The National Rifle Association has resurrected its classic slogan of defiance in response to a lawsuit that seeks to completely end the gun rights organization.
The message: New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit on Thursday, accusing the NRA of millions of dollars of financial misconduct.
- The organization quickly responded with a tweet saying, “From our cold dead hands.”
Late actor and longtime NRA president Charlton Heston popularized the slogan when he uttered it on stage at the organization’s 2000 convention, addressing then-Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.
The NRA also responded to James’ lawsuit in a statement on Thursday, calling it a “baseless premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend.”
- “[W]e not only will not shrink from this fight – we will confront it and prevail,” the NRA vowed.
The lawsuit: James said in a statement announcing her lawsuit that the NRA, over which she has jurisdiction since the group is registered in New York, is “fraught with fraud and abuse.”
- The lawsuit lists dozens of instances of alleged self-dealing, misuse of funds and mismanagement, which include executives’ use of donor money for fancy vacations, private jets and expensive meals.
- Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, general counsel John Frazer, former chief financial officer Woody Phillips and former chief of staff Joshua Powell are named in the complaint, alongside the NRA as a whole.
- James, who in 2018 referred to the NRA as a “terrorist organization,” seeks in the lawsuit to dissolve the group entirely – the most stringent remedy available to her.
NRA in turmoil: While the move outraged many pro-gun advocates, who viewed it as a politically motivated attack on gun owners, infighting and allegations of fiscal mismanagement have dogged the NRA in recent years.
- Last May, Allen West, an NRA board member and former Republican congressman, called on Lapierre, then the organization’s CEO, to resign following news reports that top executives were misusing donor funds.
- That same month, a letter by then-NRA president Oliver North was leaked to the press describing allegations of financial improprieties and requesting an internal review of “extraordinary payments.”
- The NRA ousted North a month before the letter emerged, with LaPierre accusing him of orchestrating an attempted extortion scheme.
NRA spokesman Jason Ouimet told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview published on Thursday that the organization plans to spend tens of millions of dollars in battleground states to help get President Donald Trump elected.
