CT Blue

Sometimes it’s tough being an ultra right wing organization. The problem is, you’re best strategy for success as an organization is failure. Just ask the NRA and the arms manufacturers that back it (we’ll put Russia aside for the moment). Turns out that times are toughwhen you’re on top:

The NRA is losing membership fees, and it’s running up huge deficits as a result. These grim findings, based on an audit obtained by OpenSecrets, raise doubts about the long-term prospects of the radical gun lobbying group.

“The document offers the first look at the NRA’s finances in the wake of the 2016 elections,” OpenSecrets reports. “It shows that for the last two years, the NRA saw plummeting income from dues-paying members, and that has, in turn, fueled growing deficits.”

Specifically, the NRA ran up a $14 million deficit in 2016, which then ballooned to $31 million in 2017. That’s a stunning reversal from 2015, when the NRA posted $27 million in positive assets.

There may be multiple reasons for the decline. It may be that younger people are as turned off to guns as they are to cars, and as NRA members die (there are good things about the fact that people die) they are not being replaced by other addle-brained individuals. But I think, in the main, the NRA is the victim of its own success:

The gun industry, which the NRA represents, is also suffering huge sales losses in the Trump era. Traditionally, gun sales soar when there is a Democrat in the White House because the NRA and its allies in the right-wing press gin up hysteria about gun ownership being outlawed.

But without that artificial panic, gun sales have plummeted.

If Hillary had won, the NRA would be doing just fine.

It’s somewhat interesting that the arms industry isn’t stepping in and making up for the funds the NRA has lost from dues. It must be nice to have a bunch of suckers pay for your lobbyists, and maybe they just can’t quite believe those days may be past.

For sure, this is not an isolated phenomenon. I’m sure Act Blue is bringing in more money now than before Trump got elected. But it remains a fact that these right wing groups thrive on casting themselves as imperiled victims, and that, in their heart of hearts, they’d really much rather that the Democrats win, so they can keep the till well filled. Maybe that’s the real reason they’re pulling back on political spending:

So far this season, the NRA has committed to spend just $3 million to help Republicans. That’s down from $19 million in 2016, and $11 million in 2014 at this same juncture in the midterm election cycle.

After all, if the Republicans lose big time, the NRA can start scare mongering about gun confiscations, etc., and their real clients, the gun manufacturers, will start raking in the cash again.