Photograph by Loren Elliott / AFP / Getty

Last March, Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s top executive, sent a fund-raising letter to his members—an urgent plea for money. He described an unprecedented attack on the Second Amendment. But, in reality, what threatens the N.R.A. isn’t constitutional law; it’s destructive business relationships that have damaged the organization financially and put it in legal jeopardy.

Searching through N.R.A. tax forms, charity records, contracts, and internal communications, the reporter Mike Spies discovered that “a small group of N.R.A. executives, contractors, and venders have extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the nonprofit’s budget, enriching themselves in the process.” Although the organization is quick to lay blame on its political opponents, Spies says, it is questionable financial practices that have weakened it from the inside.

Central to the story of the N.R.A’s financial problems is an Oklahoma-based media agency called Ackerman McQueen. The agency didn’t just write press releases: for three decades, it has steered the N.R.A.’s imaging on all platforms, and its executives routinely took positions within the N.R.A. In 2017, the N.R.A. paid Ackerman and its affiliates forty million dollars, about twelve per cent of the N.R.A.’s total expenses that year. Ostensibly just a contractor, Ackerman influenced N.R.A. decision-making from inside, and the for-profit company seems to have used the nonprofit organization as a vast source of funds with which to enrich itself.

Spies interviewed Aaron Davis, who worked in the N.R.A.’s fund-raising operation for a decade. “I think there is an inherent conflict of interest,” Davis says. “And it just doesn’t seem like N.R.A. leadership is all that concerned about this.”

(After this interview took place, the N.R.A. sued Ackerman McQueen, claiming that the contractor had hidden important documentation from it that detailed the business relationships.)