Tim Mak, NPR investigative reporter gives a blistering expose of the powerful US lobbying group, the National Rifle Association, revealing meticulously its people, power, corruption and ongoing downfall.
The NRA once a grassroots club dedicated to gun safety, once compelled respect -even fear- from Republicans an Democrats alike, ballooned into a powerful lobbyist organisation that maintained an iron hold on gun legislation in America. This influential non-profit raised millions in small fees from members across the country, which funded hidden, lavish lifestyle of designer suits, private jets and yachts, martini lunches and Champagne dinners- while the group manipulated legislators and flirted with a Russian spy.
In 2012, the NRA’s grip on Washington began to loosen in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Facing nationwide outrage, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre gave a speech claiming the solution was not fewer guns, but more guns, in schools. The Group’s rhetoric only escalated from there, a misstep that sparked a backlash and invited the scrutiny of the government.
Mak unveiled for the first time ever are surprising, revelatory details spotlighting decades of poor leadership and mismanagement by Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s long association with marketing firm Ackerman-McQueen; NRA executives’ 2015 trip to Moscow, a by-invitation affair packed with meetings with Russian government officials, diplomats, and oligarchs seeking diplomats, and oligarchs seeking influence in American politics; as well as the power struggle between Lapierre and former NRA president Oliver North that fractured the organisation.
Mak’s four-year investigation, scouring through thousands of pages of never-before-publicised documents and cultivated dozens of confidential sources inside the NRA’s orbit to paint a vivid picture of the gun group’s rampant corruption and slow decline, marking a sea change in the battle over guns right sand control in America.
The Second Amendment, the US constitutional right to bear arms, is secondary, the authors argue the bottom line in their view, is that gun companies and the NRA stoke fear among gun enthusiasts because it was good business.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a baby faced teenager who travelled to a small Wisconsin city gripped by unrest and used his military style, semi-automatic rifle to kill two men in the street, was acquitted in a recent trial said he needed his guns that night “to protect myself”.
Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA by Tim Mak, Dutton $29, 384 pages.