What Do Members Really Think About Their NRA Organization?

Opinion

What do NRA members, former NRA members, and the general shooting public think about the NRA today?

That’s a question that I and many others have long believed we could reasonably answer, but are my beliefs accurate and justified? Do these folks really think and believe as I think they do, or am I just relying on an echo chamber effect?

Looking at the presidential race and the wide divisions between Republicans and Democrats, “progressives” and “conservatives,” I recognize that we all tend to live in an information bubble of our own making. As a lifelong “conservative,” I tend to gravitate toward Ben Shapiro, Bill Whittle, my community on X, and my favorite blogs and websites for political news and analysis, while my “liberal” friends tend to gravitate to MSNBC, “The View,” their community on X, and their favorite blogs and websites for theirs.

We all like to have our biases confirmed, our ideas echoed, and our beliefs supported. This is true for firearms information and firearms-related politics as well.

So how do I know whether I’ve trapped myself in a self-affirming echo chamber of my own regarding people’s thoughts and beliefs regarding the NRA?

How could I verify or disprove this idea? How could I determine what “regular” people (those not submerged in the intrigue) think about what’s been going on inside the NRA over recent years and decades?

I decided the simple solution was to ask them.

I’m a member of a wide variety of firearm-related discussion forums on the internet, though I don’t have time to frequent any of them with regularity. I looked at those forums and decided to focus on a couple that I thought would best represent the core membership of the NRA: a popular forum for collectors of Smith & Wesson firearms, and a forum dedicated to hunting and the outdoors. I went to those sites and posted a simple survey, asking the forum members to answer a few questions and provide some honest feedback.

Here’s what I posted; feel free to give me feedback on these same questions here in the comments below:

Your Thoughts on NRA Today?

First, thanks to all who supported my campaign for the NRA Board of Directors. Our “Four for Reform” slate came in 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 16th out of 26.

We’ve made tremendous headway on the NRA’s path to redemption, but there’s still much work to do.

It’s easy for us to get trapped in our own echo chamber, thought silos, so I’m reaching out to different groups to get a better grasp on what folks are thinking about the current state of the NRA.

I’d like to know your thoughts on where the NRA is now, and what you see as the most pressing issues that we (the NRA Board) need to address.

I particularly want to know:

1. Are you a current or past NRA member?
2. Have you rejoined or are you financially contributing to the NRA now, or planning to do so in the near future?
3. If so, what convinced you to do so?
4. If not, what is holding you back? (Please be as specific and brutally honest as you can. We need to understand your issues.)
5. What internal issues (in priority order) do you think the NRA Board most urgently needs to address?

Any other thoughts or feedback you’d like to share with me and other NRA Directors?

Thanks.

The responses largely confirmed my original beliefs, though not exactly.

Many of the respondents are or have been, NRA members and the broad consensus was that they felt betrayed and frustrated. A few of the current members, perhaps ten percent, expressed their continued faith and trust in the NRA and its mission in general while still expressing anger regarding the scandal. Most of the past and present NRA members expressed a desire to return to the Association but an unwillingness to do so now, preferring to “wait and see” whether NRA leaders could get the Association back on track. A significant number expressed their utter disgust and resolve to never support the Association again under any circumstances.

Many specifically named Wayne LaPierre in their comments, and most of those included “the Board” that allowed and covered up the misdeeds as targets of their wrath. Of those, none mentioned any Directors or other staff members by name, aside from one or two who mentioned Ollie North with mixed reviews and one or two others who mistakenly suggested that Doug Hamlin, our recently elected Executive Vice President and CEO, was somehow a puppet of LaPierre. (For the record, Mr. Hamlin was the “reform” candidate.) There were also a couple who mentioned exorbitant legal expenses, but only in a general context.

Many expressed the need for the NRA to be more resolute and uncompromising in defending the Second Amendment. Many expressed a need for more focus and involvement in Second Amendment litigation, while others looked for a stronger focus on legislative efforts or political activity. A few lamented the NRA’s intransigence on “commonsense” gun control and/or partisan activity, though these were a distinct minority. Still, others wanted to see more focus on competition, training, and hunting.

The respondents were fairly evenly split between “The NRA is dead to me” and “Maybe someday, but I’m going to wait and see.”

