On the menu today: A rare, datelined edition of this newsletter, as I am in Houston to cover this year’s National Rifle Association Annual Meeting. Critics of the NRA are calling for the convention to be canceled, but that is unlikely to happen for a wide variety of reasons, and the knee-jerk demonization of the NRA this week is likely to overshadow the divides and lingering problems within the organization.
NRA in Houston
Houston — The National Rifle Association has been here before.
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999. The NRA’s annual meeting was scheduled to begin about a week later, in nearby Denver. The organization did reduce its then-three-day convention to just one day, and canceled a planned gun show, but the group’s president at the time, actor Charlton Heston, rejected charges that his organization was somehow responsible for the mass shooting in the Denver suburb.
“We will not be silent or be told, ‘Do not come here, you are not welcome in your own land,’” Heston said in his speech to the attendees, according to the Washington Post. “We’re often cast as the villain. That’s not our role in American society and we will not be forced to play it. . . . We cannot, we must not let tragedy lay waste to the most rare, hard-won right in history.”
The NRA convention in Denver drew 1,800 protesters according to the Los Angeles Times and more than 7,000 protesters according to the New York Times.
Here we are, 23 years later, and another awful school shooting has shocked and horrified the entire country and world — this time committed by one killer instead of two. And once again, the NRA convention is scheduled to begin, days later, in the same state — albeit about 275 miles away from Uvalde.
A lot of factors work against the last-minute cancellation of the long-planned event. The NRA’s annual meeting usually brings in about 80,000 or so members and prospective members to a city — a boost to the local economy that is so substantial that host cities usually cut the NRA a break on some expenditures related to the convention site.
Back in 2015, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported that the convention “draws more people and rings up more visitor spending than the Big Ten Conference’s men’s basketball tournament and football championship game combined. The 2014 event drew 5,000-plus more attendees than anticipated by the NRA and Visit Indy and had a regional economic impact of more than $55 million.”
The event brings hundreds of exhibitors, several acres of displays of guns, sights, and other equipment, usually a concert, and the well-covered speeches by supportive elected officials — including, in 2017, 2018, and 2019, President Donald Trump. (In 2018 and 2019, both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence addressed the attendees.) It is a major undertaking that is on par with hosting any other major convention, and Democratic mayors who oppose the NRA’s position on gun control usually grit their teeth and offer some generic welcoming message to attendees.
The last time the NRA annual meeting came to Houston in 2013, the attendance set a record — 86,228 — and Houston First Corp, the quasi-governmental organization that manages the George R. Brown Convention Center and conventions in the city of Houston, estimated that the convention injects, on average, an economic impact of $28.9 million through hotel bookings and restaurants and entertainment expenditures.
Cities, even heavily Democratic ones, do not give up tens of millions of dollars in visitor money to placate gun-control activists.
And the convention is also important for the NRA’s finances, which get a boost from the recruitment of new members and the renewal of existing memberships. The NRA canceled the convention scheduled to be held in Nashville in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the 2021 meeting scheduled to occur in Houston was first delayed to August and then canceled just a week before it was set to start. (Considering the demographics of the attendees and the likely limited number who were vaccinated, that was probably a wise decision.) The NRA is not going to just cancel its third straight convention.
Friday’s big event with elected officials may have fewer speakers than usual. Texas senator John Cornyn said he now has a scheduling conflict. Texas governor Greg Abbott may not attend. President Trump said Wednesday he would still attend.
Separate from the Uvalde shooting, this year’s NRA convention was already slated to serve up more drama than usual because of the organization’s declining revenues, runaway legal costs, tossed-out effort to declare bankruptcy, and notably declining membership numbers (the lowest point since 2017). 72-year-old Wayne LaPierre has been the organization’s executive vice president since 1991, and it would not be surprising if some of the NRA’s 76 board members felt it was time for new blood at the top. Two weeks ago, former Florida congressman and head of the Texas Republican Party Allen West announced that he would challenge LaPierre.
If the board decides to keep LaPierre, it can expect more of the same. But West brings his own baggage to the race. He was the last CEO of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis before that long-respected think tank closed its doors, and he was accused of making bad decisions in that role and mismanaging the organization. West went on to become chairman of the Texas Republican Party. When the Supreme Court rejected a Texas lawsuit meant to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential-election victory, West released a statement declaring that, “This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.” This statement was widely interpreted as endorsing secession.
