The National Rifle Association’s former second-in-command announced his support for certain gun control policy proposals in his forthcoming book.
The ex-official, Joshua Powell, who was fired in January, voices support for background checks and red flag laws, which allow police to confiscate guns from individuals a judge deems to be a threat to themselves or others, in his book, Inside the NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed and Paranoia Within the Most Powerful Political Group in America, according to the New York Times.
He laments how the NRA, which claims to have roughly 5 million members, has become “an organization of ‘No,’ in response to any effort to quell gun violence.”
Powell also describes the chief executive of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, as a bad manager but a good lobbyist with a good understanding of how to promote the group’s objectives to President Trump. LaPierre “couldn’t run an organization on a fiscally sound basis to save his life,” he writes.
The book, due for release next week, comes at a difficult time for the NRA, which has been experiencing financial issues, and, last month, the attorneys general for New York and Washington, D.C., filed lawsuits against the group.
In the New York case, Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit, People of the State of New York v. The National Rifle Association, against the gun rights organization, charging it with a string of “fraud and abuse” violations.
“The NRA’s influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets,” James said in a statement. “The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is why, today, we seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law.”
The lawsuit filed by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine against the NRA and its charitable organization claimed that they were “misusing charitable funds to support wasteful spending by the NRA and its executives.”
Powell and LaPierre were two of the four current and former NRA executives named in the New York lawsuit against which the NRA filed a retaliatory lawsuit.
In James’s lawsuit, Powell is accused of using his NRA-issued credit card for tens of thousands of dollars in travel and entertainment purchases. The NRA fired him, according to the lawsuit, after learning that between 2016 and 2019, he spent $33,000 in improper travel expenses, $4,000 on improper technology purchases, and other miscellaneous expenses. He was forced to pay upward of $40,700 back to the NRA.
