by Both the NRA and the New York Attorney General’s Office submitted their proposed terms for the final judgment in People of New York v. National Rifle Association of America et al on October 4th. Having read both proposals, neither propose reforms intended to keep the rank and file NRA member informed.
Item 9 in the NYAG’s proposed final judgment says the NRA will set up a secure online portal that will “enable digital dissemination of Board, committee, and corporate documents to Board members, and shall enable convenient encrypted communications with Board members.”
Likewise, the NRA’s proposal for a final judgment states, “The Secretary’s Office shall use best efforts to implement, by January 2025, a secure portal that will enable digital dissemination of Board, committee, and corporate documents to Board members, and shall enable convenient encrypted communication with Board members.”
Nowhere in either document is any mention of providing information on a timely basis to the members of the NRA. Whether this is an oversight or intentional, I don’t know.
At the very least, here is what I would propose and what should be included in the final judgment. If you have other items that you would suggest be publicly available, make note of it in the comments.
- Current bylaws must be published on the NRA website and available to all members. Do you know hard it is to get an up-to-date copy of the bylaws otherwise?
- A minimum 5 years worth of Form 990 and CHAR500 posted on the NRA’s public website. Many other non-profits make these available on their websites.
- Board meeting agenda and minutes posted on the public website including for past meetings of the board. If small towns can do it, so can the NRA.
If those in charge are so worried about the gun prohibitionists or reporters from The Trace having access to this information, make it so it can be accessed only by NRA members. This is what they do with regard to candidate ratings by the NRA-PVF.
The time for keeping the membership in the dark is over. If the Board and the executives are serious about a NRA 2.0, this is one change they could easily make.
Grrr…
Do you know hard it is to get an up-to-date copy of the bylaws otherwise?
Fun Fact: If you affiliate with NRA as a club, you must sign a document that reads: “…the members of this organization have read, understood individually and collectively and agree to subscribe to the purposes and objectives of the National Rifle Association as set forth in the Association bylaws.”
Fun Fact: You can’t follow any links or have access to any copy of the bylaws you must agree to follow. You used to be able to request a copy from Clubs & Associations since, reasonably, if their office as asking you to commit to support a document, you could read that document courtesy of them. But now you can’t.
I might have (looks around innocently) been a bit of a pain in the ass finding a copy of an old club affiliation document the NRA still had online that said you could email an address in the clubs office and get a copy sent to you quickly. Yes, I knew they would probably refuse to honor the request despite the document NRA posts on their own servers. The staff wrote back saying they forwarded the request on to a different office (Secretary), but that no document they know of claims they are a source of copies, even for clubs seeking to affiliate. I said that wasn’t true and gave the publication name.
They argued back and finally I sent them the exact URL where they hosted the claim. They told me that it’s Google’s fault that it’s on their servers. I just…you gotta be freakin’ kidding me. That’s like saying AT&T is to blame for them not checking tons of voicemail boxes because they laid off too many people who knew what they were doing around the office.
I called to have our club removed from a match listing they had published on their website and calling the numbers they publish on the main sites. I called for months and followed the various phone menus. Never an answer, no voice mails returned or emails received in response. I found out like 2 years later that they fired so many staff to pay Brewer (or, rather, due to the downturn in the org’s financial health that was blamed on the pandemic) that they didn’t even know about many mailboxes that someone used to check and manage. We weren’t the only ones calling! Turns out they also didn’t know about the webpages posted because no one from their division had time to actually maintain or check that stuff anymore.
So, anyway, still no updated bylaws in my hand despite the request through the clubs division for a club purpose to review. Even when you follow the directions they publish on their own website, members still can’t get copies. Even when I submitted a request to the right office, if it doesn’t go to John directly, they just ignore it. Had to get a Board member to instruct staff to please not ignore my request last time.