The NRA's success has surprised me for a long time, more so after I started shooting and paying more attention. For a long time they'd struck me as mostly representing gun-makers, with their scare tactics instrumental in jacking up prices and demand both at various times.

I was a member for a single year, joining not long after my starting to target shoot because the range I joined required it. But after reading the e-mails we'd get, I was damn sure I wouldn't renew (and didn't). This was back around 2007-08 when Obama ran the first time, and much of what they said about his voting record in the Illinois legislature was completely fabricated.

Then more recently we have the NRA as a possible source of Russian influence and/or money laundering. But it turns out the problems may go even deeper still:

Even as the association has reduced spending on its avowed core mission—gun education, safety, and training—to less than ten per cent of its total budget, it has substantially increased its spending on messaging. The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a life style built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away.