Rocky Marshall

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My 2024 NRA Ballots

March 11, 2024 by 3 Comments

Here are my ballots for the 2024 NRA Board of Director election and for the bylaw change.

Now to explain my votes. It should go without saying that I support the Four for Reform. I signed and promoted their petitions to be on the ballot as well as have supported them here. I would love it if they ended up as the top four winning candidates.

I would have voted for Owen Buz Mills except that he told Jeff Knox that he wanted people to bullet vote for the Four for Reform. As to why I added Rick Ector as the fifth candidate, his “missionary work” in Detroit in which he has introduced thousands of women is worthy of recognition. Just as importantly, he bucked the Old Guard aka “The Cabal” when he endorsed Wade Callender to be the next Executive VP of the NRA. These two factors were why I added Rick to the list of candidates for whom I voted.

While I consider the bylaw change to add a Chief Compliance Officer independent of the EVP as closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped, it is a reform in the right direction. I worked for 25 years in the financial services industry and we always had a Chief Compliance Officer. There were times I thought they were a bit “nit-picky” but their goal was to protect both the company and the client. If I had questions on something such as a political contribution, I knew I could reach out to them for advice on the best way to handle it.

While the appointment of a Chief Compliance Officer must wait until the vote is tallied, it appears that a candidate has been hired in anticipation of the bylaw change. Robert Mensinger was hired by the NRA in September 2023 as a Managing Director. He holds a law degree, has had an extensive career as a compliance and business integrity officer, and spent almost 25 years working as a Special Agent/Criminal Investigator for the Small Business Administration, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Treasury Department. My only reservation about Mensinger is that he was selected for his present job by Wayne LaPierre upon the advice and counsel of Bill Brewer. Other than that, he seems ideal for the job. Only time will tell if I was worried about nothing which is my actual hope.

UPDATE: This is just a reminder that you should vote by NAME and not by NUMBER. There are 5 or so different ballots and the order of the names varies. It is randomized as a security measure.

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Vote Four For Reform

February 21, 2024 by 8 Comments

The official NRA magazines with the ballots for the 2024 Board of Directors election have started to arrive. The Complementary Spouse and I both received ours today.

I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to bullet vote, i.e, only vote for these candidates and no others, for the Four for Reform. While there are a couple of others deserving of your vote, it is essential that these four get elected.

All four are on the ballot as a result of your efforts in signing their petition. We need people like them on the Board as they won’t put up and shut up. Indeed, both Judge Phil Journey and Rocky Marshall were retaliated against for standing up for what is right. That retaliation has led to the NRA being charged with violating the State of New York ‘s whistleblower law. This is one of the charges that the jurors in the New York trial are in the process of deciding guilt or innocence.

So few of the eligible voters actually vote that every vote for these four is critical.

We don’t know the outcome of the trial in New York and we don’t know what remedies Judge Cohen will impose if the NRA is found guilty. He could dissolve the current board and reduce it in size. He could appoint a special overseer. He could appoint a temporary board of people who are not tainted such as these four. He could do all of these things and that is why support for clean, untainted candidates is so important.

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I Endorse Four For Reform

February 3, 2024 by 1 Comment

The NRA’s trial in New York has provided more than enough evidence that many members of the Board of Directors ignored their fiduciary duties. Many thought loyalty to Wayne was the same as loyalty to the organization. It was not.

The ballots for the 2024 Board election go out to eligible voters in the March issue of the NRA official magazines. Not only has the Nominations Committee stacked the ballot with retreads, they are the same people that allowed the rot and corruption to grow. They include people like former NRA President Carolyn Meadows who currently is considered too ill to testify either in person or virtually in the NY trial. It also includes 2nd VP David Coy who served on the Audit Committee for many years who voted to approve questionable expenditures after the fact.

There are four people on the ballot who were not put there by the Nominations Committee. Dennis Fusaro, Judge Phil Journey, Jeff Knox, and Rocky Marshall are on the ballot by petition. In other words, enough of you who are voting members said you wanted them on the ballot. They are untainted by the corruption of the past and are running on a platform of reform. I wholeheartedly endorse all four and would urge you to give them your votes.

Four-for-Reform

The only two current Board members I might consider voting for are Buz Mills and Rick Ector. As evidenced by his letter to the Board exposing the backdoor shenanigans to make Charles Cotton the next EVP, Buz is not a go-along to get-along sort of guy. Rick Ector had done phenomenal grassroots work in the Detroit area introducing thousands of women to self-defense through firearms training. He also bucked the trend with his endorsement of Wade Callender for the EVP.

If it were me, I would not consider anyone else on the list of candidates. The four petition candidates plus the two that have bucked the system are the only candidates that I think will work day in and day out to restore and reform the NRA. We need an effective and untainted NRA. Now is the time to do it.

