Why don’t NRA officials donate to their own cause?

Could it be because they know they’re just making shit up? Or is it that they see their donors as rubes to be milked for their million-dollar paychecks? From Salon:

Four years ago LaPierre dusted off and embellished his Clinton-era prediction, arguing that if Barack Obama were elected, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity would be silenced, and “civil disarmament” would be implemented through a United Nations gun-ban treaty. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, but LaPierre now says it’s only because Obama and his advisers decided prior to his election to forgo implementation of the dastardly plan and instead “hatched a conspiracy of public deception to guarantee his re-election in 2012.” According to LaPierre, Obama still plans to “erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and exorcise it from the U.S. Constitution” in a second term, when he will turn “American’s guns into international soup cans and park benches.” Exactly when that will transpire, and whether Obama will repeal the Second Amendment with a two-thirds vote of the Senate or simply forgo that constitutional formality and resort to extralegal means, remains unclear. LaPierre only says that Obama is “just waiting for the moment to strike.”

The only way to avert this calamity, the NRA’s 4 million members are told in daily email alerts, the organization’s various magazines and regular fundraising appeals, is if they all dig deep into their pockets and send money to the NRA. “This is the most dangerous election of our lifetime,” screams the April cover of America’s First Freedom, the NRA’s flagship publication, showing a stern, pinch-lipped LaPierre. The battle cry for this year’s campaign to defeat Obama is “All In,” a poker metaphor designed to convey the idea that the stakes couldn’t be higher. This election, LaPierre wrote in First Freedom, “will decide whether Americans remain free” and, “That’s why NRA is ‘All In’ for the 2012 election, and why you must be ‘All In’ with the NRA.”

But the “all” in “all in” apparently doesn’t include LaPierre or any of the NRA’s other top executives. In fact, when it comes to putting his money “in,” LaPierre, who earns nearly $1 million a year at the NRA, invariably folds his cards. During his 20 years as NRA CEO, LaPierre’s name hasn’t shown up once in government reports of contributors to NRA political action committees. (The Federal Election Commission requires public reporting of all contributions of $200 or more.) In 2003, when the organization was $100 million in the red and LaPierre was pleading with members to donate to a “war chest” to deal with a “full-blown legislative assault” by “gun banners,” he himself donated nothing to the NRA’s Political Victory Fund, the group’s political action committee. He again gave nothing to the PAC in the 2008 election, despite his claim that Obama would confiscate hunting rifles and “ban use of firearms for home defense” (a charge Politifact.com labeled “intentionally dishonest”). LaPierre, who has signed off on scores of fundraising appeals to NRA members to help defeat “gun-hating politicians” and elect lawmakers endorsed by the NRA, has also elected not to contribute to those campaigns. His last contribution to an NRA-backed candidate was a whopping $500 back in 2002.


The current election may, in LaPierre’s words, “literally be a struggle for the survival of freedom in America,” but he’d apparently rather take that risk than cut a check. And he’s not alone. Other top NRA executives have also chosen not to put their money in, according to Federal Election Commission records going back to 1990 available at OpenSecrets.org. Executive director for general operations Kayne Robinson, another million-dollar-a-year man and a former NRA president, has never contributed to the Political Victory Fund — or not enough to register with the FEC in the past 22 years. Others who have no chips on the table in this supposedly critical election year for gun owners — and have never given to the PVF – include NRA president David Keene, the NRA’s first vice-president, second vice-president, secretary, treasurer, chief of staff, managing director and membership director. In fact, among the NRA’s current top officers, the only one who has ever contributed to the PVF is the PAC’s own chairman, Chris Cox. Cox has made two contributions totaling $2,000 since joining the NRA in 2002, both in 2008.

The lack of enthusiasm for the NRA PAC also extends to its 76 current directors, and 29 lobbyists, only one of whom, other than Cox, donated to the PVF. Among the directors, only two ever donated. The most recent gift, $500, was in 2006.