Category: Cops
Courtney Price was at home on Wednesday taking care of her one-year-old son, Waylon, when they experienced a terrifying and traumatic altercation with local law enforcement. What should have been an ordinary day took a turn for the worse when SWAT officers broke into the home, searching for a suspect.
In the aftermath of the raid, it was revealed that law enforcement had targeted the wrong home, and tragically, their actions resulted in the baby sustaining injuries. The events that unfolded left the family shaken and seeking justice for Waylon’s suffering.
Price told RedState that she had been staying with her aunt Redia and her husband for one week before the incident occurred. She recounted her experience, describing how she stood petrified as the police burst into her aunt Redia’s home, throwing a flashbang grenade into the residence and breaking windows. She was feeding her son, who has a condition requiring the use of a G-tube because he cannot eat by mouth. A little after 2 pm, she “started hearing very loud pings on the door,” and went to see what was happening.
I got up and started walking towards the door, and all I could see was a bunch of police because we were in a split-level house, so I was at the top of the steps there. All I could see was a bunch of police, and they were already hitting the door. I was trying to get to the door to open it, but I didn’t want to get hit, so I just froze on the steps. They busted it down and busted the windows out all at the same time. I was standing there, I froze. I really wanted to run to my baby and just help him because I see all that smoke getting on him. There were handguns pointed at me [with the officers] saying, ‘Get down, put your hands up, come down here.’ So I went down. They grabbed me and took me outside, put me in handcuffs.
Price explained that the officers kept her outside for 35 to 45 minutes while her son “was laying in his swing, covered in glass, covered in smoke, choking, gasping for air.”
One of the medics who were present at the scene placed a stethoscope on Waylon’s chest and indicated that he “sounds clear.” But the mother could see this was not the case. “My baby was blood-red, gasping for air,” she said. “He could not breathe. I asked for paramedics to be called. Paramedics were called, and the paramedics were amazing…they were amazing and helped so much.”
Upon arriving at the hospital, she was told that her son had pneumonia but did not believe it was related to the incident. But after Waylon was taken home, his situation deteriorated. She said:
That night, my son quit breathing, and I was able to…bring him back up. I kept him at home, and then, early morning, he quit breathing again. I had him maxed out on oxygen, maxed out on everything I had at home, and he was still [declining] into the low 80s. So we called 911 again and had an ambulance come.
Price said they went to the same hospital, but Waylon’s condition had worsened to the point that he needed to be transferred to a higher-ranked hospital. He was taken to Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, where it was revealed that he did not have pneumonia but was suffering from chemical pneumonitis.
He has chemical pneumonitis, which is inflammation in the lungs, irritation in the lungs. His soft tissue is irritated and inflamed. His heart is irritated and inflamed. He has chemical burns around his eyes. He had light chemical burns on his chest, arms, belly, and that has since gotten a lot better. The eyes are still pretty bad. My son was born so premature, he already had eye issues, and now we don’t know how it’s going to affect his eyes.
Waylon was recently moved out of the ICU, but the mother said, “he still has a long road ahead of him and won’t be getting out anytime soon.”
Elyria Police Chief Bill Pelko defended the officers, in an interview with a local news outlet:
“We hit the right house on Parmely,” Pelko said. “The search warrant was for 331 Parmely, that was the correct house. This wasn’t a case of us hitting the wrong house.”
Law enforcement had been looking for a 14-year-old black suspect who had previously lived in the house before Redia and her husband, Marlon Jennings. She explained to RedState:
They had been to the house five times within the last year looking for this little boy, and we’ve told them every time that he doesn’t live here. He hasn’t lived here in two years now. It was the previous residents before us. The little boy is black, and my uncle (Marlon) is also black. The rest of us are all white. He pointed at my uncle’s picture on the wall and said, ‘Are you sure this isn’t your family, the little boy?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m positive. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
In a press release, the Elyria Police Department claimed that the flashbang grenades “were deployed outside of the residence,” and insisted that the devices “do not produce a continuous burn and they do not deploy or contain any pepper gas or chemical agents.”
The second and third paragraphs read, in full (click post to read full Facebook post):
At approximately 2:12 p.m., the Elyria Police Special Response Team (SRT) executed the search warrant at 331 Parmely Ave. which was the correct address of the search warrant.
