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      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws

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      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws The powerful lobbying groups spent nearly $5m million last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry itIn Texas, where guns are already a deeply ingrained part of the cultural landscape, a powerful political force is helping to stifle regulations aimed at limiting access to high-powered firearms.The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of America’s most powerful lobbying groups, spending nearly $5m last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry it.Now, the NRA is again at the center of a heated American debate over guns after an 18-year-old with two rifles he purchased legally walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two adults.That was Tuesday. Today, the NRA will welcome 55,000 members at its annual meeting in Houston, just a few hours from Uvalde. Attendees will browse exhibits of firearms paraphernalia and hear from Republican politicians like Texas senator Ted Cruz, Texas governor Greg Abbott and former US President Donald Trump.A majority of Americans – 54% according to a CBS News poll before the shooting in Uvlade this week – want stricter gun control laws, but that majority is highly partisan. Just 27% of Republicans say the same.Among Texans that margin is even slimmer. In a 2019 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll after mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, just 51% of registered voters in Texas said they wanted stricter gun control laws.The majority of gun owners are responsible with their weapons, says Nicole Golden, the executive director of the state’s only organization advocating for policies to reduce gun violence. Texas Gun Sense was founded in 2007 by survivors of a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and expanded in 2013, after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.Now, Golden’s bipartisan group focuses on finding common ground with gun owners to support initiatives at the state and local level. They work with the Texas Department of Public Safety, for example, on a campaign to promote safe gun storage to keep firearms locked up and away from others.“I don’t think the issue is hopeless,” Golden said. “You have to redefine what success looks like. You can’t give up because I don’t think giving up is an option.”She said that this week, like after other mass shootings, her organization has seen an influx in new interest from Texans. Many gun owners, she says, recognize that America’s epidemic of gun violence needs some kind of change. After a 2018 mass shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, that killed 10 churchgoers, Abbott suggested new regulations including “red flag” laws that would allow courts to take away someone’s guns if they pose a threat to themselves or others.Golden said she was excited to work with the governor on the issue, but it quickly failed to pick up any traction in the state capital.“We watched those things fail, and this time there’s been no interest at all of dealing with safe gun laws,” Golden said. “It can often feel like you’re just beating your head against the wall or shouting into the void.”There is little doubt that Texas has a historical obsession with fire arms dating back to it being a frontier state where white settlers used guns to take land from Indigenous groups and used them to fight the Mexican government, and then the US government when the state seceded during the American civil war.“We have this long tradition of firearms,” said Jerry Patterson, a former Texas land commissioner and NRA member who helped push for concealed carry in the state after a mass shooting at a Luby’s restaurant in 1991.But that tradition isn’t just a Texas-specific phenomenon, says Harel Shapira, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin who studies gun culture in America. He says that from a very young age, gun ownership becomes part of many people’s identity across the country. Families go hunting together. Fathers teach their children to shoot and how to be safe with firearms.“Guns are a source of death, but also a source of [cultural] life in America,” Shapira said. Regulations may address who can purchase or use guns, he said, “but the question of American gun culture is a larger issue.”He said that in recent decades, gun rights have become entrenched as a rightwing political issue. If you want to win as a Republican, he said, you have to embrace pro-gun rhetoric. Plus, that culture of firearms means that when mass shootings create a call to regulate guns, gun owners often have an emotional reaction.“It’s very personal, it’s very visceral, it’s very emotional,” Shapira said. “They see it as an assassination of their character.”That culture has helped build strong support for groups like the NRA in Texas. There are 5 million members nationwide, but the group says that 400,000 of them are in Texas. The NRA did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about its support in the state.Last year, the organization cited financial struggles in an effort to leave its headquarters in New York to reorganize in the more friendly political climate of Texas.That bid at reorganization was part of a bankruptcy suit tied to an effort by New York’s attorney general to put the group out of business, according to the Associated Press. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the NRA laid off dozens of employees while its leaders used the group’s funds as their own piggybank, including a $17m post-employment contract for NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.Yet those problems, Patterson said, won’t change how the NRA or politicians think about access to firearms in America. He said that in Texas and across the US, primary electoral politics force candidates to take extreme positions on all kinds of issues, like gun rights. Not all gun owners may approve of extreme measures, he said, but the rhetoric that brings primary voters to the polls swings to the right in Republican races.“There are a lot of people on the gun control side that are not as excited about things as they appear to be,” Patterson said. “But they vote for it anyway because the elections are decided in the primary.”The NRA’s recent financial troubles didn’t stop the group from spending $786,052 in the 2020 election cycle. The group has already spent $217,596 in 2022 – paid exclusively to Republican candidates.Three of the five lawmakers that have benefited the most from gun rights groups like the NRA are Texans, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks US political spending. Cruz has received the most – $442,333 since joining the US Congress in 2012. Texas’s other senator, John Cornyn, has received $238,875 during his tenure in the US Senate. Pete Sessions, a congressman from Waco, Texas, has received $202,926 in donations from the NRA and similar groups.Those donations were smaller in 2020, as the organization began facing some of its mostly self-inflicted financial hurdles. Cornyn received $9,900 from the NRA in the last election cycle. Cruz was not up for re-election at that time and did not receive any donations, according to OpenSecrets.Uvalde’s representative in the US House is Tony Gonzales, who said earlier this week that he was not interested in discussing gun policy so soon after 19 children were killed in his district. The NRA donated $4,950 to his campaign in the 2020 election cycle.Abbott, Texas’s governor, is one of the most gun-friendly governors in the US. Even after mass tragedies like in Uvalde, he has signed laws making guns more and more accessible in the state. Last year, after signing a law allowing most Texans to carry a gun without a permit, he bragged that the measure “instilled freedom in the Lone Star State”.He is up for re-election this year. The NRA donated $2,500 to his campaign during his last race in 2018.Much of the rhetoric used by these and other conservatives after mass shootings like in Uvalde rely on a playbook partially developed by the NRA more than two decades ago. Soon after the shooting at Columbine high school in 1999, the NRA was scheduled to host its annual convention in nearby Denver.According to a secret tape released by NPR last year, the group’s leaders met to consider a response, focusing on de-politicizing the tragedy and convincing lawmakers to delay action until the immediate firestorm of bad press had passed. It’s a playbook the group has returned to again and again as more Americans have been killed by gun violence.After so many mass shootings – more than 200 in the US already this year – the responses on both sides of the issue have become predictable, Patterson said. He, like many political observers, doubt any real change will come from the aftermath of the horrors in Uvalde.“We should do that which makes a difference,” Patterson said. “I fear we’re going to do the same shit we did before. It’s the cliches, the bumper stickers, and that’s all that’s going to happen this time.”TopicsNRATexas school shootingUS gun controlUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas school shooting overshadows primaries: Politics Weekly America – podcast