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You Did It!

November 8, 2023 by

Through your efforts and that of other like-minded people all four petition candidates made the 2024 NRA Board election ballot. I don’t remember this many petition candidates on the ballot since I’ve been a voting member.

Combined-List-of-Candidates-1-3

Jeff Knox, Judge Phil Journey, Rockey Marshall, and Dennis Fusaro will definitely be on my list of endorsed candidates. I might add Rick Ector given the great work he does in Detroit in bringing women into the gun culture.

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An Updated Analysis Of The NRA’s Finances

November 7, 2023 by 4 Comments

I have published financial analyses of the NRA by former board member Rocky Marshall in the past. Based upon an audit filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State’s Charities Division by the NRA, he has updated his analysis. I am publishing this with the permission of Rocky.

From Rocky:

RED FLAGS AND REALLY RED FLAGS

  • Revenue continues downward spiral as expenses (mostly legal) will likely increase in 2023-2024.
  • Net Income losses will likely continue 2023-2024.
  • Cash on hand is $12M and monthly expenses are $19M.
  • Recommended minimum cash on hand should be $57M.
  • Additional cash required to cover -$26m projected operating loss for 2023.
  • Additional cash required for contract liabilities of $40M to paid during 2023
  • Additional cash required to cover principal loan payments due in total of $28M during 2024.
  • Line of Credit and other Notes jumped 78%.
  • Increasing debt through loans to cover general operating expenses.
  • Capitalizes computers in excess of $500 and other fixed assets greater than $1,500.
  • Capitalization of purchases is artificially low and reduces expenses in order to boost net income.
  • Assets due from the NRA foundation are $31M and inflate the NRA balance sheet.
  • Most of the NRA foundations assets due have donor restrictions and cannot be used for general expenses.
National Rifle Association Financial Analysis Year Ending 2022    Estimate
(in millions $M)20212022$Change%Change2023
Revenue233.5213.5-20-9%203
Expenses228.2228.60.40%228.6
Net Income5.3-15.1-20.4-385%-25.6
Members’ Dues97.483.2-14.2-15%75
Cash30.412-18.4-61%10
Liquidity Assets65.943.1-22.8-35%34
Note Payable & LOC24.643.719.178% 
Contract Liabilities44.840.2-4.6-10% 
Total Investments717100% 
Total Investments pledges as collateral53.644.2-9.4-18% 
Percentage of Investments collateralized75%62%-13%-18% 

In a marginally related aside, NRA In Danger is reporting that Wayne LaPierre has put his house in Great Falls, VA on the market. The asking price is $2.4 million. NRA In Danger is taking this as confirmation that the powers that be have made the decision to move to Texas. As with the bankruptcy case, the Board has been kept in the dark until it was a done deal. Read his or her full post.

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Let’s Get Rocky Marshall On The NRA Ballot (Updated)

October 25, 2023 by 4 Comments

UPDATE: Time is running out for petition candidates for the NRA Board of Directors to obtain the necessary signatures. Rocky must submit all signatures by November 7th. This means he needs everything in hand ASAP. If you are eligible to vote in the 2024 election for NRA Board of Directors and you have not signed the petition, DO IT NOW!

As a reminder, the Nominating Committee has nominated 28 people for the 25 board seats up for election. A full 25 of these people are already on the Board. It is the same old, same old which has allowed the NRA to flounder, to be brought into court in New York, and which has allowed grifters like Wayne, Marion, and company to get away with it for years.

Rocky Marshall is stepping up to run for the NRA Board of Directors. I have run guest posts from Rocky as well as have highlighted the work he had done in bringing reform to the NRA. His work analyzing the finances of the NRA has been insightful. Rocky sought to intervene in the NRA dissolution lawsuit so that someone would actually be representing the members and not Wayne’s interests. Unfortunately, it was denied.

I have sent in the names of both Rocky and Judge Phil Journey to the Nominations Committee. They, like I, fully expect that the nominations will be blown off in favor of someone who won’t rock the boat. Thus, Rocky is seeking to get on the ballot by petition. This year, thanks to the abysmal voter turnout in 2023, one only need approximately 375 valid signatures to get on the ballot.

So what is a valid signature? It would be that of a Life Member of any level or that of a five-year continuous member. If there had been any break in your annual membership during that five years, the clock starts again.

From Rocky’s email to me:

In 2021, I was selected to be on the National Rifle Association Board of Directors. During my tenure, I served a one-year term and worked diligently to change the management and the direction of the NRA due to the corruption that had occurred.  I am once again attempting to be reelected to the Board of Directors in hopes of working to save the NRA from the current demise.  If you would like to help me, and you are an NRA Life Member, please print out the attached petition and fill in your information and sign where indicated. If you are able to obtain additional NRA Life members on the form, please feel free to do so.   