During the tactical operation, two diversionary devices, commonly known as a “flash-bangs” were deployed outside of the residence. These devices produce sound and light that is noticeable in day or night conditions and are intended to distract the suspects attention. Diversionary devices do not produce a continuous burn and they do not deploy or contain any pepper gas or chemical agents.
However, the above footage from the neighbor’s Ring camera shows an officer hurling the device into the home–with the noticeable presence of smoke.
The family is now faced with the daunting task of seeking justice while also making sure Waylon receives the medical treatment he needs. Price told RedState that during the raid, the officers knocked to the floor the child’s medical equipment, which is supposed to stay sanitized. The family is trying to raise funds to purchase new equipment. The family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the medical expenses.
Jeff Charles is the host of “A Fresh Perspective” podcast. He is a contributor for RedState, Newsweek Opinion and also has a Substack called “Chasing Liberty.”
Jeff is also a freelance writer and political contributor who has appeared on Fox News, The Hill’s “Rising,” Fox Soul, Newsmax, and the First TV Network.
He enjoys reading, binging TV shows, learning to play the banjo (badly), and all things nerdy. He also believes that any steak cooked above medium rare is burnt, and an abomination.
Check out all of his information here.
You can follow him on Twitter: @jeffcharlesjr
If you have a tip about a story of local government abuse, send him an email: jeff@afreshperspectiveshow.com
Federal law enforcement officials have launched a new initiative to inform the public of what they say is a growing problem that involves the illegal modification of semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic weapons.
Officials from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a series of public service announcements designed to raise awareness on the dangers of these machine gun conversion devices, which are often referred to as “switches,” “chips” or “auto sears.”
The devices can be 3D-printed at home, but are often sold online, sometimes under misleading names to avoid detection by law enforcement, and billed as being legal to possess.
But despite their seeming harmlessness on their own, simply owning one of the conversion devices carries the same legal penalty as carrying an illegal machine gun, even if you don’t even have a weapon to modify.
The public service announcements feature U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada and leadership from the ATF Los Angeles, highlighting the dangers of the illegal conversion devices and the stiff legal penalties for those found in possession of them.
“These devices are not gun accessories. They are illegal and considered machine guns under federal law,” says ATF LA Field Division Special Agent in Charge Christopher Bombardiere.
He adds that the ATF has recovered more than 31,000 of the devices in the last five years and compared the problem to the rise of ghost guns — untraceable firearms that are assembled using spare or 3D-printed parts and which have no serial number.
Law enforcement officials say the devices can switch a semi-automatic pistol or rifle into fully automatic in as little as 60 seconds. “One pull of the trigger can release all the ammunition in the magazine,” they said.
Estrada said simply possessing one of these “switches” can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and federal law enforcement officials are being extra diligent to keep the devices off the streets.
If you know of anyone who may be purchasing, making or stockpiling these devices, you are urged to contact your local ATF office. They can also be safely turned over at a local office.
A machine gun is described under the National Firearms Act as follows:
- Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.
- The combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun.
To view one of the public service announcements published by the ATF, click here.
Situation: A man is beating a woman and child. He is armed with a bat. You are the only one effectively capable of stopping him.
Lesson: Aimed fire works at close range. Deadly force against a violent criminal attempting to disarm you is justifiable. And even the most righteous shooting can have devastating reverberations.
October 16, 2018, Clarksville, Indiana. Dusk is fading into darkness. It is early evening at the River Chase apartment complex, a pleasant neighborhood where families barbecue and children play on lawns. It is not the sort of place where one expects deadly violence to break out.
Until it does.
Brandon Haycraft, 31, lives there. He is a tormented man. His baby has died a short time before, while lying in bed next to him, and he is swamped by guilt. He has been caught up in a cycle of substance abuse. One co-worker will later describe him as “a mean drunk.”
THC is in his bloodstream now, but the marijuana hasn’t mellowed him. He has taken anti-depressants, but they aren’t helping. Neither is booze. At the moment, his blood alcohol content is 0.228%, almost three times the legally drunk limit. He has told his significant other that he’s going to die tonight one way or the other, and he might just take her with him.
His prediction is at least partly correct.
Meanwhile …
Among Brandon’s many neighbors in this peaceful area is Adam Nesvick, 37. On this seemingly normal Tuesday evening he is home alone for the moment, preparing a dinner of tacos for the rest of his family who are due to arrive at the apartment soon.
He is interrupted by the sound of loud shouting. This is a neighborhood where children commonly play outside at this hour, and at first, he thinks it’s just kids getting a little rowdy. Glancing out the window, he sees his wife’s car has just pulled up, and he goes outside to meet her.