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      The killing of at least 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in the town of Uvalde on Tuesday has reignited the gun control debate in the US. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the chief correspondent for the Washington Post, Dan Balz, about why, after yet another tragedy involving firearms, the Republican party is still unwilling to talk gun reform

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      Outrage as NRA to gather in Houston just days after Texas school massacre

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      Outrage as NRA to gather in Houston just days after Texas school massacreCounter-protests expected as about 55,000 NRA members to attend event, including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott Just days after the deadliest mass school shooting in Texas history, the National Rifle Association (NRA) – America’s leading gun lobbyist group – will meet a few hours away in Houston on Friday.Ashton P Woods says they are not welcome in his hometown.“These people are coming into our community. The city of Houston needs to kick them out,” said Woods, an activist and founder of Black Lives Matter Houston. “We have to be just as tough about these things as they are.”Woods is helping organize one of several protests planned just outside the George R Brown Convention Center, where NRA members will browse through exhibits of firearms and gun paraphernalia and hear speeches from key Republican leaders.The goal of the Black Lives Matter protest, Woods said, is to “get loud” outside while powerful speakers – including Texas governor Greg Abbott, Texas senator Ted Cruz and former US president Donald Trump – take the podium inside. Woods said the issue of firearms is particularly important to the civil rights group that primarily tackles issues of police brutality in America.“Whether it be death by suicide, death by cop, death by mass shooter, we need to control the access people have to deadly weapons,” Woods said. “These things are interconnected.”The NRA is a powerful lobbying organization in American politics, spending nearly $5m in 2021 to pressure lawmakers to oppose measures like universal background checks for gun sales and bans on powerful assault weapons.About 55,000 NRA members are expected to attend the event in Houston. The annual meeting is often a draw for activists and counter-protests as members inside discuss firearms policy – often the need for expanding access to guns.Outside the convention center, multiple counter-demonstrations are expected in Houston – especially in light of a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.Houston police are also expecting crowds at the convention center. Jodi Silva, a police spokeswoman, said the department does not share details of its policing strategies, but that there would be a visible presence of officers.“We always are aware of the demonstrations and-or counter-demonstrations and staff accordingly,” Silva said. “We staff accordingly to make sure that everyone can participate and be safe.”Megan Hansen and the Rev Teresa Kim Pecinovsky watched the news updates from Uvalde on Tuesday in shock. When they found out the NRA would be in Houston Friday, they decided they also needed to take action.“We live in a state full of people who love their guns more than they love the lives of the children in their community,” Pecinovsky said. “I had to do something with that amount of rage and lament.”Hansen and Pecinovsky have organized an interfaith gathering that will include a silent march and a moment of reflection when organizers will read the names of those who died in Uvalde.While Texas’s politics are staunchly conservative, the Houston area has become a bastion of progressivism. Harris county, which includes Houston, voted for President Joe Biden by 56% in 2020. Hansen said she wants others to know that the NRA’s message does not reflect that community.“Houston is the most diverse city in the United States and we have people from all over the world who do not agree with the rhetoric of the NRA,” Hansen said. “We want to just say, remember the people who we lost and how can we take this feeling and turn it into action?”That action – specifically legislative measures to restrict access to high-powered firearms – is unlikely to come from Republican lawmakers in the state. Yet activists in Houston want the shooting in Uvalde and protests this weekend to spark more pressure on political leaders to prevent the next tragedy.“I’m hopeful this will not just be something people attend and then leave,” Pecinovsky said. “It needs to be a catalyst for real and tangible change.”TopicsNRAUS politicsTexasTexas school shootingnewsReuse this content More

