At the time of its founding in 1871, the National Rifle Association's stated purpose was to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis." In 2019, the organization's unstated purpose is to make its executives and board members as rich as the law will allow. According to a new Washington Post investigation, the NRA has paid money to 18 of the outfit's 76-member board of directors over the past three years in exchange for a variety of "services" rendered.

Some of the more intriguing line items include $3.1 million to firearms executive Pete Brownell, for products manufactured by his company; $400,000 to former NFL player Dave Butz, for "consulting"; $85,000 to former director and current White House communications staffer Mercedes Schlapp, for media consulting; and $50,000 to former rock artist Ted Nugent, for unspecified musical performances.

None of this should be confused with the other financial scandals in which some of the NRA's more notable personalities have found themselves embroiled as of late. Earlier this year, on the eve of the organization's convention in Indianapolis, NRA president Oliver North abruptly threatened to disclose "damaging" information about NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre's penchant for charging lavish personal expenses—including a quarter million dollars on foreign travel and nearly $300,000 on fancy Italian suits—to longtime NRA ad agency Ackerman McQueen. Ackerman McQueen is responsible for producing the Second Amendment propaganda that runs on NRATV, a 24-hour streaming channel; the NRA, reportedly unhappy with NRATV's increasingly frequent forays into unhinged extremism, sued the agency in the spring over alleged double-billing practices.

LaPierre, never one to be caught unawares by public revelations of his shameless grifts, retorted that North is the true villain in this story, since Ackerman McQueen paid him millions each year to host a show on NRATV, and North would not share with the NRA's lawyers any details of his own lucrative double-dipping scheme. The NRA's board—the same people implicated by the Post's report—backed LaPierre, who has held his position for more than 25 years. In a farewell statement, a despondent-sounding North urged members that LaPierre's actions had plunged the organization into a "clear crisis" and jeopardized its tax-exempt status, but announced he would not seek a second term as president.

Although a tax-law expert described the volume of the NRA board's insider transactions to the Post as "astonishing," he noted that the documents he reviewed do not indicate that the payments were illegal. Under federal law, compensation paid to nonprofit board members and other "insider" figures is permissible if the compensation does not exceed the fair market value of services provided. As long as Nugent, whose most recent Billboard Hot 100 appearance came courtesy of "Wango Tango" in 1980, would charge $50,000 to anyone else for the appearances in question, the NRA is within its rights to pay him that amount.

As I detailed last year, the NRA board of directors is composed mostly of the organization's most famous members, nearly all of whom are cherry-picked by existing board members and insulated from accountability by a host of institutional safeguards. Only one-third of the board turns over each year, and of the five million members the NRA claims to have on its rolls, only fully paid lifetime members and those who have been annual members for five straight years are even eligible to cast a ballot. A nine-person Nominating Committee, assembled by the board, issues formal candidate endorsements for each election; of the nine individuals on the Nominating Committee, at least six of them are board members already. In other words, the most influential voice in NRA elections is that of a body put together by incumbents and made up of a two-thirds supermajority of incumbents, just to be safe.