December 21, 2003
A Deficit of $100 Million Is Confronting the N.R.A.
By STEPHANIE STROM
In the past decade the group's efforts have helped Republicans win the White House and Congress and led to laws in more than 30 states banning lawsuits against gun manufacturers. In the last year the N.R.A. helped pay for a losing legal battle against campaign finance legislation, which the Supreme Court upheld this month.
But through many of those years, according to Internal Revenue Service and N.R.A. records, the organization spent more than it took in.
Even in 2000, when gun owners helped elect George W. Bush as president, pushing N.R.A. membership to a 10-year high, expenses outstripped revenues by $20.4 million, according to I.R.S. filings.
"The victories we have delivered have been costly, cutting deeply into the N.R.A.'s budgets," Wayne R. LaPierre Jr., the group's executive vice president and chief executive, wrote in an N.R.A. magazine, America's 1st Freedom, in October. "Winning takes millions of dollars beyond what individual members' dues cover. Today, if we were faced with a full-blown legislative assault, we simply would not have the war chest."
The N.R.A., one of the largest and most powerful grass-roots groups in the country, relies heavily on membership dues, but since 2000 â when the organization had a surge of new members â membership has slid about 20 percent, from a peak of 4.3 million to about 3.4 million.
Please see the following link for the rest of the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/politics/21NRA.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Rich
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