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      Misfire review: a bullseye from Tim Mak – but the NRA isn’t beaten yet

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      BooksMisfire review: a bullseye from Tim Mak – but the NRA isn’t beaten yet The NPR reporter has written an important book about the moral bankruptcy which put the powerful and merciless gun group on the back footCharles KaiserSat 6 Nov 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 02.02 EDTTim Mak has written a sprawling tale of the greed, incompetence and narcissism which has dominated the National Rifle Association throughout Wayne LaPierre’s 30 years as its leader. Abetted by his wife, Susan, LaPierre has allegedly used his members’ dues to fund a billionaire’s lifestyle.‘We have to break through that wall’: inside America’s battle for gun controlRead moreThe LaPierres’ wedding in 1998 was a near miss: he almost ran from the altar, until she and the priest changed his mind. Mak calls this “emblematic” of “a man driven by fear and anxiety over all other forces … his reaction to these emotions is usually to flee and hide”.These qualities, Mak writes, have made LaPierre “prey” to an endless series of conmen, throughout his leadership of America’s most-feared lobbying group.“Pushed and prodded” by his wife to discover “money’s alluring glow”, Mak writes, LaPierre saw his salary balloon from $200,000 in the mid-1990s to $2.2m in 2018. According to the investigation of the New York attorney general, which has done the most to expose serial excesses at the NRA, between 2013 and 2017 the black cars, private jets and hundreds of thousands of dollars of expensive clothing led to $1.2m in reimbursed expenses.Between 2013 and 2018, companies used to book the LaPierres’ private planes received an astonishing $13.5m. There were trips to Lake Como, Budapest and the Bahamas. Just the hired cars for trips to Italy and Hungary cost $18,000. LaPierre spent $275,000 on suits at a single Beverly Hills emporium, including $39,000 on one day in 2015. To disguise such excesses, the bills were sent to an outside vendor which the NRA reimbursed.Mak also does a good job of describing how every mass shooting has pushed the NRA ever further right, transforming it from advocacy group for gun rights into a fully fledged player in the culture war, especially after the massacre of 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012.Mak offers a particularly depressing account of how the NRA chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, was personally involved in negotiations over the Manchin-Toomey bill, a Senate measure which would have modestly increased background checks if, as Mak points out, not enough to have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre, since that gunman used guns legally obtained by his mother.In any case, after months of negotiation the NRA double-crossed both sponsors, made sure the bill failed to get the 60 votes it needed to pass the Senate, then dropped its A-ratings for Manchin and Toomey to D and C respectively.The NRA’s role in the Trump-Russia scandal was substantial. Maria Butina, eventually convicted as a Russian spy, used “relationships within the NRA to build an informal channel of diplomatic relations with Russia”. Her efforts included a famous public exchange with Donald Trump during his first campaign, in which he expressed his affection for Vladimir Putin and promised to improve relations as president.The NRA spent $30m to help to elect Trump, more than his own fundraising super pac. Ironically, NRA membership dues fell after Trump entered the White House. The organization lost its most lucrative fundraiser when Barack Obama left office.Power struggles and a ‘personal piggy bank’: what the NRA lawsuit allegesRead moreThe great unravelling began on 6 August 2020, when the New York attorney general, Letitia James, filed a lawsuit to dissolve the NRA entirely. She accused LaPierre of using the organization for 30 years “for his financial benefit, and the benefit of a close circle of NRA staff, board members, and vendors”.Six months later, the NRA filed for bankruptcy. But despite endless infighting, Wayne LaPierre remains in charge. And because Trump was elected, with the NRA’s help, the supreme court now includes three justices appointed by him – at least two of whom seemed eager in arguments this week to demolish most of the remaining state restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, in New York and six other states.The passions of gun owners – and the fear they have instilled in a majority of public officials – remain dominant forces in American politics despite the greed and incompetence of their leaders chronicled so thoroughly in this important book.
      Misfire is published in the US by Dutton
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      The Guardian view on soaring US gun violence: America must face the problem | Editorial

