Submitted by Jeffrey A. Knox,, Endowment Member, Buckeye, Arizona, NRA Member Number: 03XXXXXXXXX
Whereas the National Rifle Association of America is a membership organization, created by and for the benefit of the members, and incorporated under the laws of New York State, making the members, in effect, the shareholders of the corporation; and
Whereas the staff, officers, and board of directors of the NRA have a legal and ethical duty to keep the members fully informed on matters upon which they will be asked to vote; and
Whereas it is a violation of law for officers, staff, or the board of directors to take actions which serve to perpetuate themselves in office and/or withhold pertinent information from membership; and
Whereas in the 2017 elections, the officers and board of directors did promulgate a significant number of bylaw amendments for members to vote on as a single package, and
Whereas several of those bylaw amendments have direct impact on matters such as competition for seats on the board of directors, the ability of the members to initiate a recall of officers and directors, thus serving to perpetuate the current directors in office; and
Whereas those bylaw amendments also seriously restricted the membership’s ability to initiate amendments to the bylaws of the association, and completely removed the right of members gathered for a Members’ Meeting to vote on bylaw amendments, thus repealing some of the last vestiges of the transformative bylaw changes known as the Cincinnati reforms; and
Whereas the officers and board of directors did promulgate these bylaw amendments on the 2017 mail-in ballot, and in the accompanying voting materials, with no prior notice to the membership, no opportunity for debate or discussion, and no consideration for, or presentation of, any ideas or opinions that were not supportive of the proposed bylaw amendments; and
Whereas the one-sided, heavy-handed, and undemocratic presentation of these bylaw proposals to the membership in such a way as to limit the time, opportunity, and avenues for members who might oppose some part or all of the bylaw amendments, to inform fellow members of the problems and consequences of these bylaw amendments; and
Whereas the actions of the board and staff in this matter were autocratic and disrespectful to the membership, and give the appearance of self-dealing for the purpose of perpetuating themselves in office;
Therefore be it Resolved that the members here gathered at the 2017 Annual Meeting of Members in Atlanta, Georgia, recognizing that our authority to force the officers, staff, and board of directors to take a particular action was taken away from us by similar, management-driven votes of the entire membership in previous bylaw elections, do hereby express our extreme displeasure with the actions of the staff and board of directors in their conduct of the 2017 bylaws election, and call upon them to set aside the results of the 2017 bylaws election until such time as the membership can have a full discussion and debate, with presentation of arguments from all sides; and
Be it further Resolved that the members here gathered, exercising the power which we do retain, wish to share our concerns and displeasure regarding this matter with our fellow NRA members, and hereby instruct NRA staff to publish this resolution, in its entirety, in the Official Journal of the association, and that any editorial content included in NRA publications which address this issue, must provide equivalent editorial space on the same page(s) to the author of this resolution.