All Four Reform Candidates Win Seats on NRA Board

Opinion

NRA election results are in. Not only were all four of our “Four for Reform” candidates for the NRA Board of Directors elected, each winning a 3-year seat, but we almost swept the top spots.

Ronnie Barrett, the founder of Barrett Firearms, came in with the highest vote count, as everyone expected, but he was followed closely by Judge Phil Journey and Rocky Marshall, both reform candidates who got on the ballot via petition of the members. The next seat went to Wayne Anthony Ross of Alaska, a former Vice President who’s been on the Board since 1980. I rounded out the top five. Our fourth reform candidate, Dennis Fusaro, came in at a respectable number 16.

All in all it was a stellar performance for complete outsiders with no internal NRA organization support.

As I said during the early days of the campaign, getting one “insurgent” candidate elected without the support of the establishment is extremely difficult, but getting two or three elected, much less four, is damn near impossible. The fact that all four of us were elected, with three of us in the top five, should send a loud and clear message to the Board that the members are ready for some serious changes.

An echo to that message was sent via the list of candidates who didn’t make the cut, including long-time Director and LaPierre defender Joel Friedman, as well as two past-presidents, John Sigler and David Keene. Keene distinguished himself last month by publishing an editorial in the Washington Times newspaper praising Wayne LaPierre, just days after LaPierre had been found liable for failing in his fiduciary duty and misappropriation of charitable funds, being ordered to repay some $5 million in “excess compensation” that he’d improperly taken from the NRA.

I hope the current Board members hear the message the membership sent with this vote. We will be only four Directors among 76, which means we’ll have no real power, and very little influence.

Nonetheless, I’m hoping our win will put some starch in the shorts of some of those Directors – you know who you are – and help them recognize that it’s time to be part of the solution.

We hope they’ll work with us and together we might be able to get some positive steps taken. Our election shows that the strategy the Board majority has maintained for the past 5 or 6 years has run its course. If they stick to that strategy, continuing to follow the current “leadership,” we’ll be helpless to stop them, but we will ensure that the members – and the judge – know what happened.

The judge being informed is a critical factor because the New York trial isn’t over yet. The first phase of the trial was to determine whether wrongs were done and accusations were valid – basically whether Wayne LaPierre, former Treasurer Woody Phillips, Secretary John Frazer, and the NRA itself (meaning the Board of Directors) did indeed fail in their fiduciary duties, violate their obligations to the Association and its members, and, in the case of Lapierre and Phillips, misappropriate funds. The outcome of that trial was “guilty as charged” though since it was a civil, not criminal case, they called it “found liable,” rather than “found guilty.”

The second phase of that trial begins on July 15. In that phase the judge will hear arguments and decide what remedies are needed to protect the NRA and ensure it won’t fall right back into the same traps that allowed the corruption and mismanagement to flourish.

The NRA Board and staff have taken some steps to guard against future problems, but most of those “corrections” are superficial and toothless. Most importantly, they’ve left the same people in control who were in control during the corruption. LaPierre is gone, but his hand-picked replacement fills his vacated office, while the same officers and executives retain key positions throughout the organization.

The NRA Board has some tough choices to make, and if we abdicate our obligation to make those tough choices and do what’s right for the members and the Association, the judge in New York will make those choices for us.

So far that judge has been very fair and reasonable, so I think he will probably make positive changes that will be good for the Association. Still, it would be much better if those changes came from the people elected by their fellow NRA members, than from a court in New York. One way or another, major changes are coming to the NRA. The only questions are how major the changes will be and who will be in control of making them.

It is my fervent hope that the majority of the Board will, in the words of the late Senator Everett Dirksen, “feel the heat and see the light.” They know very well that we’re not “turncoats,” “NRA-bashers,” or “the Enemy Within,” as the NRA brass has characterized us. We’re just concerned NRA members committed to transparency and integrity, who want to see the NRA as strong and effective as it once was.

The NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits will be held in Dallas from May 16 through 19 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, with a Board meeting to follow on Monday, May 20. If you plan to attend, be sure to plan to be in the Members’ Meeting on Saturday May 18. That’s your one annual opportunity to have your voice heard by NRA leaders and fellow members.

There’s been a lot of rancor over the recent scandals and the Board’s failure to take any substantive steps in response, particularly their unwillingness to fire Wayne LaPierre. That rancor was earned and is fully justified, but for we four new Directors, the mission is more important than personal grudges or past frustrations.

Our clock starts on May 20, when we are sworn in and become active members of the NRA Board. We are anxious to work with anyone who will work with us for the betterment of the NRA. We’ll listen to their positions and supporting arguments carefully, and we’ll support or oppose those positions based solely on the merits we find in them, not who’s offering the proposal or making the argument. We ask that our soon-to-be fellow Directors give us the same courtesy and consideration.

We all want the same things: A strong, effective NRA, fiscally stable, solidly grounded in the principles of liberty, actively working to protect our rights and promote our sports and hobbies. There shouldn’t be their team and our team, only the team.

Let’s make the NRA Great Again!

About Jeff Knox:

Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.

The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona, and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org.