The National Rifle Association, the longtime loudest voice for Americans who insist they be allowed to own the tools to murder large numbers of their fellow citizens as rapidly as possible—because, they insist, it may someday be something they want to do—has been having a difficult time of late. It's about to get even more difficult, as one of the organization's largest contributors is suspending his donations and mounting a campaign to rally other top donors to do the same.
David Dell'Aquila told The Washington Post that longtime NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, still reconsolidating power after a would-be coup led by ex-NRA president Oliver North attempted to oust him for using the association as personal checkbook, has "become radioactive and must step down." Dell'Aquila has given $100,000 to the group and pledged most of his own estate; he claims a total of $134 million in rich-guy pledges will be in danger of drying up if he and his unnamed allies are rebuffed. The Post was able to confirm that only one of those allies, a still-anonymous "senior firearms industry executive," was suspending a $2 million pledge.
It's that anonymous second donor that's the most dangerous for the grifting conspiracy-peddler LaPierre. The NRA exists to promote the interests of the firearms industry; if even representatives of the industry are coming to the conclusion that LaPierre's toxicity is doing more harm to their bottom lines than good, LaPierre is in for a more substantive fight than Oliver North could put up.
Under LaPierre's leadership, the association became synonymous with far-right extremist (read: militia) positions on gun laws, able to sell supporters on ever-expanding collections of high-priced arms and ammunition with warnings that the gubbermint would try to seize them at any moment or the gubbermint may become so despotic that armed rebellion is necessary or, the simplest, you will need that cache of guns and ammo if a natural disaster strikes and "urban" people flee to your neighborhood seeking food. (The NRA also became synonymous with the theory that each new mass murder was simply a "price" to be paid in order to secure the gun rights of its members, a response that became ever more flat-footed as those mass murders more regularly began to include the slaughter of children.)
Wayne LaPierre, in other words, has made the firearms industry gargantuan buckets of money by turning guns from a tool for sport to a self-defense plan favored by the nation's angriest and most paranoid people. If even those executives are beginning to think LaPierre's scandals have pushed him into net-negative territory—not because of his fevered paranoia-stoking militia rhetoric, mind you, but for pocketing donor money in the form of too-nice suits and European getaways—LaPierre may begin to see his steadfastly compliant board become less steadfast rather quickly.