The tableau before him is unexpected. He notices his wife is on her cell phone, and he hears her scream, “My God, he’s going to kill her!” He’ll later learn 911 dispatch is on the other end of his wife’s conversation. A neighbor cries out plaintively, “My God, isn’t someone going to do something?”
And now Adam sees the cause of the trouble. His neighbor across the street is brutally punching his girlfriend in the face as she sits on the ground, feebly trying to protect herself. Her daughter, age nine, swings what appears to be an aluminum T-ball bat into the big man’s back, trying to stop him from beating her mom.
Adam watches in horror as Brandon rips the bat away from the child and throws her some six feet away.
Adam and Brandon both weigh about 240 lbs., but Adam is five-feet-nine while Brandon stands six-feet-two and is rippled with muscle. He’s also now armed: He has the metal baseball bat. Adam realizes he can’t deal with this bare-handed.
Adam runs back inside his apartment for his gun.
He’s had a carry permit since he was 18 years old. His current carry gun is a SIG SAUER M11-A1, fully loaded with 9mm Speer Gold Dot 124-grain +P bonded hollow points. He’s left it on his desk in an IWB Comp-Tac holster, and now he pulls it from its Kydex scabbard and sprints back toward the door, the pistol in his dominant right hand.
When he emerges from the door, he can see the situation has degraded. Before, the man had been punching the downed woman in the head, brutally. Then, she had been down on her butt as he beat her; now, she is down on her back on the front lawn with the boyfriend hulking over her, holding the bat horizontally in both hands across her throat, trying to crush her larynx.
The beatdown has turned into attempted murder in progress.
Closing to a distance of about 15 feet from attacker and victim, Adam stands in the street, levels the gun at Brandon and shouts, “Get the f**k off of her! Sit the f**k down or you’ll be shot!”
The big, angry man turns to face the rescuer. He flings the bat at Adam. It lands halfway between them on the lawn, some six or seven feet from the armed citizen who is still standing in the street.
Safe for the moment, the little girl runs into her apartment, followed by her mom. Brandon sits on the steps and puts his head in his hands. Adam lowers his SIG to a ready position. The man has obeyed his commands. Adam hopes it is over.
It isn’t.
Attack
The lull in the action lasts about 30 seconds. Then Brandon rises, his muscled body tensed with rage, and screams at Adam, “You don’t know me, motherf**ker!” He starts moving toward Adam and yells, “You gonna shoot me, motherf**ker? You aren’t going to do anything with that [gun], you fat ass!”
Adam is backing away from him, the pistol raised again now, and he is shouting, “Stop! Don’t do it! Stop! Stop!”
But the antagonist can move forward faster than the defender can backpedal, and is closing the distance fast, and at last there is only one thing left to do.
Shots Fired
Under the streetlights, the sky nearly dark, the green Trijicon night sights on the SIG glow like beacons. Adam Nesvick puts the front sight high on his attacker’s chest.
He fires as fast as he can hold the front sight in place. He sees blood squirt toward him from the man’s chest. Suddenly Brandon falls, pitching forward at about a 30-degree angle, and lands heavily face down in the street, motionless.
And, just that quickly, it’s over.
Immediate Aftermath
The Clarksville Police arrived quickly, some 30 seconds after the last shot had been fired. Adam’s wife Shannon had described the situation to the police before they got there, and none of the cops felt a need to take Adam at gunpoint. Per protocol, however, they patted him down, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back seat of a patrol car.
Adam said later, “I remember sitting in the back of the car praying for the soul of the man I had been forced to shoot, praying for the mom and daughter, praying for the well-being of my family, praying the police understands the situation and I actually get to go to my daughter’s wedding in four days and am not sitting in jail. While I was in the car, I noticed my left hand and arm were covered in blood spatter.”
It didn’t take the police long to sort things out. Haycraft had not survived. Nesvick’s aim for upper chest had been true. One of his four hits had pierced the man’s aorta, accounting for the blood spurt and spatter, and another had smashed the spine; that bullet, Nesvick opines, was likely the shot that finally dropped the attacker.
Immediate Aftermath
Nesvick’s first realization he wasn’t in trouble was probably when a female officer approached him while he was still handcuffed and confided, “You know you’re a hero to that woman and little girl.” Adam later told American Handgunner, “That remark helped steady my nerves and ground me.” He added, “I … was approached by the Chief of Police for our town and he said, ‘What you did was heroic, you probably saved their lives.’ He told me they had had prior dealings with the man and he was a dangerous individual.”
