Atlanta, Georgia — The National Rifle Association’s CEO, Doug Hamlin, estimated upwards of 70,000 people showed up to the group’s conference last weekend. The Reload spoke to a dozen or so while they perused the cavernous exhibit floor of the Georgia World Congress Center, which was packed with the latest firearms and accessories the industry has to offer.
The nation’s largest gun-rights group has been battered by a half-decade-long corruption scandal, stemming from now-former CEO Wayne LaPierre’s misallocation of millions in NRA funds toward lavish personal expenses. It’s lost millions of members, seen its revenues cut nearly in half, and lost political capital along the way. But its corruption trial is now over, and reformers have taken control of its leadership positions by promising increased transparency and accountability–something that struck a chord with those on the exhibit floor.
“I love the new blood that’s coming into it and all that stuff,” Stephen Stinchcomb of Flowery Branch, Georgia, who has been an NRA member for about eight years, said about the reformers. “The old order is kind of getting out of the way, and the new guys are coming in. You’ve got fresh ideas.”
Scott, a 30-year member from Chattanooga, Tennessee, said he liked the new faces and voices leading the NRA.
“I do think, at the very top levels, very much the same way as we have in Congress, and the nation in general, it’s time for some new blood,” he said.
Joel Moore, from Houston, Texas, has only been a member for a few years. But he agreed.
“I’m feeling very good, very comfortable with it,” he told The Reload. “They’re on the right track.”
Not everyone is completely satisfied with the turnover in leadership or the reforms the group has implemented to this point.
Ronald Andring has been an NRA member off and on for decades, but has taken a closer interest in the group over the last decade. He’s the only member who independently wrote to the judge overseeing the group’s corruption trial and, later, testified in it. He said the misuse of member dues has pushed him into a years-long campaign to bring about reforms inside the gun group.
He introduced several resolutions during the Members’ Meeting on Saturday. One of them, an effort to get the NRA to adopt a much stricter conflict-of-interest policy, was sent to the board for further deliberation, but with the added recommendation that Andring be added to the committee considering it. He told The Reload he’s far from satisfied but believes the tide is turning.
“In the last couple of years, because of the members finally waking up and deciding to elect people to the board, besides the old guard that has populated the board and populated the committees for all these last 25 years, or whatever,” he said. “What you now have is a movement in the board that hasn’t existed for a while.”
Scott from Chattanooga said he found the LaPierre scandal “disturbing” and argued it was emblematic of larger problems in American society.
“The whole country is tired, they’re tired of people getting involved with either not-for-profits or the government or whatever, enriching themselves,” he told The Reload. “The NRA needs to become very mission-focused. It risks becoming irrelevant.”
He argued the NRA needs to do everything it can to show people it isn’t compromised because he believes its mission is too important to risk turning people off.
“It’s important that organizations like this, who are really trying to fight and preserve sacred parts of the heritage of the country, really clean up their act and show, you know, ‘listen, we’re good people,'” he said. “I think that’s really the big thing to me. There’s a real push for that, a push for transparency, a push to not waste money. I think the people are tired, they’re worn out, and they feel like there’s a group of people who are getting rich while they’re having a hard time making ends meet. And double-digit inflation just made that more dramatic, easier to see, because I can’t afford to buy eggs, but you’re taking private jets?”
Scott said the NRA should do whatever it takes to shore up its credibility.
“Anytime the media and the people who are anti gun folks have an opportunity to find some chink in the armor, ‘Oh, well, look at you. You’re a hypocrite because you do this, you’re a hypocrite because you spent that,'” he said. “You know, it’s imperative that organizations like this try to become as above reproach as possible. And if that means extra audits, if that means increased transparency, if that means more turnover, fresh faces, it’s time to do that.”
Travis from Georgia has been a member since just about the time the LaPierre scandal broke into public view. But he said his view of the group is pretty simple.
“I’m pretty happy with how things are going,” he said. “I like the fact that they stand for the Second Amendment.”
That view wasn’t uncommon on the exhibit floor either. Most of the NRA members who spoke to The Reload said their primary reason for joining was to support the group’s mission of protecting gun rights.
Gerald Fuller has been a member since the 1990s. The North Carolinian said he hasn’t followed the NRA’s corruption scandal very closely, but, while he does think the group could be a better steward of members’ money, he isn’t going to leave anytime soon.
“I think it’s a good organization. They just need to work out a few quirks, but that’s every organization,” he told The Reload. There’s always room for change, room for improvement on everything.”
Jason Lock, a competitive shooter who traveled from Nashville to explore the exhibit floor, had a similar view.
“I feel like any organization that puts their efforts towards supporting the Second Amendment is worth my support,” Lock, who has been an NRA member off and on for a decade, said. “The internal politics of what goes on inside those organizations doesn’t really affect whether I have membership or not. When the people who call and ask me to renew my membership and say, ‘you can get three or four years for a discounted rate,’ I always refuse, because I want to pay the full amount for each year so that all my dollars can go to helping preserve the Second Amendment.”
Fuller’s advice for the group is to “step up and fight harder for our Second Amendment rights.” That was a pretty common refrain as well.
“I think they will always have to maintain a pretty strong presence, because there’s just a force that continues to want to remove a well-armed militia,” Moore said. “And it’s not a radical thought. It’s just a feeling that I’d rather be in the position to be armed than not.”
“I know they have a big focus on the Second Amendment. So, I like that a lot,” Stinchcomb said. “But I’d like to see them fight more for suppressor deregulation and stuff like that.”
