Opinion By Bob Barr, NRA President

With the start of the NRA Board election, many NRA members understandably are focused on the NRA’s future, our financial strength, and the reforms the Association already has implemented to protect ourselves and our assets moving forward.

Now that the New York trial has ended, I can confidently say that the NRA truly is coming back. The internal reforms we put in place beginning five years ago have been successful. In fact, the New York trial court’s December 11, 2024 Final Judgment, expressly incorporated many of these very reforms we already had implemented.

In this environment, it is important to briefly outline the steps that NRA has taken to reform its policies and procedures for safeguarding NRA’s finances and thereby preventing improper transactions and establishing secure financial controls.

Corporations commonly rely on internal financial control procedures in their accounting departments to verify all financial transactions. These control procedures are designed to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of income, expenses and debts that a company incurs, to protect an organization from fraud.

However, company managers do have the power to override the internal control procedures as part of their management duties. A fraudulent override of financial control procedures can occur if executives intentionally bypass the internal control procedures to conceal fraudulent transactions, for example by processing invalid journal entries and recording fictitious expenses.

Such management overrides can be difficult to detect, because they are done at the highest levels of an organization.

NRA’s past experience with inappropriate spending was the result of improper overrides of control procedures by an executive (who obviously is no longer associated with us).

Although NRA’s contract auditing firms did not detect these improper transactions, the NRA was able to detect the transactions when it hired a forensic auditing firm. At that point the improper spending was terminated and shortly thereafter, the NRA adopted fraud detection reforms that have prevented any further improper transactions. Hence, the New York trial judge’s recognizing NRA’s reforms in his judgement.

The NRA has since implemented multiple additional financial reforms to protect the NRA’s assets, including:

• Appointed a new Audit Committee to oversee the NRA’s financial reporting procedures. This committee has retained an independent auditing contractor to thoroughly review and verify all items of income and expense. This auditing contractor will employ unique auditing procedures, custom-designed to analyze NRA’s business practices, to assure that all financial transactions are accurate and legitimate.
• A whistleblower policy that encourages employees to report any perceived wrongdoing via a confidential telephone or web-based hotline and provides explicit protection from retaliation.
• Corporate Governance training is now required for Board members and officers.
• Integrity and leadership training is required for employees and managers.
• A revised code of conduct and enhanced conflict of interest policy have been established.
• A Chief Compliance Officer was elected
• An internal auditor was appointed

As a result of these reforms, NRA’s financial protection reforms are judged to be secure. But that’s not all.

The chairman of the NRA’s Finance Committee recently brought together all NRA department heads for a major review and discussion of all matters of income, expenditure, budget and financial obligation. The result of these discussions was to create a transparent, realistic and balanced operating budget for 2025.

NRA’s Ethics Committee has been reactivated and has established additional policies and standards for ethical conduct, conflicts of interest and procedures for handling complaints. The Committee has reviewed numerous inquiries and provided guidance on new conduct protocols as part of NRA’s initiative to educate board members on the new policies and standards.

With new audit, financial, and ethical oversight committees appointed, extensive financial reforms now in place and NRA assets securely protected, NRA now needs to focus on the pressing challenges for restoring NRA.

These challenges are summarized below:

• Repair – Repair and rebuild NRA’s relationship with our members, our clubs, our donors, the industry, Congress, and the public at-large.
• Restore – Restore and reinforce NRA’s position of leadership in Second Amendment Advocacy in the White House, in Congress, in State Legislatures, and the Courts.
• Rebuild – Rebuild and strengthen NRA-ILA, Membership and General Operations, including Competitions, Education & Training, and our network of NRA grassroots Clubs and State Associations.
• Revive – Revive and reinvigorate the programs and services our members want, need, deserve, and expect.
• Reform – Reform, modernize, and streamline NRA’s business and financial models to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity.
• Recover – Recover money owed to NRA by former executives, the State of New York and/or others, holding everyone accountable.

Our team of candidates has been instrumental instituting these reforms, and has the knowledge and experience to guide the NRA through these challenges and move forward to a strong and effective NRA.

We ask for your vote in this very important NRA Board Election.

Help us keep NRA strong and effective. Vote for this team of candidates for the NRA Board of Directors:

• Bob Barr
• Sharon Callan
• Larry E. Craig
• Isaac Demarest
• Lawrence Finder
• Jeff Fleetham
• Carol Frampton
• Joel Friedman
• Sandra S. Froman
• Tom King
• Charles Rowe
• Ronald L. Schmeits
• John C. Sigler
• Danny Stowers
• Dwight D. Van Horn
• Blaine Wade

To learn more about these candidates, go to www.StrongNRA.com.

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About Bob Barr

As President of the NRA over the past year and having served on the Board of Directors since 1998, former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr advocates constantly for the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms in all aspects of his professional and personal life as a lawyer and writer. Defense of the Second Amendment was a primary focus of his political campaigns for Congress and presidential run in 2008. He has attended several international conferences in support of firearms rights, including fighting against efforts by the U.N. to weaken those rights. Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, and now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia. Bob is a member of the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission and also chairs Liberty Guard, Inc. a non-profit and non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting individual liberty. Bob did not seek the position of First Vice President to which he was elected in April 2023, but when he was approached at that time to so serve, his sense of duty to the NRA led him to accept the responsibility without hesitation, and he was then elected as First Vice President. Bob served as First Vice President until April 2024, when he was elected to his current position as President of the NRA.