NRA bleeds $35 million as member dues dry up: watchdog report

The National Rifle Association is continuing to hemorrhage money, a watchdog group reported Tuesday, as the infamous gun rights organization sees an ongoing loss of membership dues.

The NRA lost $35 million in revenue last year, according to the report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. That followed a loss of nearly $34 million the year before. The eye-popping figures forced the organization to "dip further and further into its reserve funds," the report found, causing its net assets to drop "nearly in half over the course of 2023, marking the second year in a row they had seen such a precipitous drop in revenues."

It's a steep decline for an organization that once seemed invincible, hosted its own far-right TV network to promote gun ownership and accessories, and served as the de facto public face of efforts to block consideration of new gun control laws in the United States.

According to the report, "the group’s overall income — not just from members, but from all sources — is so low that it amounts to less than what it brought in just from members alone in four of the previous ten years. And there are signs in the documents suggesting that the problem is only getting worse in 2024."

An audit completed this year revealed "the NRA’s total revenue from members in 2023 fell to $61.8 million, only a fraction of the nearly $223 million the group brought in from members a decade before in 2013 (all numbers are adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, its overall revenue was down to just $178 million," the report continued. "To put that in perspective, the organization’s 2023 overall fundraising from all sources amounts to less than what the NRA raised just from its members alone in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2018."

The NRA in previous years routinely pulled in $400 million annually.

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But the Trump years were a drag on the NRA's ability to attract new membership — compounded by a massive financial mismanagement scandal in which the group's longtime boss Wayne LaPierre was found to have dipped into the organization's funds to pay for his own lifestyle. This year, a judge in New York imposed a 10-year ban on LaPierre's involvement with the NRA.

The New York Attorney General additionally took legal action to try to dissolve the NRA altogether, citing a pattern of fraud. The NRA attempted to file bankruptcy to get around this but was blocked from doing so. Ultimately, a judge did not allow that action to move forward.