The NRA got 99 problems, and Letitia James is a really big one. Yesterday The New York Times reported that the New York attorney general dropped a new subpoena on the gunhumpers lobby. The NYAG has so many questions! Like did the NRA maybe make a whole bunch of illegal campaign contributions by throwing cash at GOP media vendors that happened to find its way into campaign ads for Republican candidates? And is the NRA's charitable foundation illegally funneling tax-deductible donations to the NRA lobbying arm? And how sorry is the NRA that it's chartered in New York state?
Just kidding about that last one. Letitia James already knows the answer is ALL THE SORRIES IN THE WORLD.
The AG is reportedly seeking records related to an FEC lawsuit filed by former Rep. Gabby Giffords' group alleging that "the NRA coordinated political ad spending and placement with these candidates' campaigns using a network of shell corporations, effectively evading federal contribution limits and shielding millions of dollars of political spending from public and government scrutiny in violation of FECA."
What, you don't speak lawyer? That's okay, the congresswoman included this nice picture.
In plain English, everybody in those pink boxes works at either 815 or 817 Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia. And by sheer coincidence, the companies have a whole lot of staff overlap, too. Almost like these are all the same entity with some flimsy corporate dividers erected to preserve the illusion that candidates aren't illegally coordinating their ads with PACs. ALMOST.
AG James is also interested in learning more about the $36 million in tax-deductible donations that made their way last year from the foundation, which is a 501(c)(3), to the NRA's main 501(c)(4) arm, which engages in lobbying so donations are not tax-deductible.
While both the N.R.A. and its foundation are tax-exempt, only donations to the foundation are tax-deductible. Tax experts say the foundation has become a back door for tax-deductible donations to the N.R.A. itself. Karl Racine, the attorney general of the District of Columbia, where the N.R.A. Foundation is chartered, is also investigating.
"This should raise, and should have raised, red flags," said Norman I. Silber, a law professor at Hofstra University and a senior research scholar at Yale. Last year, the N.R.A. also changed how it accounted for money flowing from the foundation, reporting that a far greater proportion than in previous years had gone toward staffing costs.
And speaking of interesting fundraising wheezes, the Daily Beast has yet another dispatch from the front in the trench war between the NRA and its former advertising vendor Ackerman McQueen (AMc). According to a November filing by AMc, the NRA took advantage of parents' widespread panic after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting to rake in some extra cash while pretending to keep kids safe.
"When People Cried, 'Someone Do Something!' We Did." screams the website for the NRA School Shield program, which promises to use donated money to develop plans to harden schools into little prisons, to preserve the God-given right of every American to walk around with a killing machine strapped to his hip. And who wouldn't want to donate to that, right? Except that donations went directly to the NRA, which made only minimal disbursements to schools.
School Shield was developed in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012. The goal was to provide schools, through grants from the NRA, with threat assessments to determine the school's vulnerability, prepare a plan to make schools more secure, and help locate qualified armed safety officials. Although this program raised millions of dollars, it was little more than a media stunt. By the end of 2014, School Shield had issued a paltry five (5) grants. After North became President in 2018, he demanded that the NRA "make it real."
That's nice. Particularly since Media Matters went back through NRATV footage and found those psychopathic goons flogging the School Shield program -- a program that appears to have barely existed as more than a cash cow -- and urging parents to do battle with any sissy liberals that didn't want the NRA to come in and "harden" their kids' schools. Here's Grant Stinchfield, whose very name sounds like an off-brand gun in a Simpsons episode, on the one year anniversary of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting.
We learned so many lessons from the mass shooting in Broward County. And if we act on those lessons, our children will be safer for it. The problem is, the anti-gun zealots who run the anti-gun lobbying groups are trying to block every move the NRA and NRA School Shield makes simply because they hate guns and our organization. I don't care what they call us. They can't preach to the media that we're irrelevant. We aren't, and I know this because of the work we are getting done. In the memory of every person shot at Parkland, at Santa Fe, or Columbine, or Newtown, in their memory, many kids are safer as more and more schools are looking inward to expose flaws so they can be corrected. Still it is true, too many more are not any safer. But look at what Florida did. It now mandates each school have an armed officer present. That is an amazing piece of legislation the NRA worked hard to get passed.
Truly, there are not enough bags of dicks in the world for this asshole to eat. And, oh by the way, in 2016 the NRA donated almost $11,000 of "non-cash assistance" to the JROTC marksmanship program where the Parkland shooter honed his skills. So, maybe they should keep these poor, dead kids' names out of their filthy mouths.
Add this one to the pile, Ms. James! And now, we'll banhammer ourselves before we say anything that we shouldn't about those filthy fucking bloodsuckers.
[NYT / Giffords v. FEC / DB / Media Matters / NRA v. AMc]
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