ALL SIGNATURES MUST BE ORIGINAL.

Please mail the petition to the following address:

Rocky Marshall

975 Turkey Knob

Boerne, TX 78006

As noted above this, a 5-year member also qualifies. That said, there is never a question regarding Life Members.

I have embedded both the petition and a bio for Rocky below. Send back the signed petition with your membership number to Rocky at the address he provided. If you have friends who are NRA Life Members, have them sign it as well.

Both the Complementary Spouse and I have signed the petition and will be mailing back to Rocky ASAP.

Rocky-Marshall-Biographical-Summary-

NRA-R.Marshall-Petition-Form

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NRA Finances And An Interesting Proxy

February 9, 2023 by

The blog NRA In Danger has posted another look at the NRA’s finances by former director Rocky Marshall. As I noted in introducing his guest post on this blog, he has significant expertise in examining a company’s or organization’s finances. Rocky brings up the concept of industry related metrics as a way to validate financial forecasts. As it is, he holds that the NRA’s forecasts for revenue are unrealistic and have no substantiating business plan to validate them.

From Rocky at NRA In Danger:

A Realistic Projection: The obvious relationship most closely associated with NRA revenues are U.S. Gun sales¹. In reviewing US gun sales data, NRA Revenues will increase or decrease as gun sales vary from year to year. From 2004 through 2019, the NRA received on average $25 for every gun sold in the United States.  However, after the breaking news of corruption in 2019, the NRA revenue dropped 48% to $13/gun sold.

The ratio of NRA Revenue/US Gun Sales is a useful metric because revenue for the NRA can be easily calculated for 2023 with a high degree of certainty.  Based on the current declining trend of US gun sales, it is projected that total US gun sales will be similar to historical (pre-covid) norms of roughly 13 million guns sold². With this in mind, a quantifiable estimate of projected revenues for the NRA in 2023 is $169 million (13 million guns sold at $13/gun). 

The NRA is projecting $230 million in revenue, which would equate to $18 for every gun sold in the US.  This is the same group that also planned $241.2M for last year and missed this estimate by $36M. The NRA estimates are not based on any practical industry metrics or upon a viable business plan to increase revenue; but, instead are misleading the BOD once again into a false premise.  

Using firearm sales as a proxy in the metric is interesting and makes sense. Both actual gun sales and actual NRA revenue are known from government reports. Actual gun sales are found from the Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report submitted to BATFE and the NRA”s revenue is reported on the IRS Form 990. Forecasts on future firearm sales do come from the NSSF and the industry in various forms. The FBI’s NICS data could be used but, as we know, it isn’t a direct correlation with firearm sales. The NSSF-adjusted numbers would be more accurate.

When comparing the ratio of NRA Revenue/US Gun Sale for the pre-2019 and post-2019 time periods, there is another factor in play that was not mentioned. Pre-2019, it was often the case that if you purchased a new firearm from one of the major manufacturers, it would come with a coupon entitling the buyer to a free one-year membership in the NRA. I know Taurus offered this and I seem to remember getting the same offer from Marlin and Ruger. I also remember the Ruger campaign where they would donate $1 for each firearm sold if they reached the 1 million mark. That was in the 2012-2013 timeframe. The key point here is that the industry seems to have backed away from the NRA once the dirty laundry started coming out.

The second part of Rocky’s post on NRA In Danger deals with the cost of corruption in terms of lost revenue. Read the whole thing as Rocky provides hard numbers of the revenue drop and the amount is shocking. Suffice it to say, the longer that Wayne remains as CEO/Executive VP of the NRA, the more potential lost revenue.

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Guest Post By Rocky Marshall

January 25, 2023 by 1 Comment

Roscoe “Rocky” Marshall is a former member of the NRA Board of Directors. More importantly, he is an experienced business executive. He is now founder and CEO of Frontier Truck Gear. Prior to that, he served as president of two subsidiaries of oil field services giant Baker Hughes which is a Fortune 150 company. In other words, he can drill down into an income statement or balance sheet to get to the real health of an organization. What he has to say below is not encouraging as to the health of the NRA.

Rocky had sought to be an intervenor in the lawsuit brought by the Attorney General of New York against the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, John Frazier, Woody Phillips, and Josh Powell. He sought to do so to be an advocate for the members of the NRA as it seems no one is actively representing their interests before the court as opposed to the interests of LaPierre and company. His motion was ultimately denied. I met Rocky in person at the 2022 NRA Annual Meeting and have corresponded with him extensively. What he is saying below is not some spur of the moment comment. He has been reading the tea leaves and saying this exact thing for some time now.

The Late Great National Rifle Association R.I.P. by Former NRA Director Rocky Marshall
To NRA Members: IT IS OVER!


