by The 2025 NRA Meeting of Members lasted a full four hours. The meeting began with the usual reports, awards, and recognition of the oldest and youngest. It ended with four resolutions being considered of which one passed, one was referred, and two defeated.
The oldest member present was Norris Jernigan, a WWII veteran, who was 100 years. If I live to 100, I want to be as spry and clear-minded as Mr. Jernigan! In a departure from past Meeting of Members that I have attended, the youngest member present was 14 year old Mason Hague (sp?). Normally, it is a toddler or even younger.
The outstanding club was the Franklin Revolver and Rifle Association of Franklin, NJ. The youth club award went to Capital City Jr. Rifle Club of Belgrade, ME. Finally, the state association award went to the Iowa Firearms Coalition.
Following this was a video message from President Donald Trump. I’m not going to say the funeral for Pope Francis provided a good excuse for Trump’s absence but it did serve as one. I don’t know if it is available online but he did call Bob Barr a great guy and former President Biden was characterized as “grossly incompetent”.
Following this was the Elections Report from the Election Committee. I will have more on this in a future post. However, for the time being here are some quick numbers.
- 2,506,951 ballots mailed
- 74,203 ballots cast
- 72,461 valid ballots received
- 1,742 invalid ballots received
- Winning totals for 3-year terms ranged from 44,546 (Mitzi McCorvey) to 34,167 (Scott Emslie).
- Proposed amendment won with 52,608 voting for it.
CEO and EVP Doug Hamlin reported that new money and new hires were being dedicated to hunting, competition, and clubs and associations. These are the three areas that are being emphasized in the effort to rebuild membership.
Moving on to New Business, four resolutions were considered. I will do more in-depth reprting on these four resolutions in future posts.
Ron Andring, Sr. of San Antonio, TX and the Members Take Back the NRA Facebook page offered two resolutions. His first resolution offered a very strong conflict of interest bylaw amendment. As one might imagine, there was considerable debate on this. A motion was made by Director Joel Friedman to refer this to committee which engendered considerable debate itself. Eventually, over 100 voting members requested by a show of credentials that they wanted to vote using a paper ballot. This was done and the motion was referred to the Bylaws & Resolutions Committee for more work with the request that Mr. Andring be part of the committee working on it. I was told by a long time observer that this was the first time the paper ballot had been used in over 25 years.
Mr. Andring’s second resolution dealt with the interference in the voting process by Wayne LaPierre and demanded that future elections be free of collusion between any board members and the EVP. This was defeated.
I am happy to say that my own resolution on transparency which called for a members-only webpage that had the bylaws, tax filings, board minutes, and a list of committees with their members on it passed. The resolution also asked that the Board of Directors consider the feasibility of livestreaming board meetings. There were some objections raised to it saying it might be costly to set up a webpage. I consider this a spurious objection as the NRA already has multiple webpages and the items included already have to be created. It is not costly to upload documents in a PDF or to convert a MS Word document such as the minutes to HTML. I guess the third time is the charm as this was my third attempt to get a resolution passed.
The final resolution was a condemnation of former VP and head of the Audit Committee David Coy. While I don’t have a copy of that resolution, it did call for him to resign from the Board of Directors. It was defeated. I will say my only surprise is that President Bob Barr did not rule it out of order. I say that not because I thought it out of order but that seemed to be the way challenging resolutions such as this were dealt with in the past.
With that, the meeting was adjourned and all newly elected directors officially started their terms of service on the Board of Directors. We will be sworn in at the Board meeting on Monday.
I was quite relieved to see your resolution pass given the amount of consternation people had over the cost. I explained to quite a few objectors sitting near us that these records are already being generated (no additional cost), and the cost to make them available to the membership via a web page or individual files was so small to be inconsequential. However, their value in transparency will go far in restoring the reputation of the NRA.
With the far lower observed attendance in the meeting and exhibit hall it really hit home how much destruction has been wrought to our organization. I am very pleased that the people many of us voted for to right the ship are doing exactly that. I noted that you, Mr Fusaro, Mr Knox, Mr Marshall, and Mr Journey spoke very clearly and concisely when recognized, and offered discourse of true constructive value. I am very satisfied with a new majority of BoD members of like mind that we can now receive the much desired change that has been absent for so long. It’s the first time in years I feel positive that the NRA is heading in the right direction. Best of luck to you all.
Thank you. We are trying. The rudder moves long before the ship turns.
And the bigger the ship and the more inertia the slower the turn is. (For example, Titanic might have been better served for Captain Smith to point her bow right at the berg and put engines into full reverse.)
Thanks for the inside baseball both here and at other blogs, Judge. This is the kind of thing we rank-and-file members need regular doses of for reassurance that even though it won’t show up on the NRA site or at Ammoland etc. points are being put on the scoreboard and the work is being done.
You are absolutely correct on the fact that all of the records requested to be posted for members to see would already have been generated. Making them available via a webpage is, as you say, an inconsequential cost. It was a spurious objection during the meeting and I consider it still to be a spurious objection. As I said in my coverage of the trial, I was disappointed that Judge Cohen didn’t mandate that as he did mandate a board portal for directors.
I will continue to work within the Board to get that information posted as soon as possible. Transparency is a win for the members and a win for the organization as a whole. There are some things that can’t be posted or discussed in a public forum but they should be rare.
Thanks for the recap of the member’s meeting. Looking forward to hearing what was accomplished by the new BOD today.
It’s a start. And the Andring anti-interference and Coy condemnation resolutions are campaign fodder for our “Third Wave” next year once they start campaigning.
May not seem like much to our resident Veruca Salts, but it IS a first step hopefully to be soon followed by more. And as noted, a campaign issue for Reform Wave 3 to run on.
We have taken many steps, NRA is mostly unified. We have some players working both sides. I am doing my best to keep track. NRA 2.0 is Captain of the ship. The only thing that didn’t work out was the secretary race. Twice 2.0 has put candidates up. The reality and justification was Frazier is a victim like the rest of us. Lied to and relying on the true bad actors. Keep in mind the jury verdict. I watch the entire bankruptcy trial and 4 weeks of the NYAG trial there was no evidence of Frazier enriching himself unlike so many others. Yes he screwed up. Signing false tax forms. Also one of the 1st things EVP Hamlin did was removed Frazier from the position of general counsel. The job of secretary is a glorified administrative assistant. I 1st met him during my 1st term on the board in 96 or 97 he was an intern. I was not as generous as some of my fellow 2.0 board members. I voted against him both times he has had an opponent. I’m sure we will take another run at him. Truth time the board has much larger fires to extinguish.