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Just a few weeks ago, the National Rifle Association claimed to be in dire financial straits in a court filing, saying it could soon be “unable to exist” due to a directive from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urging New York insurers and financial services companies to “review” their relationships with the organization. Today, the NRA has said fuck being broke, I’m worth it and I’m doing self-care with a seven figure ad buy supporting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.


As USA Today reported, the buy will target five regions represented by senators the group views as possible swing votes: one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, and four Democrats: Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Doug Jones. The ad warns, in the urgent and gravelly tone of a guy narrating a horrifying true crime show on the Discovery channel, that “your right to self-defense depends on this vote”:

Meanwhile, the anti-Kavanaugh side is kicking off a multi-city tour dubbed Rise Up for Roe, with big names like Elizabeth Warren and Alyssa Milano. Thanks to America’s terrible non-profit disclosure laws, we don’t know how much groups seeking to defeat Kavanaugh, like Demand Justice, have to spend compared to the big right wing groups like Judicial Crisis Network or the NRA, but it seems safe to assume that the pro-Kavanaugh groups have vastly more cash at their disposal: JCN alone spent $17 million on preventing Merrick Garland from being confirmed to the Supreme Court.


However little we might know about the finances behind the campaign to confirm Kavanaugh at large, it’s interesting that the NRA managed to find between one and ten million dollars—USA Today didn’t specify—between its couch cushions for this ad, despite claiming in court just three weeks ago that it was broke as a joke.

I find this very relatable in the sense that when I am broke, I also tend to carry on spending money on stupid shit as if I am not broke and everything is fine. My suggestion to the NRA is that if they want to feel better about being broke, Sephora is a much more delightful way to spend money you don’t have than trying to put a gruesome piece of shit on the Supreme Court. Plus, you get reward points.

My other suggestion to the NRA is to disband and go fuck itself.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated the Judicial Crisis Network spent $17 million preventing Neil Gorsuch from being seated on the Supreme Court. It was Merrick Garland, not Gorsuch.