Says Adam, “Fast forward another hour and I’m sitting in the office area of the police station waiting to make my statement, watching the forensics officer check in the evidence … I saw them check in my gun, and there was blood on the slide. They checked in the bat, and they checked in a chunk of hair that had come from the mother, and a few other miscellaneous things.”
Adam continues, “While I was sitting there, finally in some kind of light, I noticed blood stains all over my shirt and pants. He was really close when I shot him. Anyway, I gave my statement, keeping it simple and to the point. The biggest thing I remember them pressuring me on was ‘Was it an accident? Did you inadvertently fire?’ My answer was ‘No, officer, I was scared shitless, but it was a conscious act to fire because I knew my life was in danger.’ I had my wife bring me new clothes so they could put mine in evidence, and I walked out and got in the car. The officers thanked me repeatedly for being cooperative.”
It took a while for the prosecutor to call Adam to confirm he considered Adam a hero, and he definitely wasn’t going to be charging him with anything. At this writing, no lawsuit has been filed, and the window for plaintiffs to do so will have closed by the time you read this. The prosecutor’s finding actually came sooner than that.
Wave3 News reported soon after the shooting, “‘He did approach the individual who was assaulting the lady and her child and did, at gunpoint, instruct him to leave them alone and sit down on the curb,’ said Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull. Police said the man complied for a while, but then tried to attack the neighbor and ignored warnings to stop. When he came at the neighbor, police said he shot him. ‘Based upon what we learned last night, I’m of the belief that it was self-defense, that it was justified under the law and therefore there was no arrest made in the case,’ Mull said. ‘In a case where an individual was acting violently and had just violently assaulted a child and a defenseless lady. Due to his intervention, the assault was terminated, and this individual was ultimately killed in an act of self-defense.’”
The legal side of it was, for all practical purposes, over. It had clearly been a justified homicide. But there were still the emotional and psychological elements to deal with.
Personal Aftermath
It is common for defensive gun usages to happen at or near one’s home. Often, family members are present, and it’s a traumatic thing for them to experience. You’ll recall Adam’s wife, Shannon, was outside the house and in fact the first to call 911. She told American Handgunner, “When Adam stepped out with the firearm, I told 911, ‘My husband has a firearm, he has a permit, he’s trying to get the guy to sit down.’ I heard the dispatcher say ‘Weapon involved’ or ‘Weapon on scene.’ My husband walked over to the curb and had the husband sit down. I saw the woman and girl run into the house. A car blocked my view of Brandon, I couldn’t see if he was sitting or lying. In 30 seconds, I saw the man jump up and come rapidly toward my husband and when they got about 10 feet apart, my husband started backing up. He was telling my husband, ‘You aren’t going to do anything with that, you fat ass.’ He began to lunge at Adam, and Adam fired. I thought it was three shots. He collapsed. I saw blood squirting everywhere.”
Altered perceptions are extremely common in these incidents. Far more often than not, auditory exclusion or auditory muting will occur. Adam Nesvick was no exception. He told AH, “I had auditory exclusion so bad I didn’t hear everything he said as he came at me while I was screaming ‘Don’t do it!’ When I fired, I remember hearing muffled gunshots. I heard little pops, but I was deaf as a post for three days later.”
Another extremely common phenomenon is tunnel vison. Adam told us, “When the woman and the little girl went into the house and he got up, I realized ‘Oh, my God, this is going to happen, I’m probably going to have to shoot,’ and I hyper-focused on him from then on.”
When multiple shots are fired, relatively few participants remember the round count correctly. This was true here as well. Adam and Shannon each thought Adam had fired three shots, while one eyewitness insisted five shots were fired. All were incorrect: Evidence incontrovertibly proved Adam had unleashed four rounds.
After you’ve been in an incident like this, people treat you differently. Dr. Walter Gorski, the great police psychologist who is credited with defining “post shooting trauma” as something separate and distinct from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) referred to it as Mark of Cain syndrome. Sometimes, you are excoriated as a murderer. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may be treated like a hero. The latter of course is better, but can still leave you wondering whether people still see you as the good neighbor, the good professional, the good worker at your job; instead, they see you as “He Who Killed,” and it changes the way they treat you, which in turn can change the way you feel about yourself.
