Follow The Money: Tracing The Immoral Disgusting Greed Of The NRA

pray you can put away the guns

After an NRA leader predictably blamed the Charleston victims for their own deaths based on a faulty premise and an inaccurate understanding of the legislative process, you might be wondering why the NRA says such tone-deaf, ignorant things after each mass shooting.

It’s because they have a lot of money at stake and they need to find a way to keep lax gun regulations from being blamed for the shameful level of gun violence in the United States. They can’t make that argument logically, so they throw rhetorical bombs at people who were just murdered and at their families and friends.

Lot’s of people think of the National Rifle Association of America of yesterday — back before it was a corporate whore killing innocents for profit. But it has evolved from the independent group it used to be into a monster of corporate greed.

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The NRA is a “virtual subsidiary of the gun industry”. Business Insider broke down the money:

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala’s, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.

The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.

The NRA is no longer a group of gun enthusiasts advocating for gun rights. Now they fight viciously to bar universal background checks while then using the fact that killers get weapons they would not have this way to fearmonger people into carrying more guns.

Remember this? “We need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security.” That was the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre just one week after 26 people, including 20 children, were mass murdered in Sandy Hook Elementary School.

All they are really saying each time they open their malevolent, greedy mouths is GIVE US MORE MONEY. WE DON’T CARE WHO DIES. PAY US.

The NRA is why legislation to require universal background checks failed to go anywhere in Congress, in spite of the fact that it had massive public support.

As Secretary Hillary Clinton said at a U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) 83rd Annual Meeting Saturday, “It makes no sense that we wouldn’t come together to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, or people suffering from mental illnesses, even people on the terrorist watch list. That doesn’t make sense, and it is a rebuke to this nation we love and care about.”

It’s way past time that Americans stop being bullied by the disgusting, immoral greed of the NRA and that members know this is not the old NRA. This isn’t the independent group you joined. The NRA is a festering corporate monster feeding off of the relentless murders of innocents.

Responsible gun owners must reject the irresponsible, sick agenda of the NRA.

Image via Twitter, courtesy of the Venerable Rod Bower, Archdeacon of the Central Coast.



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