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My NRA Committee Assignments

May 14, 2026 by 1 Comment

While I am waiting for the full list of who is assigned to what NRA committee, here are my committee assignments for 2026-2027.

  • Audit (elected as previously noted)
  • Membership
  • Legislative Policy
  • State and Local Subcommittee of Legislative Policy
  • Hunting and Wildlife Conservation

I served on all of these committees in the previous year and had requested to serve on them again. Of course, the Audit Committee is elected by the Board of Directors and is not merely an appointment by the President.

I have talked with some other directors who did not get all their requested committees. I think one reason I was able to get everything I requested is that I am retired and have the time to devote to serving on them. Not everyone has this sort of flexibility.

I see a direct correlation between what we do in the Legislative Policy and Hunting & Wildlife Conservation Committees and in building or rebuilding our membership.

When the full list of all committee assignments is released, I will post it. I don’t think it will be marked Privileged and Confidential.

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A FAQ On The New Virginia Gun Laws

May 13, 2026 by 1 Comment

The Virginia Citizens Defense League has published a 48 page guide to the newly passed gun control laws in Virginia. It has links within it that go to broader explanations as well as to the laws passed by the Virginia General Assembly. From what I understand, July 1st will be the date when most of these laws will go into effect. As of today, she still has not signed the assault weapons ban that she sent back to the legislature and which they sent back to her without the amendments she requested.

If you plan on traveling in Virginia or you are a gun owner in Virginia, I would carefully go over this FAQ. As for me, the only times I plan to visit Virginia are for my NRA Board of Directors’ meetings.

New+2026+gun+law+effects-finalDownload

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New England Firearms Advocacy Conference

May 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms along with a number of state level 2A organizations in New England will hold the New England Firearms Advocacy Conference on May 30th in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation will also be participating. My good friend Charlie Cook of Riding Shotgun with Charlie will be the emcee of this event.

The event will feature a number of speakers including state representatives, 2A attorneys, Dr. John Lott, Cam Edwards, and podcaster Jared Yanis.

The cost to attend this event is $25 and includes a one year membership in CCRKBA.

I love that CCRKBA and the other organizations involved are taking this conference to the belly of the beast. I’m sure Mass. Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) and others of her ilk are none too pleased to hear the dissenting voices to their gun control regime.

Full details including more on the speakers and organizations attending are in the press release embedded below:

CCRKBA RELEASE – May 30 ConferenceDownload
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Meme Of The Day

May 2, 2026 by 2 Comments

This is both funny and sad at the same time. The sad part comes from how many European countries have no sense of humor. Even worse, how they have kowtowed to newcomers in order to seem accommodating when all the newcomers see by these actions is weakness.

I am thankful for the Bill of Rights which allows me to even post this meme.

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NRA Annual Meeting Report, Part 4

April 27, 2026 by 2 Comments

There were a number of bylaw changes proposed in advance of the NRA Annual Meeting. In my opinion, none was more contentious nor more change-oriented than the proposal to restructure the Executive Committee. The bylaw as originally proposed would have reduced the Executive Committee in size from 20 members to nine. The structure would have been changed from 20 at-large members selected from the Board of Directors to the three officers, the committee chairs of Audit, Finance, Legal Affairs, and Membership, and two at-large members from the Board as a whole.

President Bill Bachenberg presented the bylaw proposal to the members at the Meeting of Members for comment in an effort to get the pro and con arguments on the table. While I cannot speak for all of these Meeting of Members as I’ve only attended a few, this seemed to be a radical change in favor of transparency. The bylaw proposal was also discussed extensively in a Board Town Hall held the week before leaving for Houston.

The bylaw change was also discussed in the Bylaws and Resolutions Committee extensively. Both in the Board Town Hall and in this meeting, I was under the impression that the consensus was to enlarge the Executive Committee by two more at-large members and that this change was to be incorporated. In the greater scheme of things, nine versus 11 is not that great of an expansion.

When this bylaw amendment was presented to the Board by the Bylaws and Resolutions Committee in last Monday’s Board meeting, their committee substitute returned to the original nine members. This would have essentially given the President four votes in the committee as he appointed three of the four committee chairs. The Audit Committee chair is selected by the members of the Audit Committee.

After the motion to approve the bylaw change was introduced and seconded, I introduced an amendment to expand the number of at-large members to four and the overall number to 11. You can see my amendment in the embedded document. The feeling of myself and others was this was essential to bring balance to the committee. Frankly, I do not know if the bylaw change would have been passed without this amendment.