Little kids had always seemed to play outdoors in their neighborhood; after the shooting, not so much. The mom and daughter whom Adam had rescued spent a couple of days in the hospital, refused to look at Adam or Shannon after coming home, and soon moved away. Other neighbors started moving away too.
That said, though, Adam reports, “No one really dumped on us. One of the little kids, who was a friend of the little girl who used the bat to try to get Brandon to stop beating her mom, saw us on the street and gave us a big thumbs up. Brandon’s best friend told me, ‘I’m sorry he died, but you did what you had to do.’ The apartment complex gave us a $50 gift certificate to go to dinner on them.”
Sleep disturbance is a virtually universal experience among those who’ve had to kill to survive. “I didn’t sleep for three days afterward,” Adam told us. “This eventually went away. I had flashbacks for a long time and still do occasionally, but not as bad or as vivid. Shannon had really bad flashbacks. We were comfortable talking about it, and that got us through a lot. Shannon got counseling. I got help from friends who had been through similar things, maybe more help than I would have gotten from a psychologist.”
In 2020, the Nesvicks moved to another state. “I thought getting away was the best thing, not being in the place every day where I had shot someone,” Adam explained.
The police gave him his gun back a month later. He was deeply touched to note the cops had not only wiped the blood spatter off the SIG but had cleaned and oiled it too.
His SIG went away. It carried too many unpleasant memories. Today Adam carries a CZ P10C.
Lessons
Excellent marksmanship, delivered at speed with the front sight visually indexed, put every shot where it needed to go and quickly ended the attack. The SIG M11-A1 had a full magazine of fifteen 9mm rounds. If Brandon had gotten it away from Adam, that was enough to kill the rescuer, his wife Shannon, and Brandon’s own significant other and her little girl, and any other witness who came into the line of fire. Adam Nesvick’s defensive gunfire very likely saved more lives than his own.
Adam had worked hard to develop shooting skill. He had learned from friends, read many books, and participated in gun-related internet forums. After the incident, he decided to seek formal training, and took a class from nationally recognized instructor John Murphy of Virginia. John told me Adam was very competent. Indeed, it was John Murphy who put me in touch with Adam and brought his story to these pages.
A lot of gun owners think home carry — wearing a handgun on their physical person when at home — is paranoid. If we think about it, the practice is a minor inconvenience for which in trade the homeowner gets instant access to a loaded gun when deadly danger suddenly presents itself. Had the SIG been on his hip instead of on his desk, Adam might have been able to back down Brandon before the latter put his bat to the throat of his victim. But there is no telling for certain.
You’ve all heard of “suicide by cop,” the self-destructive person who forces a lawman to kill him. This incident is a case of “suicide by armed citizen,” not the first such I’ve seen.
Adam Nesvick did the right thing. The criminal justice system immediately recognized that. Adam doesn’t consider himself a hero. He’s the only one who doesn’t.
Ezra’s Escapades By Bart Skelton
The summer had been dry enough to choke greasewood, and the dirt roads in southwest New Mexico were blessed with fine, powdery dust 4 or 5 inches deep. Driving down any of them made for an experience kin to a hurricane hitting a talcum powder factory. My old pickup was covered with the fine powder inside and out from my several trips out to my desert shooting range. I’d been doing some accuracy work with some .44 Magnum handloads using Hodgdon 4227, and it had required multiple trips down several parched, dust-infused roads to get to the range.
As the sun started making its way down the last stretch to the west, I decided I needed to wash the dust out of my mouth and cool down a bit. I headed to the Adobe Deli, southwest New Mexico’s premier steakhouse, bar, and desert rat lair.
The place was dark and cool inside, and the first sip of cool libation was pure heaven. When my eyes had adjusted somewhat, I noticed an older gentleman sitting at a table on the other side of the room, watching me with a slight smile. His hat was tipped back, and he was nursing a cocktail. He nodded my way, and with a little more eye focus, I finally recognized him.
“Git over here, brother,” he said as I approached the table. He stood and gave me a hefty abrazo, then patted me on the back. “Damn good to see you son. You’re looking good.”
“You too ol’ pard,” I said. It’d been a while since I’d seen Ezra, but he hadn’t changed a bit. “Aw, work’s been busy,” I said. “Been out trying to gin up some good-shootin’ .44 Mag loads for a javelina hunt this fall.”
“.44 Mag?” he said with a grin. “It’ll work on ’em, but there ain’t no better javelina gun than a Winchester .32 Special you know.”
