Year: 2009

In the comments on my post earlier:

While I’m sure GOA doesn’t spend as much money as the NRA I’m equally certain they don’t spend it on such things as headquarters buildings, airfare for nearly a hundred directors to annual meetings or exorbitant salaries for their own pet poiliticians — which is all LaPierre and Cox are.

For comparison, NRA’s form 990s is here.  NRA spends 1.3% of it’s annual operating budget on executive compensation.  GOA’s executive compensation accounts for 11.5% of its total operating budget, and Larry pays himself a salary or 33.6k a year the GOA Foundation as well, which NRA does not do.  True, Wayne and his buddies make a lot more than Larry and his buddies, but NRA is a much larger organization.  How many CEO’s of 332 million dollar a year companies can you name that make less than a million a year?  Wayne does not make substantively more than the CEO of the small biotech company I work for, and we have yet to make a profit.  Chris Cox could make a hell of a lot more money working on K street.  James Baker left ILA to start his own K street lobby firm. As for fancy buildings, NRA spends 2% of its annual expenses for office space.  GOA spends 7.6% of it’s annual expenses on office space.

But let’s not stop there.  We can also examine the Form 990 of GOA Foundation, and examine the Form 990 of NRA Foundation.  Ignoring for the moment I had to up my upload limits just to fit NRA Foundation’s Form 990 on the server, which do you think looks like it’s doing more to advance the cause?  NRA Foundation’s executive compensation is a big fat zero.  All the NRA Foundation officers are uncompensated.  Just look at the list of grants paid out by NRA Foundation.  To 4H clubs, to JROTC, to shooting clubs, Boy Scout Troops, the list goes on.  They paid 15.2 million dollars in grants to do things like help raise new generations of shooters.  I could write for twenty pages about all the things NRA Foundation does.

GOA Foundation, in comparison, spends 11% of its total expenses paying Larry Pratt.  Totals paid out were 149 thousand dollars for “Research, publish and distribute numerous books, monographs, issue briefs, auto and video tapes, and other educational materials relating to firearms rights.”  In 2007, 114,000 was paid out by their legal defense program.

Like I said before, none of the things GOA are doing are worthless endeavors, but we should be serious about which organization is making the greater contribution to the cause of the Second Amendment, and keeping our shooting culture alive and well.  I would not, on my own initiative, compare GOA to NRA, because I think there is no comparison between the two that is fair.  They each have different roles to play.  But GOA makes a regular habit of claiming to be an equal or better than NRA.  When you look at the matter seriously, that’s a laughable assertion.

A reader sends me this passage from a fundraising letter from Gun Owners of America:

And, as to why you should give your support to GOA, rather than the NRA or any other group, let me say that when it comes to defending your gun rights, we have no equal.

Sure, the NRA does some great things.  They sponsor shooting events, they train kids how to shoot safely, they have great trinkets they offer to people to join, and they lobby for gun rights.

But what’s more important?  A nice trinket or your right to keep and bear arms?  We hold the line when others compromise.  We oppose a national gun registry; we oppose trigger locks; we oppose ‘bullet tracing.’  We oppose all things that seek to infringe on your right to defend yourself.

Oh man.  Where to even start.  I guess I can start first with the fact that GOA is seeking to actively undermine other groups in an attempt to feather its own nest.  We call this “eating your own.”  Hamsters do that.  I would have thought gun rights organizations like GOA would be better than hamsters, but apparently that’s too much to ask.

Secondly, NRA is also opposed to all those things that GOA mentions, except that NRA has an extensive lobbying operation that actually has a presence on Capitol Hill and in all fifty state Capitols.  From people I know who work the Hill (no, not NRA people), GOA’s presence in the halls of Congress is pretty much nil.

So what are you getting for the money if you donate to GOA?  A quick look at their form 990 should make that abundantly clear.  Conspicuously absent?  Lobbying.  In fact, postage and shipping appears to be their largest cost center.  That’s not to say what GOA does is entirely worthless, but they aren’t “hold[ing] the line.”  They aren’t lobbying in defense of gun rights anywhere close to the level NRA operates at.

Remember the sources of NRA’s political capital post we did a few months ago.  What are the sources of GOA’s political power?  Based on their form 990, they took in $430,000 in member dues in 2007, which would put their membership around 40,000 at the high end, and perhaps as low as 20,000.  NRA is 4 million.  If you look at GOA’s Political Action Committee, they spent $147,054 dollars in 2008, compared to NRA’s PAC who spent 15.5 million.  Which organization do you think politicians are going to pay attention to?

GOA is right about one thing, they do indeed “have no equal,” and gun owners should consider themselves very fortunate that is the case.  If we had to rely on GOA to defend the Second Amendment, it would be dead letter by now.