by This afternoon I received notice that NRA Director and former President Bob Barr resigned his seat on the Board of Directors. This makes the fifth resignation from the Board within a month. The resignation of Jim Fotis to deal with a family emergency was regrettable but understandable. The resignation of David Coy to accept the position of treasurer of the NRA Foundation and avoid a conflict of interest also makes sense. However, the resignations of former NRA presidents Sandy Froman, Charles Cotton, and now Bob Barr leaves me to wonder what the underlying unstated issue was that led them to resign.
From the announcement:
Board member and past President Bob Barr has resigned from the Board, effective today. He will remain a member of the Executive Council.
Ron Schmeits was the next runner-up, but has declined to serve. The next runner-up, Mr. David Mitten of Chillicothe, Ohio, has accepted the position and will fill the vacancy until the adjournment of the 2026 Members’ Meeting. Past President Barr’s resignation leaves an additional two-year vacancy that will be filled by the members via the 2026 mail ballot.
Please join me in thanking Congressman Barr for his long service, and in welcoming Mr. Mitten.
David Mitten was part of the ElectANewNRA aka NRA 2.0 team in the 2025 election. However, he is not on the ballot for the 2026 Board election.
Mr. Barr is currently the chair of the Legislative Policy International Affairs Subcommittee. There is no word if he has resigned that position but he certainly could remain in that seat regardless of whether he was on the Board. Interestingly in my opinion, Mr. Barr, like Ms. Froman, remains a member of the Executive Council unlike Mr. Cotton who resigned from it. A longtime observer of NRA internal politics suggested to me that Mr. Cotton resigned from the Executive Council so as not to violate his fiduciary duty of loyalty to the NRA.
Going into the 2026 Board election, there will be a total of 30 seats to be filled. There will be the 25 regular 3-year seats that will be filled. In addition, with the resignation of Mr. Barr, there will be three 2-year terms that need to be filled (Fotis, Froman, and Barr) and a 1-year term (Coy). Finally, the nine runners-up will compete to fill the 76th Director 1-year term.
All I can say is that our winter Board meeting in January will be interesting.
Not just their resignations, but also the decision of another former president to fill a vacancy. Very weird.
To *not* fill a vacancy. 🙃
We know they’re planning SOMETHING. Question is, is it just to re-establish the grift in a new home, or are they goin to try to use the Foundation as home base to try to recruit the Fudds and “reasonable regulation” types for a rematch of the NRA Civil War?
I can just see the lot of them as the types to say “we’re not talking about banning Bambi-blasters (yeah, right, *Canada has entered the chat*) but nobody NEEDS a weapon of war…”
I’m clearly not a fan of these folks, but I don’t recall seeing anything that these guys would go Fudd.
Honestly, as someone who has known several of them for many years, I hate to say that my opinion is that they are just Boomers hanging on past their prime and don’t even know they are out of touch or off base. At least some of them, based on my past knowledge with them, represent the Principal Skinner meme that it’s all the “kids” who are wrong. The court was wrong, other people just “don’t understand,” the market signals are wrong, etc. It’s never them or their leadership that was wrong.
This isn’t judging them for their age – there are solid thinking Boomers around – it’s just the ones I know involved in the Foundation leadership & the friends who have joined them there had that mindset.