Hanging over the debate on this bylaw change were two things. First, members remembered the autocratic rule of past NRA President Charles Cotton. His name was invoked many times throughout the whole meeting as a warning. Second, there was the specter of the Special Litigation Committee which had worked virtually in secret and hand-in-hand with Bill Brewer.

The debate on this bylaw amendment was vigorous but respectful. You had reformers on both sides of the issue. For example, Jeff Knox argued for it while Judge Phil Journey argued against it. I doubt you could find any two who had been more identified with the reform movement within the Board than those two. As an aside, all of this debate happened during open session.

When the amended bylaw change came to a vote, it was a recorded roll call vote which will appear in the Official Journal (aka the American Rifleman and the American Hunter) at a later date. The final vote was 38 yea, 25 nay, and 2 voting present. For the record, I voted in favor of the amended bylaw. I should also note that I had been a member, though briefly, of the previous 20-member Executive Committee.

Key to my vote were a few factors. First, there was now parity between the President and the Board. Second, all meetings of the Executive Committee are open to all Board members. Third, any decision can be overruled by a simple majority of the Board of Directors. Fourth, the restrictions on the powers of the Executive Committee were substantial yet not so onerous as to make them powerless.

One of the many arguments made for the reduction in the size of the Board of Directors is that you cannot get anything done with a Board of 76 directors. Some have argued that the Board should be more like a corporate board with a small number running the affairs of the Association. In one sense, this is what we created with the new reconstituted Executive Committee. It will act like a governance committee while the Board as a whole remains more like a legislative body.

The Bylaws and Resolutions Committee substitute along with my amendment are embedded below. You can see some of my handwritten notes in the PDF.

Executive Committee Bylaw AmendmentDownload
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NRA Annual Meeting Report, Part 3

April 24, 2026 by 6 Comments

One of the biggest portions of the Board meeting held after the Annual Meeting is devoted to elections of officers, trustees, and members of the Audit, Executive, and Nominating Committees. Unlike my first meeting in April 2025 where there were many contested elections with multiple rounds of voting, this year it mostly went smoothly with only a few multiple rounds of voting.

First up was the election of the officers with the following elected by unanimously by acclamation.

  • President – Bill Bachenberg
  • First VP – Mark Vaughan
  • Second VP – Rocky Marshall
  • Exec VP – Doug Hamlin
  • Secretary – John Frazer (Was on the ballot because the intended replacement backed out. John will remain in the Secretary’s position with the intention that a replacement found within the next 6 months)
  • Treasurer – Mike Erstling

After Doug Hamlin was elected, he appointed John Commerford as the Executive Director of ILA and Josh Savani as the Executive Director of General Operations. These appointments were confirmed unanimously.

Surprisingly, there was a contested election for the Chief Compliance Officer. It was between the incumbent Matthew Boyden and Emory “Jack” Hagan who is on the Board of Directors. The winner had to receive 3/4th’s of the vote under New York Not for Profit Corporation Law. Prior to the vote, board counsel Alex Reid informed the Board that under the Final Judgment that two years of severance would have to be paid to Mr. Boyden as he would have been replaced without cause. Both men were given time to make campaign speeches and members could argue for or against a candidate. The vote was 56 for Boyden, 6 for Hagan, and 2 voting present. There were a total of 64 votes cast.

The next election was for the Audit Committee. Nominees are announced by the President and then each is voted on separately. Given it is a committee of the board under NY NPCL, candidates must receive a 3/4th’s vote of those present. This election was held before the Executive Committee because as I will explain in a future post the Executive Committee was restructured and the Audit Committee chair is automatically a member of the committee.

  • Regis Synan – 55 yea, 0 no, 55 present
  • Theresa Inacker – 55 yea, 0 no, 55 present
  • Charlie Beers – 55 yea, 3 no, 64 present
  • John Richardson – 59 yea, 0 no, 64 present
  • Jonathan Goldstein – 59 yea, 0 no, 64 present

After this vote, the Audit Committee briefly met. We re-elected Charlie Beers as chair and Regis Synan as vice-chair. We reported this back to the meeting.

Next up was the restructured Executive Committee in which four at-large members were elected. The at-large members were expected to bring strong financial, managerial, legal, or other relevant experience to the committee. Like the Audit Committee, they required a 3/4th’s affirmative vote. The Nominating Committee had nominated Alex Carroll and Anthony Colandro. I nominated Randy Luth who is the CEO of Luth-AR and was the founder of DPMS/Panther Arms prior to its sale to the former Freedom Group. The other nominees were Charlie Hiltunen, Judge Phil Journey, Janet Nyce, and Prof. David Raney. Candidates needed 48 votes to win.

