Bankruptcy protection applied for: US gun lobby NRA declares itself bankrupt

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Creditor protection applied for
US gun lobby NRA declares itself bankrupt

For decades, the NRA in the United States has been fighting against stricter gun laws. The state of New York wants to put an end to the lobby association. To prevent dissolution, the organization is now filing for bankruptcy – to gain time to rebuild.

The influential US gun lobby organization National Rifle Association (NRA) goes bankrupt. With this, the NRA wants to avoid a threatened dissolution procedure by the public prosecutor's office at its headquarters in New York and prepare for a fresh start in the state of Texas. The non-profit organization filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of US bankruptcy law in a court in Dallas, Texas, which gives the organization room for rebuilding.

The goal is a restructuring into a Texan organization, as it was called in a press release. There is a "corrupt political and regulatory environment" in New York, she wrote. New York State filed a lawsuit against the NRA in August with the aim of disbanding the group. Attorney General Letitia James accused the leadership of having diverted millions. "The influence of the NRA was so strong that the organization was not controlled for decades, while the leadership put millions in their own pockets," she said at the time. The NRA has served as a "breeding ground for greed, abuse and shameless violation of the law".

The lawsuit that James filed in Manhattan alleges that NRA executives paid for family travel to the Bahamas, private jets, and expensive meals. Violations by the NRA against its own statutes and federal and state laws have resulted in a loss of more than $ 64 million in three years. This led the NRA to be in the red in 2018.

The NRA called the allegations groundless and spoke of an attack on the constitutional rights of gun owners. She is traditionally close to President Donald Trump's Republicans, while James is a Democrat. The NRA works as a lobby group for the rights of gun owners anchored in the US constitution and organizes courses on handling firearms, among other things. Critics accuse her of being jointly responsible for the numerous gun victims in the United States through her work.