Wayne LaPierre resigns as leader of the NRA days ahead of civil trial
Wayne LaPierre resigns as leader of the NRA days ahead of civil trial
Wayne LaPierre, the leader of the National Rifle Association of America who served for decades as a fierce protector of the Second Amendment, advocating for firearms owners and manufacturers, is resigning days before his civil trial is set to begin.
Wayne LaPierre, the leader of the National Rifle Association of America who served for decades as a fierce protector of the Second Amendment, advocating for firearms owners and manufacturers, is resigning days before his civil trial is set to begin.
The NRA announced Friday in a statement LaPierre is stepping down as executive vice president and chief executive officer, effective January 31.
Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA executive and head of general operations, will become the interim CEO and executive vice president of the organization, the NRA said on its website.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2020 filed a lawsuit to dissolve the NRA, claiming the organization violated laws for non-profit groups and took millions for personal use and committed tax fraud. The case is set to go to trial on Monday.
Get fucked Wayne!
‘Nother Russian Asset
The indictment in that case is utterly crushing.
You can tell from reading it that LaPierre went into it prepped to defend against him having taken money & benefits without it being recorded. But they were actually building a case that the money & benefits were taken in violation of nra bylaws.
One thing that sucks about it, though, is that Oliver North was actually doing his job as the President of the NRA in good faith and was engaging in oversight. I don't like even having a tiny shred of respect for that man, but I have to admit he seems to have been trying to run an evil organization in an above-board way.
It's called lawful evil and my favorite kind of BBEG. Not so fun in real life though.
Gun owner here.
This is a very good thing.
Like many gun owners, I have a love-hate relationship with the NRA. On one hand, they do a lot of political action, on the other hand, I think they do almost as much to set gun rights back as many anti-gun groups do.Look at the message they send out, it's always panicked rabble-rousing to raise funds. It makes gun owners look crazy. I get the need to raise funds, but if they focused more on educating the general public about firearms and what makes a gun more or less dangerous and why people own and how they use guns, I think that would do an awful lot more good for everybody. I don't think most anti-gun people are evil, I think they are fighting for what they believe will bring about more safety. Same thing with pro-gun people. Thus, good faith education helps everybody.
It's also become fairly obvious that Wayne and a band of his cronies who have basically a stranglehold on NRA leadership are more or less totally corrupt and are using an awful lot of NRA donations to enrich themselves rather than to further the mission. Maybe that's why they keep sending out rabble-rousing fundraisers.
Anyway here's to hoping that a new chapter brings some new leadership that aren't a bunch of corrupt assholes.
I don't think most anti-gun people are evil, I think they are fighting for what they believe will bring about more safety. Same thing with pro-gun people. Thus, good faith education helps everybody.
Good faith education means understanding that "belief" has absolutely zero relevance to this conversation. Beliefs can be wrong. The only thing that matters is objective material evidence that one's position is correct.
The gun-control crowd has mountains of evidence that guns make society more dangerous, that firearm regulations reduce gun crime, and that firearm deregulation increases gun crime. This evidence comes from the USA, as well as numerous other countries with varying laws surrounding firearm ownership. Mental health and societal order are contributing factors, but nothing correlates with gun violence like the number of guns on streets, and the causal links are well established.
The gun-rights crowd, on the other hand, has little to no evidence that guns make us safer. This is because guns, objectively, do not make us safer. All reputable data points us solidly to the conclusion that guns increase our risk of injury or death. This is not some matter of opinion or belief, it is a fact, and you can either be right or you can be wrong about it. That is why the gun-rights arguments are generally centered around fear of hypothetical assailants, or heroism by good guys, because when the facts aren't on your side, it's more effective to focus your energy on hyperbole and anecdotes. That, or they just parrot "shall not be infringed", because a religious interpretation of the Constitution makes an excellent thought-terminator when the questions get too hard.
Just because there are "two sides" to an argument doesn't make both sides equal. One side can just be wrong, and in this case, there's plenty of evidence to make that assertion.
Good faith education means understanding that “belief” has absolutely zero relevance to this conversation. Beliefs can be wrong. The only thing that matters is objective material evidence that one’s position is correct.
On this I agree 100%. Feelings don't matter, data matters.
Here's the most important data point I have, that's responsible for an awful lot of my beliefs.Murder victims by weapon, 2015-2019. Following years are on a newer site that doesn't easily deep link. The result is more or less the same for most years though- each year about 10k-12k people are killed with a firearm. This data is centrally tracked by FBI and can be considered very reliable.
Defensive Gun Uses in USA. A Defensive Gun Use, or DGU, is were a lawful gun owner uses a legally owned firearm to stop or prevent a crime. The overwhelming majority of DGUs (90+%) end with no shots fired; the criminal sees the gun and runs away. DGUs are often unreported (as there's often little to report) and those that are reported are not centrally tracked in any way. That means the only way to estimate their frequency is statistical analysis of victimization surveys. That of course means there's wide disagreement on the overall number of DGUs.
To save you a long read- anti-gun researcher Hemenway estimates 55k-80k/year; pro-gun researchers Kleck and Gertz say it's 2.1 million/year, Cook and Ludwig took a different analysis method and came up with 4.7 million/year. Other analysis of government NCVS data suggests between 100k/year and 370k/year.The point is, even if you go with low end estimates from Hemenway, Firearms are used 5x more in defense than as murder weapons.
I recognize that's not a perfect comparison, as many of those DGUs wouldn't have resulted in death had the victim been unarmed, and that also doesn't consider non-fatal shootings.
However, the general argument for why 'guns are bad' is because a criminal can kill me with one; I look at this and see another side of that coin.
The other thing I've found as I learned about guns, is that not all gun owners are the same.
I was surprised to find that gun ownership in most areas has as much of a safety culture as pilots. Sure there's a few idiots, but the vast majority of people I've interacted with in the gun community are VERY safety oriented. These are not the people who would threaten you.
The lion's share of gun violence is committed by prohibited gun owners, people who due to previous convictions are already ineligible to possess a firearm. And it's usually committed with an illegal firearm too.Unfortunately, in these stats you can't easily screen out gang-related violence. But you CAN use your brain.
Go to a site like mass shooting tracker and pick a few stories at random. You'll find an awful lot like 'victim 1 and victim 2 were leaving a house party on whatever block of whatever road, suspect 1 opened fire from a moving vehicle operated by suspect 2. Victim 1 and victim 2 were both injured, as well as bystander 1 and bystander 2. Victim 1 returned fire and injured suspect 1.' AKA, gangland drive by shooting.
My point overall is this- having studied the stats and the reality of guns and gun ownership pretty extensively (more so than most I believe at least), I believe the ACTUAL HARD EVIDENCE (when you don't massage it for example by including suicides in 'gun violence) clearly shows that in the US at least, private civilian gun ownership and concealed carry are NOT the evil that anti-gun people make it out to be, and may even be an overall net benefit for society.
Thoughts and prayers, Wayne. /s
2024 starting off with a banger