GunLink Blog

On January 15, Marion Hammer, NRA past president and a current member of both the Board of Directors and Executive Council, published an outrageous editorial on Ammoland Shooting Sports News warning of current and past threats to the NRA, and listing a slate of candidates she supports for the upcoming NRA Board of Directors election.

Marion is free to endorse any Board candidate she likes. But in her endorsement she can’t rewrite history to suit herself, nor can she expect to cast aspersions on the motives of good people without challenge

In her screed, Ms. Hammer carefully avoids naming names, but anyone who has been paying any attention at all to NRA politics – past and present – knows exactly whom she is referring to.

She begins with muddy praise for the stalwart NRA members who staged a revolt at the NRA Members’ Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1977. It was the night when the members wrested control of the NRA from a hidebound and self-perpetuating management and put the Association on the road to being the premier defender of the human right to armed self defense. Then she jumps forward to 1997 to talk about an attempted “coup” by a group of “dissident malcontents,” but fails to mention that both actions were staged by many of the same people, and for many of the same reasons.

I put “coup” in quotes in the second instance because the group that she claims was staging the “coup” was actually the duly elected Officers and Directors attempting, unsuccessfully, to exercise their fiduciary responsibility against actions by paid staff and key contractors with multimillion-dollar contracts.

The 1997 fight was not a coup; it was a mutiny.

In contrast to Cincinnati, the prize in 1977 was not the heart, soul, and destiny of the NRA, but control of the organization’s checkbook and prudent management of its resources. The goal in both instances was to give the members control over their NRA. The 1997 action included First Vice President Neal Knox, Second Vice President Albert Ross, and a majority of the NRA Board of Directors.

But, history is written by the victors, so the attempts of the Board of Directors to demand fiscal accountability from their hired staff was later reported as a “coup.”

The core issue was how the NRA’s PR company, Ackerman McQueen, was drawing millions of dollars a month from the organization and improperly controlling NRA staff. The Board directed Wayne to sever ties with Ack-Mac, and Wayne promised to do so, then claimed to have done so, by bringing in a new PR company called Mercury Group. The “new” PR company turned out to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Ack-Mac, with all of the same players in all of the same positions, still bleeding the association of the same millions of dollars.   Continue reading →