Ezra was a retired lawman, and he knew guns pretty well, but he limited his knowledge to just a few models in a few calibers. Probably good thinking.
“Yep, I popped my share of javelina down in South Texas–and in this New Mexico country, too,” Ezra said. “Never had much reason to shoot ’em though, since you can’t eat the damned things.”
When I attempted to explain to him that javelina were palatable when properly handled and prepared, his laughter caught the attention of several of the Adobe Deli patrons.
“Hell boy, they don’t even eat the suckers down in Mexico,” Ezra said with another belly laugh. “I heard once javelina tamales were sorta tasty, ‘cept you have to drink a whole bottle a mescal to wash the taste outta your mouth.”
“But that .32 Special, now that’s one heck of a cartridge,” Ezra continued, taking a long sip of his amber colored cocktail. “I used that Winchester 1894 carbine for a lot of years as a law officer, and I think it’s the best police long gun there is. Ol’ Joaquin Jackson was the one that got me to carrying one.”
My old friend Joaquin, now retired from the Texas Rangers, was always partial to the Winchester 1894 carbine, but in .30-30 rather than the .32 Special. “So, Joaquin put you on the ’94 for police work, huh?” I asked the old law dog.
“Yep, in .32 Special,” he replied. “Oh, I know Joaquin liked the .30-30, but, like I told him, the .32 Special’s a lot better.” Ezra took another sip of his drink, then reached with both hands to his shirt pockets, looking for a cigarette, though he’d quit long ago.
“Many years back, I’s a chasin’ a crook they called ‘El Chito’ who’d committed a slew of armed robberies over around Las Cruces. One of my old informers told me Chito had hightailed it down to the bootheel when he found I’s after him. He had family down near Agua Prieta, Sonora, and I figured he planned to cross over there if it got too hot.”
Ezra went on to explain that “El Chito” was somewhat of a gun aficionado and fancied himself as a pistolero, as well as a fair rifleman. He was an avid deer hunter and bragged that he could hit a running deer at several hundred yards with his trusty treinta treinta, his .30-30. Chito, an ex-con, had been caught several times by the authorities for various acts of malfeasance and was generally carrying a gun.
“One of my snitches, ol’ Cinco, gave me the scoop on where Chito was hidin’, which was a little adobe not too far from the borderline,” Ezra continued. “Now Joaquin’s choice in the ’94 was the .30-30, and Chito’s, too. I figured I need somethin’ a little meaner. I got to readin’ in one of them gun magazines that the .32 Special was pretty close to the .30-30 in ballistics but shot flatter at longer distances.
One of my old law dog partners had retired, and I knew he was sittin’ on an old ’94 in .32 Special. I paid him a visit, and we did a little tradin’. Turned over a real nice Browning High Power that had been slicked up by RoBar straight across for the Winchester. My old pal figured I’d lost my mind.”
Ezra stared at his glass a moment, then took a long sip on it. After a lengthy session of throat clearing, he sat back, pondering.”Well, did you get him?” I finally asked.
The old lawman looked at me suddenly, his mind having been on something else. “No, no I didn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I set up on that adobe shack all night. Just before daylight, ol’ Chito came out the back door to answer nature’s call. Kinda crazy, but he was wearing one of them Panama hats. I hollered at him to freeze when he was at his most vulnerable, if you know what I mean. He fired a shot regardless, so I took as fine a bead I could on that hat.”
Ezra looked around the room a minute and grinned. “One thing for sure, the .32 shoots flatter, all right. I momentarily forgot there might be less bullet drop, so I compensated by aiming at the crown of that hat. That’s just where that bullet hit, and it was the last I ever saw of ol’ Chito. I still have the hat.” “Still have that old ’94?” I asked. “Best varmint gun I own,” he replied. “After I learned not to hold high.”
“Sit down here and join me for something cold and wet,” he said.
Few political groups in U.S. history have seen a collapse as swift and dramatic as the National Rifle Association.
Over the last several years, the NRA has experienced a public implosion, as the group loses members and revenue amid serious accusations of mismanagement and corruption. And according to the latest NRA tax returns obtained by The Daily Beast, the reputational and organizational damage is rolling on with seemingly no end in sight.
While the events contributing to the NRA’s freefall have been well-documented, a review of the gun rights group’s tax filings and political spending over the last 15 years provides some of the clearest evidence of its downfall—showing just how badly the legal setbacks and mismanagement have ravaged the once-formidable gun lobbying giant.