As state-party chairman, West chose to run against his state’s incumbent governor, Greg Abbott. County officials argued that
by not resigning as party chair immediately upon declaring his candidacy, West had created an ‘outrageous conflict of interest.’ He spent about a year in the job of state party chairman, and frequently clashed with his state’s top Republicans:
West has held the job for just under a year, and it has been a run filled with regular bouts of intraparty drama. He has been a leading GOP critic of Abbott’s coronavirus response, even protesting outside the Governor’s Mansion last fall. He called House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, a “political traitor” for courting Democrats in his bid for the gavel late last year. And during the regular legislative session earlier this year, he sharply questioned Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s commitment to a long-sought bill allowing permitless carry of handguns, which ultimately became law.
In the March 1 primary, West won 12.3 percent, well behind Abbott’s 66.4 percent.
These flaws aside, West would still represent managerial change at an institution that has experienced just about every kind of managerial problem in recent years. But an institution that has had the same executive vice president for more than three decades is not one that instinctively embraces change, especially when it is under attack in the public square. It would not be surprising if LaPierre enjoyed a certain “rally around the flag” effect; some board members might well believe that firing him now would be perceived as a concession to the organization’s critics.
True, but Accurate
All I see in the latest piece by New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait:
National Review’s Jim Geraghty argues that tougher background checks would not have stopped the Uvalde shooter, who had no criminal record, restraining order, or record of complaint. His colleague Charles C.W. Cooke chimes in to argue that none of Abbott’s pro-gun measures specifically enabled the Uvalde shooting.
These narrow claims may be true, but—
I’m gonna stop you right there, pal.
Stacey Abrams Needs to Look Up the Definition of ‘Suppression’
In case you missed it, not only was overall turnout significantly higher in Georgia’s primary compared to four years ago, overall turnout was significantly higher in this week’s Georgia primaries than it was four years ago, but it was significantly higher among minorities, and 27 percent higher among Democrats, even though Stacey Abrams was the only candidate on the ballot. There is no longer any plausible route to argue that the changes enacted to Georgia’s voter laws amount to voter suppression.
ADDENDUM: After a couple years of pandemic interruptions, the National Review cruises are back, and this year’s voyage begins with a special reception in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the evening of November 11. The following morning, the seven-day cruise on the Sky Princess — the newest addition to the Princess fleet — departs the port of Fort Lauderdale and sails to Princess Cays, Bahamas; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Amber Cove, Dominican Republic; and Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos, before returning to Fort Lauderdale on November 19.
Other people will tell you how great the ship is, how great the food is, and how great the destinations are — and all of that is true. But what I want to emphasize is that on a National Review cruise, you never know what’s going to happen.
I’m thinking of the time I saw Bernie Goldberg and the late Andrew Breitbart get really heated on stage during a night-owl session, with James Lileks trying to play referee. Or getting to quote an infamous line from Law and Order to the late senator Fred Thompson. Or the soon-to-be senator Pat Toomey being our surprise guest on the late November 2010 cruise. Or Mark Steyn talking about Islamist mullahs going on honeymoons with goats in front of Reverend Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute. Or our old friend Jonah Goldberg using an obscure double entendre and the esteemed Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, turning to me and asking me what it meant. Trust me when I say you never know what is going to happen, but there is a good chance you will come away with at least one and probably several “you are not going to believe this” stories.
This isn’t like attending a conference, although events such as the biannual Ideas Summit can be wonderful too. In addition to our regular interviews and panel discussions — carefully planned when we’re at sea, so as not to prevent folks from enjoying the cruise destinations — our cruisegoers get to hang out with the attendees, having cocktails, dinner, and post-dinner cognac and cigars with with them. You never know whom you’re going to run into at breakfast or lunch, or on excursions ashore. There are a lot of events where you can go and see some prominent figure speak, but I can’t think of any comparable event where you get to go and just hang around so many prominent figures on a vacation.
This year’s guests — so far — include professor William Allen, the former chairman and member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights; Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; Kevin Hassett, the former chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers; Princeton visiting fellow Daniel Maloney; and NR editors and writers Charlie Cooke, Rich Lowry, Andy McCarthy, John O’Sullivan, Dominic Pino, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Jimmy Quinn. I don’t know what those people are going to do. They don’t know what they’re going to do. But we don’t really record these, and so the only way to really know what happened is to be there.
This year, the National Review Institute is adding even more events to the cruise, including a lot more interaction — separate forums with smaller groups outside the main theater, including topic-specific breakout sessions; two book clubs, which will meet a few times during the cruise; and the popular three-session version of the Burke to Buckley course.