The National Rifle Association announced Friday it has filed for bankruptcy and will seek to incorporate the nation’s most politically influential gun-rights group in Texas instead of New York.

The announcement made on the NRA’s website comes months after New York’s attorney general sued the organization over claims that top executives illegally diverted tens of millions of dollars for lavish personal trips, no-show contracts for associates and other questionable expenditures.

The coronavirus pandemic has also upended the NRA, which last year laid off dozens of employees, canceled its national convention and scuttled fundraising. Still, the NRA claimed in announcing the move that the organization was “in its strongest financial condition in years.”

The NRA said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Dallas federal court.

“The move will enable long-term, sustainable growth and ensure the NRA’s continued success as the nation’s leading advocate for constitutional freedom – free from the toxic political environment of New York,” the NRA said in a statement.

The gun-rights group boasts about 5 million members. Though headquartered in Virginia, the NRA was chartered as a nonprofit in New York in 1871 and is incorporated in the state.

 

Lead photo via Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle via AP.

 

Related Stories
‹
NRA Opens Gun Convention in Texas After School Massacre
Written by JUAN LOZANO and DAVID A. LIEB The National Rifle Association begins its annual convention in Houston on Friday, and leaders of the powerful gun-rights lobbying group are gearing up to “reflect on” — and deflect any blame for — the deadly shooting earlier this week of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school […]
NRA’s Gun Rights Message Lingers Despite Legal, Money Woes
Written by COLLEEN LONG Liberals have cheered the highly public legal and financial jeopardy ensnaring the National Rifle Association, seeing the gun lobby’s potential demise as the path to stricter firearms laws. But, it turns out, the NRA’s message has become so solidified in the Republican Party that even if the organization implodes from allegations of […]
Private Sales Emerge as Obstacle To Senate Action on Guns
Written by MARY CLARE JALONICK Democrats in Congress are trying to pass the first major gun control legislation in more than two decades with the support of President Joe Biden, who said Thursday that it is “long past time” to do so. But they are confronting a potentially insurmountable question over what rules should govern private […]
Scandal-Ridden NRA Head LaPierre Digs in Against Gun Control
In the aftermath of the back-to-back shooting massacres in Texas and Ohio, the debate over gun control has returned to the National Rifle Association and its immense power to stymie any significant legislation on the issue. The man largely responsible for the NRA’s uncompromising stance is its decades-long CEO, Wayne LaPierre, who has been engulfed in turmoil and legal […]
Only One Way to Fight the Power of the NRA
Unbelievable. The National Rifle Association has so conned us into thinking that guns are the American way, Patriotic, and God-fearing, that we don’t even pay attention when a family implodes because of the easy, accessibility of guns.  Congressional candidates are scared to death, pardon the pun, of the the power of the NRA to get […]
What Can We Do About Guns?
Unbelievable. Buried in the middle of the paper in a catch-all section called “other news” was the headline “Grandfather Kills 6 Children, Mother of Children, and Self.” Folks, this is major slaughter and nobody cares?  The National Rifle Association has so conned us into thinking that guns are the American way, Patriotic, and God-fearing, that […]
›