The broad consensus of the “wait and see” folks said it would take a lot to win back their trust. They repeatedly expressed the need for the leadership to “come clean” about past failures, apologize, remove all those responsible or negligent in the matter, and provide clear, third-party audit reports.

The Smith & Wesson collectors were, by and large, very civil, respectful, and orderly in their comments, while the folks at the hunting and outdoors site were much more raucous and aggressive. Language occasionally got “colorful.”

What struck me was the mishmash of information among the respondents. A few seemed to be fairly knowledgeable about the whole affair, but even among those, there was some misinformation and much that was clearly missing. The majority appeared to have limited knowledge regarding details of the violations of Wayne and others, the trials, or the recent efforts to reform the Association. They simply knew that Wayne had abused his position, that members of the Board had allowed or assisted in that abuse, and that they held the entire Board responsible for failing to stop the abuse or taking decisive action to rectify the situation sooner. This led to the most often repeated suggestion for reform, which was a call to reduce the Board to a much smaller body. Other often repeated criticisms involved the incessant pleas for money and membership renewals through the mail and over the phone, as well as strong objections to the continued use of “cheap Chinese-made junk” as premiums for memberships.

My informal “survey” was sometimes conversational, as I answered some questions and corrected some misinformation along the way, including a widely held belief that NRA Directors are paid for our service (we’re all volunteers), but avoided arguing with anyone, reiterating that I wasn’t there to advocate or convince anyone of anything, but only to hear their opinions and ideas. Many thanked me for reaching out to them and suggested that other Directors should do the same. I wholeheartedly agree and am sharing all of this information with all of my fellow directors.

All in all, this was a very enlightening exercise. Clearly, the NRA is doing a poor job of communicating with our members, former members, and the shooting public, and we have a whole lot of work to do if we ever hope to restore their faith and trust.

Anyone interested in perusing the several pages of comments on these sites can do so by clicking the following links. Reading the comments is open to anyone, but you would have to be registered with the sites in order to leave a comment of your own.

• www.24hourcampfire.com

• www.smith-wessonforum.com

Both are excellent, well-run sites with tons of interesting and useful information. I just wish I had more time to spend exploring them.

I will also mention that I considered posting a copy of the survey on the world’s largest firearm-related forum site, AR15.com, but decided against it, as past posts regarding the NRA have received almost universal derision and contempt there. This convinces me that the NRA must do a much better job of correcting the historical record and getting our message out, particularly to the younger, more tactical-oriented demographic represented on that site.

The NRA Board of Directors will meet on September 7th, 2024, to hopefully wrap up the final details of the New York v. NRA lawsuit and to set the agenda for continued progress as we head toward 2025. One of the key events of this meeting is the presentation of the Nominating Committee’s list of candidates for the 2025 Board elections. The judge in New York has instructed that he wants to see a more open process that provides an easier path for new candidates to get on the ballot. I am hoping to see a nomination list that includes at least an equal number of new candidates to the number of incumbents on the ballot. I’m also going to suggest that all incumbents should include their years of service on the Board at the top of their bio in the ballot issue of the magazines next year.

I think our members deserve to know how long each candidate has served on the Board.

As always, I’ll do my best to keep you informed, and if you’re a Voting Member of the NRA, please take the time to vote next year. Until then, I want to remind you that there are millions of gun owners who routinely don’t vote in federal, state, and local elections. This is the year that we must change that. Talk to your family, friends, and especially your shooting and hunting buddies to be sure that they all get to the polls in November. This one could be for all the marbles.

Read Related: Millions Of America’s Gun Owners Are NOT Registered To Vote. WTF!

About Jeff Knox:

Jeff Knox is a dedicated political activist and the director of The Firearms Coalition, following in the footsteps of his father, Neal Knox. In 2024, Jeff was elected to the NRA Board of Directors, underscoring his lifelong commitment to protecting the Second Amendment. The Knox family has played a pivotal role in the ongoing struggle for gun rights, a legacy documented in the book Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War, authored by Jeff’s brother, Chris Knox.

Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, The Firearms Coalition is a network of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs, and civil rights organizations. The Coalition supports grassroots efforts by providing education, analysis of current issues, and a historical perspective on the gun rights movement. For more information, visit www.FirearmsCoalition.org.