NEWS AND COMMENT: The National Rifle Association (NRA) is under pressure because the departing head of this sport hunting, gun loving, association is departing on Friday because a corruption case in which he is accused of misusing millions of dollars on private jet flights and African safaris and yacht trips. The man, Wayne LaPierre, made a fool of himself on an African safari trip once, which I wrote about some time ago. You can read that article by clicking on this link if you wish.
Mr LaPierre denies wrongdoing. He is expected to testify during the trial in which the New York attorney general is asking the court for financial penalties for years of alleged corruption.
The attorney general, Letitia James, is a Democrat. She once called the NRA “a terrorist organisation”. She wanted the NRA dissolved entirely as a group but a judge blocked that application deciding that it was too draconian.
In Manhattan, New York City, a jury is scheduled to spend six weeks hearing testimony from 120 witnesses on the alleged corruption case.
The NRA has pledged to fight the lawsuit. It could result in the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the finances of the NRA.
LaPierre has been the head of the group since 1991. He said that his resignation would commence on January 31. He has resolutely fought against gun control despite the very many mass shootings and murders of school kids schools across America annually. He has accused his opponents of using the school shootings to score points against him.
He is joined in the litigation by John Fraser, the NRA’s general counsel. Wilson Phillips is also joining him. He is the retired finance chief. They have both denied wrongdoing. A fourth defendant, Joshua Powell, came to an agreement to pay $100,000 in restitution. He is banned from serving as an officer at nonprofit groups in New York.
If the jury decide that the defendants are guilty they will recommend an amount of money which they should pay the NRA as restitution. The NRA is still a very powerful lobbying group and political force.
For animal advocates, the NRA is a diabolical organisation promoting sport hunting which most animal advocates fight against because, they argue, it contributes to the gradual, almost irrepressible, extinction of iconic species on the African continent. African officials say that the large fees that NRA supporters pay to shoot iconic species in Africa help conservation but experts say that this is a smokescreen.
There are numerous negative spin-offs from sport hunting and trophy hunting in Africa such as causing elephants to have smaller tusks because the sport hunters like to shoot the elephants with the biggest tusks and in doing so they are artificially selecting the species on the African continent. It is human intervention in the natural selection process. The same kind of intervention has taken place with respect to lions as the best lions are shot and so the remaining ones are weaker in terms of their ability to survive. Shooting these animals undermines natural selection which in turn undermines the evolutionary process which makes them stronger.
I’m told by The Times that the NRA is “beset by financial troubles, dwindling membership and infighting among its board, raising doubts about its long-term future”. This will please all animal advocates.
And it will please many parents who see the extraordinary number of school mass shootings of young children by deranged young shooters insistent on using their collection of rifles to kill people. They want them to end. The NRA doesn’t mind whether they continue. They simply protect the rights of Americans to bear arms under a constitutional clause which is hundreds of years old and has no real meaning in today’s world.
