Will NRA’s Internal Turmoil Impact Trump’s 2A Agenda?

Donald Trump has had a pretty good relationship with the NRA dating back almost a decade, when the organization was an early endorser of his presidential campaign and spent tens of millions of dollars to help him get elected. But according to some of the NRA’s new leaders, that relationship has soured, at least to some extent.

The New York Times reports that the power struggle on the board has gotten Trump’s attention, along with the fact that during this year’s election cycle the NRA spent more money on legal fees than promoting pro-2A candidates. 

Bill Bachenberg, the group’s first vice president and a staunch Trump ally, also told fellow board members that during this year’s election Mr. Trump was upset that the N.R.A. had not committed to doing more to help him win. And Mr. Bachenberg wrote that during a conversation at the group’s annual conference in May, Mr. Trump expressed incredulity that the N.R.A. was paying tens of millions of dollars a year to a lawyer, William A. Brewer III, whose political donations have favored Democrats over the years.

“I can say for a fact that President Trump and his most inner circle have lost faith in the N.R.A.,” Mr. Bachenberg wrote last week in his letter, which was co-signed by Mark Vaughan, the N.R.A. board’s second vice president. “I communicate with them often. We have a tremendous amount of work to rebuild trust with them, just like our members and donors.”

Asked for comment, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, responded only broadly, saying in a statement that “President Trump believes that every American has a God-given right to protect themselves and their family, and he will defend law-abiding gun owners.”

Bachenberg and Vaughan are part of the group of board members who’ve been pushing for internal reforms to the organization, which includes ending the NRA’s relationship with Brewer. In September, a majority of the NRA’s board voted to disband the group’s Special Litigation Committee, which was seen as the first step in disassociating the group from Brewer and Associates, but the 34-26 vote failed to meet the 2/3rds majority threshold needed to adopt the resolution, which left the committee in place. 

A central dispute between the camps is the role of Mr. Brewer, who became the gun group’s aggressive lead lawyer in the last several years of the LaPierre era. Mr. Bachenberg and Mr. Vaughan’s letter assailed Mr. Brewer, saying he had billed the N.R.A. more than $198 million since 2018.

“Brewer’s reputation is our number one impediment in bringing back the members, donors and industry, and rebuilding N.R.A. brand trust,” the men wrote.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, Mr. Brewer said his firm had helped the N.R.A. successfully “confront a barrage of blue-state regulatory investigations,” including an effort by New York regulators to dissolve the group. His firm has also previously said that some portion of its billing is spent on outside experts and services.

Mr. Barr, in a separate statement, said that “attacks on the N.R.A.’s legal strategy are, at best, misinformed” and that they disregarded “the existential threat the association has been facing.”

I’d argue there’s more than one existential threat to the NRA. Yes, the politically motivated attack on the group by New York Attorney General Letitia James could have led to the group’s demise, given that she was seeking to dissolve the organization. But Bachenberg and Vaughan say that donations and contributions to the NRA have also cratered over the past five years, and the Times quotes a retired accountant at Ernst and Young who says the financial health of the group is “tenuous” and the “annual losses for the last two years are not sustainable.” 

As the Times admits, even with the NRA’s “internal turmoil”, the chances of new gun control measures becoming law under Trump are pretty slim. There are other 2A groups and activists in Trump’s orbit as well, so even if he’s distancing himself to some degree from the organization there’ll be opportunities to get his ear and advocate for things like national right-to-carry reciprocity and the Hearing Protection Act.

Bachenberg’s letter is more of a warning to the board that the NRA’s internal dysfunction is itself an existential threat to the organization, not that Trump is getting squishy on gun issues. I suspect that the reformers are going to gain more ground in the NRA’s next board elections, but the question is whether it will be too late to make a difference.