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      OpinionUS gun controlThe Guardian view on soaring US gun violence: America must face the problemEditorialThe US already had more guns than people when sales began rising a few years ago. It is now set for its highest number of gun killings in 20 years Sun 22 Aug 2021 13.30 EDTLast modified on Sun 22 Aug 2021 14.05 EDTAs Covid cases surge once more in the US, another public health crisis is pummelling the country too. Last year, gun killings soared by around 4,000, to almost 20,000 in total – the worst single-year increase on record. So far, 2021 looks even worse. In the first five months alone, more than 8,100 people died. America is set for the deadliest toll in nearly two decades.Alarmingly, there is also a surge in gun purchases. The US already had more guns than people when sales began rising a few years ago. But last year saw a 64% jump compared with the previous year, to an estimated 20m guns. Around a fifth of buyers were first-time owners. The pandemic sparked a rush to purchase firearms, and some bought because so many others were doing so. The backlash against Black Lives Matter protests may have played a part. Black Americans saw the highest increase in gun ownership and, reportedly, Asian Americans also bought more guns, as hate crimes have risen. Sales have continued to grow this year, with manufacturers struggling to produce enough ammunition.Research so far does not suggest a direct correlation between the rises in gun sales and violence. Experts point instead to economic desperation, isolation and the loss of social structure with the closure of schools and community organisations by the pandemic, and the disruption to prevention initiatives – such as the work of violence interruptors, who help to mediate when conflict develops. But the increase in ownership is nonetheless disturbing, and one study – not yet peer-reviewed – suggests that states with lower levels of violent crime pre-Covid saw a stronger connection between additional gun purchases and more gun violence.Though mass shootings this spring helped to push gun violence up the political agenda, they account for fewer than 1% of firearms deaths. Shootings make headlines when they happen somewhere unexpected or there are large numbers of fatalities; the reality is a daily toll of violence, concentrated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of colour. Joe Biden, in talking of two mass killings that sparked huge attention, noted: “You probably didn’t hear it, but between those two incidents, less than one week apart, there were more than 850 additional shootings that took the lives of more than 250 people, and left 500 injured.”The president’s response includes predictable, if welcome, measures such as tightening regulations on the sale of “ghost guns” assembled from kits. The striking and overdue change was the $5bn earmarked in the infrastructure bill for prevention funding, though that may not survive congressional politicking. Community intervention programmes have been proven to work. The administration is to be applauded for recognising that while gun controls are essential, they cannot be sufficient in a country already awash with firearms. Nor will simply pouring more money into the police when those disproportionately hurt by gun violence – young black men – are also disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.The amount of weaponry in the US potentially destabilises its neighbours. The Mexican government is taking gunmakers to court in Boston, arguing that lax controls add to the flow of illegal arms across the border. About 70% of the weapons seized in Mexico came from its northern neighbour. With gun violence costing America an estimated $280bn a year, a much bigger investment in prevention is both necessary and affordable. Other items on the administration’s list – such as bans on assault weapons and improved background checks – require congressional action that is unlikely. The National Rifle Association maintains significant political clout despite its disarray. It has also achieved what it wanted in exchange for its investment in Donald Trump: a strongly pro-gun supreme court, which is likely to hear a second amendment case soon, reviewing a New York law that strictly limits the carrying of guns outside the owner’s home. Legislative progress, however limited, could soon be unwound. In the face of such developments, and the fast-rising human toll, never have concerted efforts to tackle gun violence been more necessary.TopicsUS gun controlOpinionNRABlack Lives Matter movementGun crimeDonald TrumpJoe BidenRaceeditorialsReuse this content More