No one was elected in the first round of voting. In the second round of voting, Anthony Colandro with 55 votes and Charlie Hiltunen with 48 votes were elected while David Raney withdrew. For the third round of voting, both Phil Journey and Janet Nyce withdrew giving Alex Carroll and Randy Luth 57 votes by acclamation.

Next up was the NRA Special Conservation Fund aka the Whittington Center board of trustees. Nominated for three-year terms ending in 2029 were Pete Brownell, Philip Gray, Jerry Kraus, Randy Luth, Andrew McEntire, Janet Nyce, and James-Scott Wong. Nominated for a one-year term ending in 2027 was Nick Krallis. The entire slate was elected by acclamation.

There were six nominees for the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund board of trustees. From academia were Prof. F. Lee Francis of Widener University Commonwealth Law School, Prof. Robert Cottrol of George Washington University Law School, Prof. Raymond Diamond of LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and Prof. Nick Johnson of Fordham University School of Law. Also nominated for reappointment were James (Jim) Porter II and Graham Hill. All six were elected as trustees of the CRDF by acclamation.

The final election was for the Nominating Committee. The committee is composed of six board members and three non-board members. No board member may serve on the Nominating Committee more than once in a three-year period nor if their term expires in the ensuing year.

Nominees from the board were Jason Wilson, Howard Massingill, Jerry Kraus, Larry Finder, Amanda Suffecool, Linda Walker, Knox Williams, Scott Emslie, and Jim Porter. The non-board nominees were Ed Hope, Rick Figueroa, James-Scott Wong, and Jackie Emslie. There were 59 valid ballots which meant a winner had to have at least 30 votes to win.

The six board members of the 2026-2027 Nominating Committee are Amanda Suffecool (40), Howard Massingill (39), Jason Wilson (39), Linda Walker (34), Jerry Kraus (32), and Knox Williams (32). The three non-board members are James-Scott Wong (46), Rick Figueroa (41), and Jackie Emslie (31).

Congratulations to all who won. It is expected that the major committee assignments will be done by this end of this week and the rest soon after. The days of waiting until June or July are over.

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NRA Annual Meeting Report, Part 2

April 23, 2026 by 7 Comments

The Annual Compliance Report to Members was released and made available at the Meeting of Members on Saturday, April 18th. It covers activities from January 1 to December 31 of 2025. The report covering 2024 is available in the member’s only section on the NRA website. Just look under “Governance Information.” The 2025 report should be up there sooner than later.

I should add that if you have not registered for access to this, you should. I had one director complaining to me about not being able to print the Bylaws out from within BoardVantage which is the Board’s court-mandated secure portal. He wasn’t aware he could access this information and print the Bylaws from the Governance Information section. It looks like I need to do more to make members (and directors) aware of their ability to access this information which was posted as a result of my transparency resolution that passed at the 2025 Meeting of Members.

The compliance report covers five areas: travel and entertainment expenses; contract negotiations, exceptions, and subsequent payments; related party transactions; whistleblower reports; and independent audit. Rather than rehashing both the reports covering 2024 and 2025, I will just highlight some of the year over year changes.

Travel and entertainment expenses were down by $800,000 in 2025 from the previous year. Two major factors were the locations of the Fall and Winter board meetings and the reduction in number of days of each. The officers elected in 2025 made the decision that the Fall and Winter board meetings would be held in northern Virginia exclusively. This cut down on both lodging and travel expenses for staff. Additionally, starting with the Winter board meeting, the number of days for committee meeting were cut from three to two. Authorization for lodging only began with the day of your first committee meeting. For example, at our Winter meeting, I did not have a Thursday committee meeting but still arrived on Wednesday night as I wanted to attend the Legal Affairs Committee meeting on Thursday. As I’m not on Legal Affairs, I paid for that night’s lodging out of my own pocket.

I would like to point out that there were no charter flights in 2025, no first class flights, and only four pre-authorized exceptions to fly business class due to documented medical conditions.

Looking at vendor payments especially for legal expenses they were significantly lower in 2025 than in 2024. Of course, the New York trial had been finished. In 2024, Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, was paid $32,273,602. In 2025, they were paid 6,885,582 for prior legal services and their engagement was ended. By contrast, the NRA’s other law firm, Baker Hostetler was paid zero in 2024 and $2,416,051 in 2025. They provide our board counsel and cover most of our outside, non-2A, litigation needs. The biggest vendor in 2024 was, of course, Brewer while the largest in 2025 was Fidelity Investments. The payments to Fidelity include both employee and employer contributions to the NRA’s 401(k) plan.

The total number of whistleblower reports were similar – 58 versus 57 – but varied distinctly. For 2025, while there were a total of 57 reports, only 48 actually related to the NRA. Of these, only 12% were substantiated as opposed to 52% from the previous year. Indeed, the great majority (63%) were unsubstantiated.

