National Rifle Association (NRA)

The NRA Board of Directors consists of 75 members, 25 of whom stand for election or re-election at the NRA Annual Meeting. All those who have been NRA members for at least five years are eligible to vote. About 140,000 of 2.6 million members (~4%) participated in these elections in the early 1990s. Candidates who showed a willingness to compromise on legal gun control generally had no chance of election.

Until 1977, the actual leadership was the responsibility of the Management Committee, which included the president, elected for one year at a time, and fewer than ten board members. This management committee appointed a Nominating Committee, which selected NRA members to stand for re-election or re-election each year. At the 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati, these board-nominated candidates were replaced by candidates selected by the membership, and the Management Committee was dissolved. The previous Vice President was elected directly by the meeting and given executive powers (Executive Vice President, EVP). Political lobbying is the responsibility of the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), which was established in 1975. Its director reported directly to the vice president in 1977, giving him the same rights as the chief of general operations to whom he had previously been accountable. Since then, major association bylaws could only be changed by a general membership meeting. After the dismissal of then ILA Director Neal Knox in 1982, the Board of Directors obtained an amendment to the bylaws at a membership vote that again gave them the right to elect the Executive Vice President (EVP) themselves.

Since 2003, the presidents of the NRA have each been elected for one year and can be re-elected for a maximum of one further year. Unlike the respective Vice President and ILA Director, they have only representative duties and powers. The following persons have held or are holding these leadership positions in the NRA:

The NRA has other sub-organizations besides the ILA, including the NRA Foundation, the sponsoring organization Friends of the NRA, and the campaign organization Political Victory Fund (PVF). Through regular fundraising appeals and e-mail campaigns by all these sub-organizations, the NRA took in $70 million in 1994. Behind piecemeal individual donations are also major industrial donors, including 20,000 gun dealers and gun manufacturers, as well as some wealthy conservative financiers. The NRA took in another $8.6 million in 1993 through ads placed by the U.S. gun industry in its association newspapers. The gun dealers, in turn, solicited donations to the NRA from gun buyers; from this came millions more annually. By appealing to its members to make earmarked donations of a set amount directly to the PVF, the latter received over $16.5 million from 1988 to 1994, which it was legally allowed to spend as campaign contributions. In doing so, the NRA circumvented the then-legal limits on individual donations to political interest groups. In 1993-94, the NRA spent over one-third of all campaign funds independent of political parties. It is thus considered the largest and most effective lobbying group in the US.

The NRA offers many different courses and training programs in the use of firearms of all kinds, tailored to specific target groups, including children, youth, women, teachers, hunters, police officers, members of the judiciary and the military. It is therefore recognized as a non-profit organization in the USA and is exempt from taxes. It established shooting competitions for youth since 1903, training for hunters since 1949, for police officers since 1960, and some states require hunters to attend NRA courses. In 2012, as many as one million youths took NRA courses annually. 10,000 law enforcement members received NRA certification as firearms instructors. In total, 55,000 certified NRA instructors now train about 750,000 firearm owners each year. For women, there is the Refuse to be a Victim program.

The NRA publishes several monthly magazines for its various audiences, which members receive free of charge: American Rifleman, American Hunter, Americas First Freedom (1997 to 2002 under the name American Guardian), Woman's Outlook.

For children from preschool age to sixth grade, the NRA has offered a program featuring the mascot Eddie Eagle since 1988. It is designed to educate children to be careful with firearms in order to avoid shooting accidents. The program has been criticized as an advertisement for the gun industry, intended to establish a gun culture among young people and thus recruit future NRA members. It makes children responsible for the safe handling of guns, rather than requiring adults to keep guns out of reach of children. At the same time, the NRA opposes all legal steps that make it difficult or impossible for children and young people to have access to weapons.