by An astute reader who was at the NRA Meeting in Houston sent me a set of pictures. They were all taken as the exhibition was closing on Sunday afternoon. The pictures are of leftover 2022 convention programs. This has me pondering about the real numbers for attendance at the exhibition.
As noted in an earlier post, the official total of attendees was 61,254. This was the lowest number of attendees since 2006.
Now look at this first photo. The label on the box says the box holds 90 programs and that it was box 147 of 417. Assuming that this was the only order of the programs, the NRA has 37,530 printed to give out.
Now look at the next set of pictures taken at the various entrances to the exhibition hall.
A very rough estimate has at least 32 unopened boxes of 90 each. That is 2,880 program. Let’s assume that number of loose programs not handed out is another 900. That adds up to about 10% of the ordered programs were not handed out and are now wasted. Rounding up, this leads me to assume that maybe 34,000 programs were handed out.
On the one hand you have the people who didn’t take a program. On the other hand you have those who picked up a program on more than one day. I was in the middle in that I picked up a program on the first day and used it for the whole three days.
My rough observation going in and out of the hall numerous times daily is that more than half the people took a program. That leads me again to be suspicious of the official number of attendees as the numbers are just not adding up. I could be wrong and I will cheerfully admit it.
It is not that I don’t trust the NRA but there are people who have a vested interest in fudging the numbers. Unfortunately, many of those people are in positions of authority.
The last couple of times I attended the NRAAM (the last being in Dallas a few years ago) the ‘official’ numbers were quite high, and likely should have been higher: In the last two of my attendances while my friends and I were standing in line to register, people leaving offered us their passes. So, they were counted, we were not.
This time, well…I wasn’t there, but the history of the NRA since Dallas is that I don’t trust Wayne, his organization, or anything they say.