The NRA’s most recent tax return, filed in November of this year for 2022, reveals dramatic declines along almost every conceivable metric: revenue, assets, member dues, lobbying, and political spending—with conversely sharp increases in legal costs and deficits.
And as the NRA’s power and influence has waned, gun violence has perversely soared, particularly suicides, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
In one view, the NRA’s decline might be seen as a consequence of its own “success,” as its gargantuan lobbying efforts in the early to mid-2010s effectively froze the national gun control debate, diminishing the advocacy group’s utility. Still, that might be changing.
In 2022, 15 GOP senators repudiated the NRA, passing the first meaningful gun control package in decades. That could be a signal of the NRA’s demise, but it also could be interpreted as a reaction to the surging gun violence that continues to this day in part because of the lax gun laws that the NRA advocated for and won over that time.
What is clear is that the NRA today is in a dismal state. On the income side, 2022 was the fourth year in a row that revenue fell, marking its weakest fundraising year since at least 2008. Membership dues are at all-time lows, according to available public data, and staffing is at the lowest point since those costs began their downward plunge in 2016, while the group’s legal costs—largely driven by civil actions alleging rampant mismanagement of funds and self-dealing—are proportionately higher than ever.
The roughly $211 million that the NRA reported in income last year is still, of course, an enormous figure—more than double that of its handful of gun-rights competitors combined. But it’s also less than 60 percent of the NRA’s 2016 revenue high of $367 million.
That decline has driven the NRA deep into the red, leading to a $22 million deficit last year. That’s the group’s largest deficit since 2016, when it spent record sums during a vital election cycle, leaning on its high revenues and fat cash reserves as ballast for the spending binge. Today, however, the well is drying up.
The NRA’s net assets have plummeted. An internal audit obtained by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington shows that the group shed $36 million in value during 2022, going from $77.8 million in January to $41.8 million by year’s end.
And as a result, the NRA has been forced to tighten its belt while its influence wanes.
The group reported nearly $230 million in expenses last year, its second-lowest overall spending level since 2011, according to archived tax records. Only 2021 was lower.
One significant metric of decline is the group’s outside political spending, which has flagged since Donald Trump was elected. Total political outlays for the 2018, 2020, and 2022 cycles combined are at parity with what the NRA spent in the 2016 election alone, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
In the lobbying realm, the NRA shelled out big in 2021. That came directly on the heels of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ ongoing civil fraud suit, filed in August 2020, and while the organization was simultaneously attempting to declare bankruptcy and reorganize in Texas. (Texas courts ultimately rejected that reorganization as a bad-faith effort.)
But in the two years prior to 2021, lobbying expenditures had fallen dramatically, as they did again in 2022. The levels for the current year, 2023, are stacking up to potentially be the lowest since 2008, according to CRP data.
A number of factors have put downward pressure on the NRA’s finances.
One major contributor is the drop in dues, with member fees bringing in around $83 million in 2022—the lowest on record since at least 2008 and a nearly 59 percent drop from 2016, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis this October from CREW. The NRA also saw its lowest income from contributions and grants income since 2011, despite an overall 35 percent increase in fundraising expenses—indicating that the group’s investments are yielding smaller returns.
With less money coming in, the nonprofit has been running up staggering legal fees from its ongoing civil disputes. Those include its court fights in New York, which involve millions of dollars in alleged self-dealing and mismanagement—including on behalf of the organization’s beleaguered CEO, Wayne LaPierre—as well as a battery of complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging unlawful political coordination and shell company shenanigans.
The NRA has fought the New York lawsuit tooth and nail. The group went on the offensive with its own separate lawsuit against the state, which made its way to the Supreme Court this November. Last year, those efforts yielded a small victory when a New York court stopped that state’s AG, James, from dissolving the organization entirely, though she was allowed to pursue narrower damages and is actively doing so.
As a result, the NRA’s legal costs in 2022 were proportionately the highest they’ve ever been, with its $44 million in legal payments accounting for nearly 20 percent of expenses—roughly one of every five dollars spent. (In 2017, the NRA’s legal costs were 2 percent of expenses.) The group’s largest single vendor last year was its principal law firm, Brewer Attorneys and Counselors, which received about $23.5 million, or nearly 10 percent of the NRA’s 2022 budget.
