The National Rifle Association (NRA) is still shrinking, but not as quickly as before.
The group’s 2024 Annual Report, obtained by The Reload at the NRA’s annual conference over the weekend, shows member dues were down, and expenditures fell alongside them. But the NRA has managed to slow the decline on both fronts from previous years. Additionally, reformers who’ve pledged to move the group on from its recent corruption scandal and provide greater transparency managed to wrestle full control of leadership positions from longtime defenders of former leader Wayne LaPierre–who was at the center of that scandal.
“We have seen precipitous declines in spending across most categories in recent years, with legal costs being the main exception,” Ohio State University Professor Brian Mittendorf, who has tracked the NRA’s finances for years, told The Reload. “Though the organization once again saw spending exceed revenues in 2024, there were some encouraging signs for them.”
The group’s financials suggest it may now be better positioned to rebound from the years-long ordeal surrounding LaPierre’s misallocation of NRA funds toward lavish personal expenses. LaPierre resigned shortly before being found liable by a jury for millions of dollars in inappropriate spending in early 2024. Now that it has reached the end of that case and parted ways with the outside counsel that ran its legal defense over the course of the disastrous ordeal,
The report covers more than just the group’s main non-profit arm, its 501(c)(4) membership group, which has struggled the most during the NRA’s recent ordeal. It consolidates the finances of the seven related groups that make up the larger NRA, which include three 501(c)(3) entities and three different Political Action Funds (PACs) or Super PACs. That makes it more difficult to judge the health of any individual entity, but still provides insight into how the overall organization is functioning.
The report shows the NRA brought in $51.7 million in membership dues during 2024, compared with $61.8 million the year before. That’s a 16.3 percent decline, which is an improvement over last year’s 25.7 percent decline in member dues.
It raised a total of $223.9 million and spent $233.7 million, ending nearly $10 million in the red. But that, too, was an improvement over 2023.
Meanwhile, reformer-backed Bill Bauchenberg inched out Bill Barr in the race for NRA President by a vote of 38 to 34. Rocky Marshall, one of the first reformers to win a seat on the board, was elected to serve as the group’s new second vice president. Doug Hamlin, who was also backed by the reformer faction, was kept on as Executive Vice President–the most powerful role at the organization, which LaPierre filled for decades.
Additionally, reformers were able to push through a resolution in the members’ meeting for the first time since the scandal broke out. In a near-unanimous vote, NRA members at the meeting recommended that the board create a transparency website featuring the group’s financial filings and minutes from the board meetings, as well as explore the possibility of live streaming those meetings.
Reformers also captured key spots on many of the NRA’s oversight committees. Marshall was appointed ot the Audit Committee alongside new board member, and author of the members’ meeting transparency resolution, John Richardson. Cam Edwards, the editor of Bearing Arms and a frequent critic of the NRA’s financial mismanagement, was also elected to the Nominating Committee, which helps select board candidates.
The NRA’s legal costs abated slightly in 2024, falling from the top line item in the group’s expenses to third. However, they remained a significant drag on the organization. It spent $45.5 million on “legal, audit, and taxes,” with $40 million of that falling under administrative costs rather than advocacy. For comparison, the group spent just $12.9 million on the same costs in the last year before the LaPierre scandal broke, with just $4.6 million going toward administrative legal costs.
In 2024, Brewer Attorneys & Counselors was once again the group’s top contractor by a wide margin, according to a compliance report handed out at the group’s meeting. The NRA spent more than $32.2 million on the outside law firm’s services, adding to the more than $200 million it spent on the firm over the course of the litigation.
That same report showed the most notorious issues followed the NRA into at least the early part of 2024. It found the NRA spent $55,683 on two January charter flights for LaPierre to travel from Texas to New Jersey in order to attend the corruption trial. In May, the group spent another $26,045 on a charter flight from Dallas to New York for an unidentified keynote speaker during the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum. Additionally, the NRA paid former President Marion Hammer $110,000, despite her position on the board–though the contract was cut off partway through the year and no other board member received more than $5,000 from the NRA.
However, as with LaPierre, the NRA has now parted ways with Brewer. The end of that relationship and the lawsuit that sustained it appear to have had an immediate effect on the NRA’s spending. Hamlin announced during the members’ meeting that the group’s legal spending had plummeted in early 2025.
He said legal expenses fell from $15 million in the first quarter of 2024 to just $685,000 during the same time this year. If that trend holds, it could free up tens of millions of dollars for the NRA to spend on other priorities without needing to raise more revenue or debt.
The compliance report shows that not all of the group’s issues are in the past, though. Bob Mensinger, the NRA’s new Chief Compliance Officer, said he received 58 reports of wrongdoing during 2024. He said 83 percent of them were at least partially substantiated after investigation, but didn’t detail what the problems were or how they were fixed.
Mittendorf, who has previously warned the group’s spending habits had pushed it into a potential death spiral of cutting core services while also losing members, nonetheless said his reading of the report showed a rosier picture than at any point during the last half decade.
“Many of the spending categories that comprise their core operations saw the recent declines begin to level off, suggesting they may be approaching a bottom. This, coupled with the fact that 2024 still entailed over $45 million in legal-related costs, suggests that if they can drastically cut back on legal spending in 2025, we could see a new influx of spending on core programs and a gradual renewal of operating reserves.”
Still, the NRA has a long way to go if it wants to get back to the scale of its pre-scandal days. In 2018, the group brought in $170.3 million in member dues and $412. 2 million in overall revenue. It still managed to spend even more, at $423 million. That’s triple the dues it brought in during 2024 and nearly double the overall revenue. Similarly, spending was cut nearly in half.
Mittendorf said that goal is likely a long ways off, if possible at all. However, he said the group may now be positioned to start attempting a comeback.
“If the organization can point to increased programming, they may also be able to bring back lapsed members who were frustrated with years of turmoil,” he said.
