Prestidigitation

If I were to ask pretty nearly anyone why the National Rifle Association (NRA) runs commercials that promote fear and paranoia, they'd give me one of two answers:

1. The NRA does not do that
2. Fear and paranoia sell

I probably would have said the latter. I think I've been duped, and not because I believe the former.

I read a fairly long piece in the New Yorker about Secrecy, Self-Dealing and Greed in the NRA. The short summary is the the NRA, which is a non-profit organization, appears to have a extremely tight relationship with their public relationship firm, Ackerman McQueen, a for-profit organization. That is, many people who work for the NRA are former Ackerman McQueen employees, and many people who are thought of as NRA spokespeople are actually Ackerman McQueen staff.

The result of this close relationship is that the NRA tends to make decisions that benefit Ackerman McQueen rather than its membership. In public filings in 2017 the NRA revealed it paid Ackerman McQueen more than $40 million. It's fine to pay your public relationship firm more than $40 million is you are getting more than $40 million of value from that payment. The evidence suggests they are not.

Glossy magazines, TV spots and launching their own NRATV don't appear to bring in as much money as they pay to produce them. Some of the promotional materials seem outright self-destructive - highlighting rich donors when the NRA gets most of their money from a broad array of small donors who might not like to see them spend it in this way.

It all adds up to why I said I think I've been duped. The NRA doesn't buy TV spots selling the idea that the Democrats are coming to take your guns because that's what gets them money or makes them powerful. The NRA buys those TV spots because the decision making at the NRA is controlled by the PR firm that they pay to make those TV spots. The people doing this know that people like me will believe that fear sells because we are cynical.

We're convinced that fear and paranoia sell, but they are not actually selling. They aren't selling fear, they are paying to put it out there. But they have been paying themselves to put it out there, using donor money. What fear and paranoia have been doing in this instance is make a loud distraction.

If the NRA continues to lose millions of dollars a year at some point it will collapse. I think it would be easy to see that as a victory for a lot of people who oppose the NRA's politics.

But this isn't a story about one half of America supporting gun massacres and another half opposing them and team good winning. This is a story about people who are supporting gun massacres as a distraction while they line their own pockets. Those people are getting away with it, team good is not winning. If the NRA collapses, the people who are responsible both for the poisonous politics and for the collapse of the organization will walk away millionaires. And then they will do it again.