) Clearly, there’s no shortage of candidates for a reconstituted NRA board. Nor is it clear why the NRA could not go into receivership or supervision by either the attorney general or the courts while it gets its act together. I’m not an expert in New York nonprofit law, so there may well be some legal nuances that I’m missing. But at the very least, James should have clarified, either in the complaint or in her later public statements, why none of these options, which would preserve the NRA’s ability to function as a political entity, would work. (At her press conference James added that “because they have basically destroyed all of the assets of the corporation, it was critically important that one of the causes of actions and one of the remedies that we are seeking is the dissolution of the NRA,” but the complaint doesn’t talk about the NRA’s financial status. Nor did James explain why other alternatives, like non-profit bankruptcy, were not available.) Finally, it’s possible that James never intended to dissolve the NRA, and that the dissolution remedy is simply leverage to get the NRA to settle on terms favorable to the attorney general. But merely threatening to violate a norm by itself does damage to it, because it undermines the norm’s power—that is, it signals that violating the norm would be legitimate. This harms the norm’s standing among the public, from where norms get their force. We see this all the time in criminal law, with the pervasive use of overcharging by prosecutors to induce plea bargaining. It’s a widely criticized practice, and it’s no better when done civilly. The second norm that the NRA lawsuit threatens is that of impartial justice: officials should not use their powers to go after targets simply because they disagree with their politics. Although the timing of the lawsuit—the start of the 2020 election session, in which the NRA was expected to play a major role in supporting Republican candidates—raises questions, investigations are ready when they’re ready, and the timing may just be a coincidence. The bigger concern is James’s own prior statements that show her opposition to the NRA. more
conclusion In an interview published just a week before she won office in 2018, James called the NRA a “terrorist organization.” This statement is either hyperbole (and does not befit a candidate for the position of chief law enforcement officer of the nation’s fourth-largest state) or shows a worryingly narrow conception of acceptable democratic politics. The NRA is neither the KKK nor Al Qaeda: it doesn’t advocate political violence or plot to overthrow the state. It is a controversial political organization—one of many, like Planned Parenthood or Greenpeace or PETA or Black Lives Matter—through which Americans argue over the most important and controversial political issues of the day. To pretend otherwise is to deny the fact that America is a diverse country with diverse political views. Whatever James’s motivations, the optics look terrible and can’t but help raise suspicion, especially for supporters of the NRA, that she’s not playing it straight. Whatever the reality, the perception of political prosecution (which the NRA has alleged in its counter-suit) is its own problem, for the simple reason that, for norms to remain healthy, not only must they be upheld by the relevant political actors, but the public must perceive the norm as being upheld as well. That way the public can have confidence in the norm and continue to demand of its political leaders that they uphold it. Precisely because of her public opposition to the NRA, James should have committed to strengthening the NRA as an institution and preserving its ability to represent and fight for a political agenda supported by millions of Americans. This would be perfectly consistent with rooting out corruption in the NRA, providing relief to dissatisfied NRA members and punishing LaPierre and his cronies. In the end, this lawsuit is about much more than the NRA or even the broader issue of gun rights. The NRA may well survive, either by winning in court, by reforming or relocating to a more friendly state (President Trump suggested, in his own norm-breaking way, that the NRA move to Texas). And if the NRA does collapse, it will only be to the benefit of even-more extreme organizations like the Gun Owners of America (“The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.”). The true importance of this lawsuit is its effect on democratic norms. The last four years have seen the Republican party, from the President down, shred one fundamental governing norm after another. This is bad enough, but an underappreciated danger has been the effect on the Democrats, who have as yet largely resisted the authoritarian temptations that polarization presents. Democracy might be able to survive the corruption of one of its major parties; it certainly can’t survive a spiral of reciprocal norm violations. And while the lawsuit may not quite be “totalitarianism on the subscription plan,” liberals should ask themselves whether, in a world in which organizations like Planned Parenthood are just as reviled on the right as the NRA is on the left, they’re comfortable with partisan state attorneys general seeking to dissolve organizations based on the actions of their leaders. (As Noah Feldman notes, there is a long and shameful history of states using corporate law to harass civil rights groups like the NAACP.) It’s easy to support good-government norms when they align with one’s political preferences. That’s just cheap talk. The trick is to support them when it’s hard, when you have to make a political sacrifice to do so. James had an opportunity to demonstrate what responsible, norm-respecting government looks like. She could have modeled how a law enforcement official can fight organizational and personal corruption while preserving the legitimate political activity that the organization represents, even—especially—when that official opposes the political activity in question. In short, James could have shown the entire country what the vitally important post-Trump project of norm rebuilding could look like. It’s a shame she failed.