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      NRA’s grassroots clout still formidable with Republicans despite legal setbacks

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      The once all-powerful National Rifle Association is mired in legal and financial woes but its 5 million members still exert hefty grassroots influence with most Republicans as a fresh gun control debate in Congress heats up, say gun experts and NRA veterans.The NRA’s grassroots clout – via the Internet, letters, phone and other tools – coupled with the influence wielded by millions of other gun owners, keep many Republican allies fighting almost reflexively against gun curbs, notwithstanding recent NRA problems including electoral setbacks, staff cuts, drops in member dues revenue and legal threats, according to analysts.Which means that even after two mass shootings in March in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado spurred the House to pass bills to ban assault weapons and require mandatory background checks on gun purchases, the outlook in the evenly divided Senate to pass these bills seems very slim – unless filibuster rules are changed, say analysts.Still, NRA and Republican sources say if a weaker background check bill than the House passed one is introduced it may have enough Republican support in the Senate to pass as a compromise measure.To be sure, the NRA’s political strength by some key measures is markedly less than in recent years.After giving Donald Trump a huge boost in 2016 with over $30m in ad spending to help him win the White House, the NRA had a much smaller presence in 2020 to Trump’s and the Republican party’s dismay. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA’s spending in 2020 fell to $29.4m from $54.4m in 2016.What’s more in 2018, gun control advocates were credited with helping the Democrats take back control of the House in 2018 as their spending for the first time edged the NRA’s spending. And in 2019, the NRA’s revenue from its members dues declined from 2018 when it was $170m to $113m.Nonetheless, the NRA’s grassroots muscle remains formidable and is working to block the House passed measures.“The NRA is in a weakened condition, and their very future is at stake,” said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland and author of several books on guns, in an interview. “But the gun rights movement is deeply embedded in the GOP. Even though the NRA as an organization is seriously weakened, grassroots supporters are still out there, and are willing to act on the issue.”“For the GOP, support for gun rights from its gun base is pretty much on autopilot,” Spitzer added.Moreover, Spitzer noted that the Senate prospects for the two bills that passed the House seem dim. “The divisions between the two parties are sharper than in the past. Democrats are clearly behind strong gun laws, and Republicans are mostly opposed.”“The filibuster is the real stumbling block,” he added. “ We’ve seen this movie before.”Similarly, a former senior NRA official touted the group’s grassroots strength.“The grassroots of gun owners are still a political force with or without the NRA. Even though the NRA has had significant problems and continues too, they will raise more money” to fend off new gun curbs, if past experience holds.But the ex-official cautioned that “if they changed the filibuster rule, all bets are off”.Further, the NRA veteran noted that he thought a weaker background checks bill like one sponsored in previous sessions by Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, had a decent chance of getting enough Republican votes to pass the Senate if Democrats accepted it as a fallback option.Republican operative and lobbyist Charlie Black agreed that the less onerous bill like that previously backed by Manchin and Toomey has a good shot of getting through the Senate if Democratic leaders embraced it.But Black noted that the odds of the House’s mandatory checks bill passing the Senate are slim. “You’re not going to get the House bill through the Senate,” Black said in an interview.President Joe Biden has called on the Senate to pass the House measures which he called “common sense”, but at his first press conference last week gave mixed signals about how hard he will push for them.Just 10 days before the Boulder shooter killed 10 people, the NRA weighed in on Twitter and applauded a Colorado court ruling blocking a Boulder assault weapons ban enacted in 2018 which it had sought to overturn.However, the NRA and its leadership remain mired in legal and political battles to defeat the New York attorney general’s lawsuit that accused the nonprofit NRA, which has been chartered in the state for 150 years, of mismanagement and corruption.The lawsuit that attorney general Letitia James filed charges last summer that the NRA’s veteran chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a few other top NRA leaders looted the group costing it about $64m in just the three prior years.LaPierre was accused of self dealing by letting the NRA pay for millions of dollars of junkets with his wife and other family members to Europe, the Bahamas and other scenic spots.LaPierre and NRA lawyer William Brewer III have denounced the lawsuit as fueled by “political animus”, noting that James is a Democrat. And Brewer has said the NRA has taken steps to correct its financial problems including replacing some senior staffers. The NRA’s long-time top lobbyist Chris Cox, who had become a critic of LaPierre, was forced out in 2019.But the NRA’s 76 member board was mostly in the dark this January, when NRA leaders announced it was filing for bankruptcy in Texas where it hoped to incorporate, steps that two NRA veterans say were aimed at thwarting James’s probe.James has filed a motion seeking to halt the NRA’s bankruptcy move, and a bankruptcy judge in Texas is slated to hold a hearing on 5 April on the matter.On Sunday the NRA held an emergency board meeting in Dallas specifically to get the board to “retroactively” ratify the bankruptcy action before the 5 April hearing , say two NRA sources.Despite all the NRA’s legal and political maneuvering, Black sounds bullish that the House bills won’t get through the Senate.“The NRA’s grassroots is still active and powerful and influential with members of Congress,” he said. More

