Source: United States Senator for New Jersey Bob Menendez
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a leading voice on gun violence prevention, sent a letter to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) to request answers regarding its “School Shield Program,” which was created after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012. The program, which has only received less than 1% of the NRA’s revenue has never been fully executed. 2019 reports indicate it was created as a “shell program” to boost fundraising numbers—and that the NRA never had any intention or meaningful ability to competently execute it.
“[A]ccording to leaked NRA financial documents, the NRA only allocated a fraction of its budget to protecting schools. In fact, multiple news sources report that the NRA allocated less than $2 million or only 0.08 percent of its $2.2 billion in revenue yearly, to the School Shield Program,” wrote Sen. Menendez to Wayne LaPierre, NRA’s Chief Executive and Executive Vice President. “[2019] reports suggest the NRA has spent nearly a decade exploiting school shootings to fund its larger efforts to erode federal, state, and local gun safety laws and regulations—shamefully, the very laws and regulations that could help prevent these tragedies.”
Sen. Menendez also requested specific information about the program to help understand how the alleged program has been executed and its impact in preventing gun violence from continuing to tear communities apart across America. This includes a list of the program’s grantees; evaluations or metrics used by the program to evaluate grantees’ use of funding; and tax and accounting records related to the program, among other questions
As a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that oversees national tax policy, Sen. Menendez recently blasted the NRA’s continued and flagrant violation of the laws that govern tax-exempt organizations and has led efforts in the past years to urge the removal of the National Rifle Association Foundation from the list of charities eligible to solicit and receive contributions from federal employees.
The full text of the letter can be found HERE and below.
Dear Mr. LaPierre:
At the NRA Convention, hosted just three days following the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, you claimed that the NRA School Shield Program (“Program”) was designed to “help promote and fund the necessary security that every schoolchild needs and deserves” and that schoolchildren are “our most treasured and precious resource.” This program, which was created after the atrocities at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, was “touted [by the NRA] as a way to help [with] . . . building design and access control to information technology.” Yet, according to leaked NRA financial documents, the NRA only allocated a fraction of its budget to protecting schools. In fact, multiple news sources report that the NRA allocated less than $2 million or only 0.08 percent of its $2.2 billion in revenue yearly, to the School Shield Program. This follows reports in 2019 that the program was a “shell program” that the NRA used as a front to increase revenue and boost its fundraising numbers—and that the NRA never had any intention or meaningful ability to competently execute the program.
Such reports suggest the NRA has spent nearly a decade exploiting school shootings to fund its larger efforts to erode federal, state, and local gun safety laws and regulations—shamefully, the very laws and regulations that could help prevent these tragedies.
Given these concerning allegations, I write today to request additional information about the NRA School Shield Emergency Response Program. I request that you provide the following materials by July 22, 2022:
1. A list of the Program’s grantees, including the name and address of the grantee, the date of the award, and the amount awarded, since the Program’s inception. Please include a copy of the grantee’s application and any details about how the funds were used by the grantees.
2. Any evaluations or metrics used by the Program to evaluate grantees’ use of funding.
3. All internal documents concerning the purpose, governance, and administration of the Program, since the Program’s inception.
4. A list of staff that worked on the Program, their job titles and job descriptions, whether they were employees of the NRA or shared employees with the NRA Foundation and their amount of time spent on the Program, since the Program’s inception.
5. All internal financial documents, including all tax and accounting records relating to the Program, since the Program’s inception.
6. A list of all payments made to Ackerman McQueen related to, or on behalf of the Program, since the Program’s inception.
7. Any annual reports or portions of the NRA or NRA Foundation that relate to the Program, since the Program’s inception.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
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