The NRA’s financials are spiraling rapidly towards insolvency, and the future appears bleak for
the survivability of the NRA which may be forced into bankruptcy (for real this time) in the
coming months. The next and final chapter for the NRA will be in a bankruptcy court where a
Judge will likely appoint a “Receiver” to take control of the assets of the NRA.


The NRA has been thriving for over 150 years; but will likely not survive to the end of this year.
This once great organization is now facing dissolution as the direct result of malfeasance by
Wayne LaPierre and the impotent Board of Directors (BOD). Undoubtedly, key management
personnel including Wayne Lapierre, Wilson Phillips, and others will likely face criminal charges
for embezzlement, fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other charges.


The NRA in the coming months will not be able to pay outstanding bills or maintain staff to
fulfill the mission due to the rapid decline of donations by members. In 2016, NRA revenues
reached a peak of $367 million and currently is projected to receive $200 million for the current
fiscal year 2022. The collapse in donations is directly related to the revelations that the NRA
Management misused millions of dollars of donations for personal benefit. The misuse of NRA
monies by NRA Management and the BOD has been reported as far back as 1998 when a
complaint was filed by NRA Directors with the FEC.1


A question that is often repeated is: “Why did the NRA BOD allow Wayne Lapierre and others to
misuse the donations and defraud the members?” The most obvious answer is because a few
key Directors were being paid. From 2002 through 2020, over $10 million dollars have been
paid directly or indirectly to NRA Directors. A secondary issue is that NRA Directors were not
informed and also routinely presented false information by NRA Officers and Management in
order to hide the truth. During my tenure as an NRA Director, I was routinely denied access to
information and also received blatantly untrue information from NRA officers. The NRA BOD
has not provided proper fiduciary oversight of the NRA for decades. The NRA BOD could have
easily stopped the fraud and mismanagement by Wayne LaPierre (and others) but instead
chose to ignore the obvious illegal activities. The BOD audit committee (chaired by the current
President Charles Cotton) approved transactions retro actively without BOD approval.


The current lawsuit from the New York Attorney General will likely not go to trial; but instead,
will be superseded by a forced bankruptcy. The negative press reports from these legal filings
will continue to drive donors away and revenues will decline. As a former Director for the NRA,
I have researched the complaints by the New York Attorney General and found all charges to be
true. I could not identify a single charge that was untrue or exaggerated. As has been
reported, Wayne Lapierre has admitted to several of the charges in the previous bankruptcy
trial in Dallas.


Historians and columnists will report in future years that the NRA was destroyed from within by
the greed of NRA Management Wayne LaPierre, Woody Phillips, (and others) and also by the
lack of oversight by the NRA Board of Directors. Collectively this group has destroyed the most
valuable gun rights organization on the planet.

  1. Weldon H. Clark Jr. FEC Complaint 1998 (https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/4865/00001F57.pdf)
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Allen West Agrees To Challenge Wayne

May 10, 2022 by 4 Comments

Lt. Col. Allen West (USA-Retired) has agreed to challenge Wayne LaPierre for election as the Executive VP and CEO of the NRA.

Now do I think he will be successful?

No.

The reason is that too many members of the Board of Directors mistakenly believe their loyalty should be to Wayne and not to the NRA. They have long ago forgotten their fiduciary duty – if they ever learned it to begin with. I have read the attacks by David Keene and Marion Hammer on the idea of West being the next EVP and it is obvious that they think their loyalty should be to Wayne. More on that in a separate post.

As Rocky Marshall notes in the press release embedded below, the leadership of the NRA will be changed. The only question is whether it will be in Houston by the board or will it be in New York by the judge. When I say leadership I mean more than Wayne. Both Charles Cotton and David Coy, due to their chairing the Audit and Finance Committees respectively, are in too deep for the courts to allow them to remain in office. As to Willes Lee then moving up to be President of the NRA, I feel the same about that as I would about Kamala Harris moving up to be the President of the US.

Below is the press release sent out today announcing that West had agreed to challenge Wayne.

Allen-West-NRA-accept-05.09.22-press-release

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Draft Allen West For NRA EVP

May 5, 2022 by 3 Comments

I received a press release today seeking to draft former Congressman Allen West (R-FL) to stand against Wayne LaPierre in the election for Executive VP and CEO. Lt. Col. West is a former member of the NRA Board of Directors. He resigned in 2019 after refusing to hew the party line that all was well within the NRA. West now resides in Texas, has served as Chairman of the Texas GOP, and just placed second to Greg Abbott in the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary.

The effort to draft West is led by current NRA board member Judge Phil Journey, former board members Rocky Marshall and Bill Daley, and current board candidate Frank Tait (among others).

I have embedded their press release below:

Draft-West-NRA-press-release