In response to The Daily Beast’s comment request, NRA spokesperson Billy McLaughlin provided a statement arguing that the group’s legal defense costs are an investment, noting that the NRA is still head and shoulders above competing gun rights groups.
“As pundits and anti-Second Amendment crusaders continue to predict the demise of the NRA, the Association remains the largest and most effective advocacy organization of its kind, period. The NRA has invested heavily in its legal defense against the NYAG and, in March 2022, scored a major legal victory—when a New York court struck down attempts by the NYAG to dissolve the organization,” McLaughlin said.
“Beyond that, the NRA continues to score many legal and legislative victories, defending the Second Amendment and its patriotic members,” he continued. “As another example, the U.S. Supreme Court recently accepted the NRA’s First Amendment case against a former New York State financial regulator for review.
That decision is a landmark development in one of the most closely watched First Amendment cases in the nation. Only a few weeks ago, it was announced that the ACLU will join as counsel in that case.”
(The ACLU denounced the NRA in a statement to The New York Times explaining why it took the case, saying the civil liberties group doesn’t support the NRA or its mission. “We signed on as co-counsel because public officials shouldn’t be allowed to abuse the powers of the office to blacklist an organization just because they oppose an organization’s political views,” the ACLU said.)
Robert Maguire, a nonprofit analyst at CREW, told The Daily Beast that he hasn’t seen anything like the downfall the NRA has experienced.
“The NRA is the definition of an embattled organization,” Maguire said, referencing the array of legal and internal woes plaguing the organization. “2016 wasn’t that long ago, and at that time the NRA was, if not the most powerful organization in D.C., certainly one of them.”
“We have a lot of mass shootings in this country, and we used to have this discussion, this wait-and-see what the NRA is going to say,” Maguire continued. “But you don’t see them playing on the national stage the way they used to, and its repugnant statements after mass shootings are pretty much expected and just seem like an absurd afterthought.”
Maguire noted that “as an alternative or corollary to their implosion, they are a victim of their own success.”
The NRA eschewed its gun safety philosophy in the 1970s, transitioning into a trade organization to promote gun sales under the banner of the Second Amendment. That general shift—which former Chief Justice Warren Burger famously described as the “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public”—was partly designed for profit, partly for electoral politics, and partly to normalize firearms ownership and thereby forestall legislative and judicial restrictions.
Those efforts have rendered gun control politically nonviable for years, even in the face of overwhelming popular support. And as political and judicial attitudes grew increasingly calcified, the NRA has become less necessary.
A few gun rights groups have tried to give the NRA a run for its money, but so far they haven’t gotten the same traction. A review of tax returns from the leading organizations—the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Safari Club, and Gun Owners of America—reveals mixed trends in revenue. But in 2022, all three groups combined only pulled in about one-third of the NRA’s income.
Maguire noted that the NRA’s downfall tracks with increased gun ownership.
“Previously, we didn’t have this broad gun idolization culture, but in the ’90s you have Columbine, followed by mass shooting after mass shooting, and the NRA comes out every time to say, ‘You’re not going to take our guns away from me,’” Maguire said. “And every time, gun sales go up, so that today we have more guns than people in this country. We’re so saturated with them, who needs an organization to protect our guns?”
But gun deaths have also increased along with ownership, a darkly ironic trendline when contrasted with the gun lobby’s decline.
Firearms deaths peaked in 2021, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recording nearly 49,000 fatalities—the majority of them suicides, which was a record high—and only a decrease of 700 deaths in 2022.
Unofficial data for 2023 from the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles information from law enforcement and government sources, shows 41,585 firearm-related deaths as of Dec. 20, with more than 56 percent being suicides. There’s also been a steady rise in mass shootings, which the FBI defines as involving four or more people—with Pew Research data revealing a long-running and increasingly dramatic rise in “active shooter” incidents.
However, 2022 also saw President Joe Biden signing the first meaningful federal gun control legislation in three decades, which passed the Senate with significant bipartisan support. As holes appear in the firearms lobby, gun control advocacy organizations like Everytown and Giffords are gaining traction.
This year, Everytown has led the lobbying charge among both gun rights and gun control groups, according to CRP data. And in 2022, Everytown and Giffords together raised about the same amount of money as the top three gun rights groups combined—not counting the NRA.
The post The NRA Is at Rock Bottom—And 15 Years of Tax Filings Tell the Story appeared first on The Daily Beast.
Hopefully soon a certain “Gentleman” named Wayne will find out if this is true. Grumpy