In addition to the reduction in travel costs, what makes me happiest is seeing that our auditors gave the NRA a clean audit for 2025. Aprio did special tests on 21 areas and found zero non-compliance. This contrasts with six instances of non-compliance in 2024. As our Chief Compliance Officer Matthew Boyden wrote about these results, “they reflect a culture of accountability that has taken root across the organization.” The NRA is digging ourselves out of the mess we put ourselves in but we are doing it the right way and without cutting corners.

The Annual Compliance report is embedded below.

2026 Annual Compliance ReportDownload

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NRA Annual Meeting Report, Part 1

April 22, 2026 by 4 Comments

Over the coming days I will be doing a series of reports about the NRA Annual Meeting including the Board meeting and Meeting of Members. They will cover a number of topics. These topics will include the Elections Committee report, the Annual Compliance Report to Members, changes to the Executive Committee, and much more.

I am starting with the Elections Committee report which is embedded at the end of this post. Sadly, voting numbers were down again. Out of approximately 2.5 million ballots sent out, only a total of 59,781 were return for a voting turnout of a mere 2.43%. The total number of valid ballots was 56,850. This will mean that petition candidates will only need a total of 285 valid signatures to make the ballot.

One reason for the low turnout could have been that virtually all the candidates on the ballot were going to be elected. This was due to resignations of Board members which opened up a total of 10 slots in addition to the regular 25 3-year terms and the 76th Director. We may never know.

As I reported earlier in April when I gave out the draft election results, Isaac Demerest decided not to run for 76th Director which only left Lynn Gipson. Then Eb Wilkinson declined the seat he won. Thus, Regis Synan moved up to take a 3-year term, Jim Wallace moved up to take a 2-year term, and Isaac Demerest won a 1-year term as he had placed ahead of Lynn Gipson. As the Elections Committee report makes clear under Robert’s Rules of Order, Mr. Gipson was declared the winner by acclamation of the 76th Director seat.

All was well and good until Sunday afternoon.

We learned then that both longtime director Wayne Anthony Ross of Alaska and Lynn Gipson had passed away on Saturday, April 18th. My condolences to both the Gipson and Ross familes.

We took up the issue in Monday’s Board meeting regarding whether they would or could be replaced on the Board. It resolved around the meaning of Article VIII, Section 4 of the NRA Bylaws stating that the 76th Director “shall be chosen only from those persons who were nominated as candidates for election for Director in the mail ballot…” The debate was whether write-in candidates could be considered “nominated” within the meaning of this bylaw. It was ultimately decided that “nominated” only applied to those candidates who appeared on the ballot by a nomination from the Nominating Committee or by a nomination by petition. There were a number of arguments regarding this. One strong argument was that write-in’s had not been vetted to see if they were even eligible under the Bylaws unlike the other candidates.

Jeff Knox corrected me on the relevant section of the bylaws were in play. He said:

There was no question about write-ins being eligible to run for 76th. The question was on Article IV, Section 2, Bold Italic, filling vacancies occurring between regular elections: “…shall be filled by persons who ran and lost on the most recent mail ballot in rank order…” The question was whether write-ins “ran” on the “ballot.” They would have to be “otherwise qualified to serve,” but would receiving write-in votes be enough to consider them to have “run?”

By a vote of 27 yes to 33 no, it was decided as there remained no nominated candidates on the ballot those two positions will go unfilled. Thus, the 2026-27 Board of Directors will only number 74.

My vote was not to seat a write-in candidate and that vote had nothing to do with the candidates themselves. Indeed, I had urged voters to write-in Chuck Rowe’s name on their ballots as I thought he would make a great Director. Rather it went back to what I considered the letter and the spirit of the Bylaw itself.

One thing I might point out is if you are considering running for the Board of Directors now is the time to request a petition package from the NRA Office of the Secretary. As a reminder, potential petition candidates can now gather signatures electronically from eligible NRA voters.

The report of the Committee on Elections is below:

2026 NRA Election ReportDownload
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The Shot Heard ‘Round The World + 251 Years

April 19, 2026 by 2 Comments

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World aka the Battle of Lexington and Concord was 251 years ago today. It marked the armed struggle for American independence from Great Britain. I always like to acknowledge this date on the blog along with other historical dates.

The video below is an excellent overview of what led up to the battles and the battles themselves.

Sad to say but the current government of Massachusetts from Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) on down have done more for gun control in the Bay State than General Gage sending the regulars forth to confiscate the gun powder in Concord. They still proclaim “Patriots Day” but I doubt they live it.