Our Fourth Goal: Member Engagement

It should come as no surprise that three of Save the Second’s five goals are related to the NRA Board of Directors (BoD). After all, the BoD largely control the future of our National Rifle Association. You may already know that there are seventy-six NRA BoD. That’s right, seventy-six that control the direction of our NRA. How many can you name? How many have you met? How many have you contacted? How many have replied to you? Let’s say you mailed a letter to each director, how much would that cost?

The NRA BoD answer to the members of the NRA. As NRA members we can influence our NRA BoD and thus the direction of the largest civil rights group in America. Still, member engagement is likely the most difficult of all our goals. A whopping 94% of voting eligible members didn’t vote last year’s BoD election. Those voting members are not likely to know that Chris Cox is packing up his office today or that Hickok45 just announced (as I write this) that he and John will no longer support the NRA. Without a doubt, reaching and educating those members are crucial to the success of making the NRA strong. We are considering different methods of reaching those members (we could use your help), but let’s focus on the BoD. Assume that you are fully up to speed and you know the allegations, facts and have concerns. You need to contact your directors!!! Let’s look at how we contact the BoD.

In January of 2019 Director Timothy Knight wrote an article on Ammoland in which he described how a member can contact their BoD. In the article he describes writing individual letters to the BoD’s as being, perhaps, the most productive method since many directors never see comments, questions or concerns on social media. Those letters take time and are also expensive, though. If I bought seventy-six stamps that would cost me roughly $57.80 right now at my local Walmart. Imagine if I had sent a letter for each new revelation of lawsuits, improprieties or other concerns in the past three months! Suffice it to say that I would certainly not be able to afford continuing to send those letters. I still agree with Director Knight, (if you can afford the time, energy and money to write those directors via mail, do it) but for those of us who can’t there has to be another way.

I have been compiling information on our BoD which, ironically, you won’t find on the NRA’s website. Unless you receive the monthly American Rifleman magazine you probably have zero clue who those directors even are (outside of some NBA player who hasn’t even been sworn in, but on his second term as a director). There are several others who, like me, have been trying to contact their board and have graciously shared their findings with me. We were worried about the enemies of the NRA obtaining this information but it seems they already have. In fact, if you were to google information on the BoD right now you would see two anti-gun groups front and center sharing more information about the NRA BoD than the NRA’s website ever has. That is appalling to me, but I am further appalled by the lack of means by which we contact our BoD. While that may be appalling to me, I am simply outraged at the lack of attendance certain directors have had. I have included that attendance (courtesy Adam Kraut’s article) on this director list below and Save the Second has a full goal addressing that on our third goal, Director Attendance.

Please, use this information to politely, and responsibly, share your concerns with your NRA directors. We desperately need an NRA that is strong, effective, efficient, relevant and accountable to its members.

If you are a BoD and would like us to redact any information here, we are happy to do so as long as you have alternate means by which your constituents can contact you.

-Ron Carter

*Update, July 29, 2019: There were five directors who had previously requested their email address be redacted for various reasons. Charles Cotton, Joe Allbaugh, Leroy Sisco, Matt Blunt and William Satterfield.

Others have directly or indirectly shared their email addresses and with some digging you can easily find them. It would be disingenuous to abstain from publishing on our form here since our goal is to give all of you the means to contact your NRA directors. We have posted those now, with the exception of Leroy Sisco whose email apparently is no longer working and Satterfield who we are awaiting a response from.

*Update August 10th, 2019: Three directors resigned on August 1st. You can read their resignation letter here. It is unknown exactly who will fill their spots as generally those vacancies are filled by runners up from the previous election. David Butz replaced Pete Brownell when he resigned. We know that Adam Kraut has declined a seat from the recent resignations. While in April the Board of Directors amended its bylaws to require any board nominee to have held a lifetime membership for at least five years, it is unknown whether the runners up would be grandfathered into those seats or be restricted as a result of that amendment. Until those directors are announced, the resignations will appear highlighted in red and stuck out on our sheet above.