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      Major NRA donor to challenge gun group's bankruptcy over alleged fraud

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterA major donor to the National Rifle Association is poised to challenge key aspects of the gun group’s bankruptcy filing, in an attempt to hold executives accountable for allegedly having defrauded their members of millions of dollars to support their own lavish lifestyles.Dave Dell’Aquila, a former tech company boss who has donated more than $100,000 to the NRA, told the Guardian on Saturday he was preparing to lodge a complaint in US bankruptcy court in Dallas, Texas. If successful, it could stop top NRA executives discharging a substantial portion of the organisation’s debts.It could also stop Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s controversial longtime chief executive, avoiding ongoing lawsuits that allege he defrauded the pro-gun group’s members to pay for luxury travel to the Bahamas and Europe and high-end Zegna suits.LaPierre has denied the allegations of financial impropriety, insisting in a letter to NRA members that the group is “well-governed, financially solvent and committed to good governance”.Dell’Aquila’s complaint, likely to be brought within the next few weeks, would use a provision of the bankruptcy code to prevent the NRA from sidestepping more than $60m of debt on grounds it was improperly incurred. The law stipulates that debts acquired through malfeasance can be deemed by the court to be an exception to bankruptcy arrangements.Speaking from his home in Nashville, Tennessee, Dell’Aquila said: “We intend to invoke this provision. We are going to ask the judge to determine that our claim was incurred as a result of fraud and should be deemed non-dischargeable.”The NRA declared bankruptcy in the Dallas court on Friday. The organization also said it would be relocating from New York, where it was founded in 1871, to Texas.After the chapter 11 filing, LaPierre admitted the move was designed to extricate the NRA from lawsuits threatening its existence. In August the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, sued the NRA in an attempt to shut it down, alleging its leaders had used it as a “personal piggy bank” and illegally diverted $64m for their own use.LaPierre claims that civil lawsuit was politically motived. On Friday, he said the bankruptcy filing and move to Texas were a way of “dumping New York. The NRA is pursuing reincorporating in a state that values the contributions of the NRA.”Dell’Aquila told the Guardian the move was predictable.“I think they planned this all along,” he said. “It was always an ace they were going to play. It’s just tragic that the NRA is wasting millions of dollars in members’ money on attorney fees and this type of litigation. It’s shameful.”A year before the New York legal action, Dell’Aquila brought his own class-action lawsuit against NRA executives on behalf of the 5.2 million members of the organization. In that suit, he recounted how he had donated $100,000, thinking it would go towards wildlife conservation and second amendment advocacy work.Drawing on details uncovered by the former NRA president Oliver North, Dell’Aquila alleged that “LaPierre had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in clothing, private jet travel and other benefits”.The suit points to $243,644 spent on luxury travel to the Bahamas, Palm Beach and Italy and $274,695 dispensed at clothing stores in Beverly Hills.The NRA tried to have the civil suit dismissed, arguing Dell’Aquila had no standing to bring the action. But the judge allowed the case to go ahead with respect to individual claims of fraud on the part of NRA leaders in their solicitation of donations.In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that the NRA had admitted current and former executives received at least $1.4m in improper or excessive benefits. The disclosure was made in tax filings.Dell’Aquila’s lawsuit has been put on hold, pending the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings. He hopes that by filing his new complaint, he will be able to keep at least the $64m alleged in the New York lawsuit out of the bankruptcy deal and thus continue to hold LaPierre and other executives’ feet to the fire.“Nothing has changed with Wayne as leader over the past 30 years,” he said. “The NRA is still an old boy’s club, making deals in the back room and unaccountable to the 5.2 million members who pay for everything. It has got to stop.”The New York attorney general has also vowed to fight to stop NRA leaders escaping the legal consequences of their actions.“We will not allow the NRA to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office’s oversight,” James said after the bankruptcy filing was announced. More