Transparency and a renewed focus on political advocacy weren’t the only things the attendees who spoke with The Reload were hoping to see, though. While the NRA’s finances continued to slide throughout 2024, the slope of that slide was less extreme, and the end of the corruption trial has freed up tens of millions of dollars the group can put toward other uses. Lock said he was excited about one of the group’s new initiatives.
“The NRA came out with a new competition that was two-gun and three-gun,” he said. “Think it’s an AR competition, and that is really interesting to me. I think it’s good for getting more people into it, especially because they may not come shoot three-gun like I shoot. They may not shoot USPSA, but they know about the NRA. So, they may come and bring their black guns and play some competition with us. So, I’m happy to see them doing that. I’m happy to see them opening that up.”
“If they’re kind of dabbling in that, then that kind of lets me know that they think about the other genres besides just defensive shooting,” he added. “There are many ways to use our firearms, and we need to protect that.”
Of course, the Annual Meeting is open to the general public. You don’t have to be an NRA member to get in. So, there were plenty of people who’d either never joined or let their membership lapse for one reason or another.
Hunter and Carrie Anne, a pair of military servicemembers from Louisiana, drove up from Fort Benning to attend the show. It was the first one for both of them. She was offered a job modeling for Curves N’ Combatboots, which makes leggings with integrated fabric holsters. He came along to see what the show was all about.
“I haven’t really paid much attention or heard much about it until today,” Hunter said of the NRA show. “But it’s been really great. I was just telling her, I feel like you have to come in here knowing what you want, because there’s so much stuff in here. It’s so cool, but it’s good to see all the booths and to explore and experiment and actually hold the weapons and stuff so you have an idea of what you want.”
“People are really friendly, too,” Carrie Anne said.
“It’s been a really good experience,” Hunter added.
They said they’d definitely be back when the NRA returns to Atlanta again in a few years, and they planned to look into becoming members in the meantime.
Eric, a young man from Atlanta with a master’s degree and an indie-rock style, said he wasn’t a member either. Although, he viewed his entrance fee and efforts to introduce new people to the shooting sports as a way of supporting the NRA’s mission. Of course, he also saw the show primarily as a great way to spend a weekend afternoon.
“I love coming to these events, looking at all this, like hanging out with people, chatting, seeing what new technology is coming out, just seeing cool stuff and getting my hands on it,” he said.
He said he planned to come back to the Annual Meeting again and attend other events like it, too. But he wasn’t sold on getting an NRA membership yet, mostly because he felt he wasn’t well enough informed about the group’s internal dynamics or the membership’s benefits to make a commitment like that.
“I’m not gonna join unless I’m just fully educated,” Eric told The Reload. “It’s like, when you go get Netflix, you know what you’re getting, right? When I got HBO Max, I bought that the other day, and I know what I’m getting. When you join a gun club, you know what you get. With the NRA, I haven’t really put the thought into it. I’ll probably become a member way down the road. But if I’m gonna go with that, instead of going to the show, I’d like to go to the legal seminars, go to meetings where they set policies or make decisions. But, you know, that alone sounds like a second job. But the show floor is where all the fun is. It feels like I’m at Six Flags,”
Tommy, an off-duty cop, said he let his NRA membership lapse over the LaPierre corruption scandal and the group’s partial backing of the bumpstock ban during the first Donald Trump administration.
“I just feel like a lot of other organizations, like Gun Owners of America, were doing a better job,” he said.
He said his work on the streets of Atlanta has bolstered his commitment to gun rights. He said he’s seen dangerous criminals let off the hook for serious gun crimes, while people he views as harmless hobbyists have the book thrown at them over offenses that shouldn’t be illegal.
“I deal with a lot of weird stuff, and see a lot of Glock switches and stuff like that,” he said. “And it’s funny how I see some cases not get prosecuted or picked up by the ATF, but I see a guy in New York get screwed over for 50 rounds and an 80 percent frame. I think it’s fucked up, excuse my language.”
But he also said he was impressed by the NRA’s recent reforms and is mulling over whether to join up again.
“I’m thinking about getting a membership again,” Tommy said. “I’m reconsidering it.”
First, though, he wants to see “more advocating for gun rights and kind of turning the table back.”
Andring argued the NRA needs to do more than merely change leadership or pass bylaw reforms. He said those steps, while necessary, don’t make up for LaPierre’s misdirection of funds, the money paid to board members, the $200 million spent on Bill Brewer’s legal representation, or other things he views as wrongs.
“You had all of the years of turmoil under Wayne LaPierre,” he said. “As soon as the trial ends, or actually as soon as the bench trial ends, all of a sudden, we launch NRA 2.0 and for all those people who were frustrated, who quit, who were who were upset because their money ended up in the in the pockets of Bill Brewer, or in the pockets of directors and insiders the piece that’s missing is that we are just sort of going to forget the past. And we’re just going to jump into the future. But nobody’s talking about what you say to people who are angry and frustrated to bridge that gap between what was and what you want.”
He said the group needs to admit its missteps to current and former members before it starts trying to ask them to come back on board.
“What they need to be hearing from the NRA is not a solicitation to be joined, not a solicitation to up your membership or whatever, but simply an acknowledgement that they’re not crazy,” Andring said. “They were right to be angry because the NRA Board and the NRA failed them. That was the jury’s verdict. The NRA failed to properly administer the assets of the organization.”
Scott argued the NRA is too important to lose, and too important to let even the appearance of corruption creep in again.
“I think that’s a big thing for any organization, but particularly groups protecting the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, anything that has anything to do with the Bill of Rights. Those organizations have to stay as above reproach as possible,” he said. “They’re taking unfriendly fire, and the last thing they need is friendly fire.”
