Neal Knox Update
September 22, 2003

NRA finances

This afternoon most of the U.S. 9th Circuit  Court of Appeals judges will consider whether to overturn their own three-judge panel’s decision to delay the California Recall Election until March.

Odds are they will call for the election to be Oct. 7, as scheduled. 

The three-judge panel, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision repeatedly, said the fact that punch-card voting systems would be used in a half-dozen counties would disenfranchise too many poor and minorities because the method was so inaccurate. 

While some pundits and editorial cartoonists pontificated that the decision was a payback to the Republicans who had pushed the recall, it missed the point of the Bush v. Gore decision, which concerned the lack of standards for hand recounting punch cards, not the relative accuracy of the system. Actually, studies say all the voting systems ­ punch cards, optical scanning, touch screen, etc. ­ are about equally inaccurate, miscounting about 3-3.5 percent during a machine count.

That’s likely to be a key factor in today’s hearing. Plus the fact that there’s no way any of the voting systems can handle the recall vote, 135 candidates for governor, plus the multitude of candidates in the March Democrat primary election.

According to the latest polls, support for recalling Gray Davis is slowly declining ­ though about 53 percent want to get rid of him ­ and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is losing ground, 28%, to Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, 26%. A pox on all three.

The only pro-gunner, Tom McClintock is doing better in private polls than the published polls, but is still decisively in third place. 

Tom is being called a spoiler, but he says he’s not getting out ­ despite the strong pressures at the Sept. 13-14 Republican State Convention to get him to step down.

Congress ­ and the government ­ shut down last week because of Hurricane Isabel, a full day earlier than necessary because the D.C. subway system shut down, making it impossible for workers to get around. 

That put a crimp in what I had expected to be an interesting week in Congress. This week may be interesting but that two days out of the rapidly diminishing schedule may make it harder for our friends to get those interesting things done.

I had to make a quick trip to Oklahoma last week for the funeral of a favorite uncle. While there I spoke to the Stevens County Rifle and Pistol Club in Duncan.

I got back just ahead of Hurricane Isabel, which we weathered without anything more than a few limbs off the sycamore by the house. Many thousands are still without power in the D.C. area.

That trip caused me to miss the NRA board meeting (though I did attend the Legislative Policy Committee meeting). Once again ­ as it has been for the last couple of years ­ the Finance Committee report to the board has been in executive session. This one was for nearly two hours, I’m told.

I suspect the closed session had something to do with the fact that at the end of 2002, NRA’s consolidated balance sheet ­ including all NRA Foundation and Whittington Center funds and assets ­ were $76.6 million in the red. The parent National Rifle Association’s unrestricted net assets are $102,593,367.00 in the hole, according to the 2002 Annual Report distributed at Orlando in April.

The previous year, NRA’s deficits were $63.8 million and $85.5 million.

I have reason to doubt that NRA’s finances have improved in 2003. 

Some of us ­ including both vice presidents and the Finance Committee Chairman ­ were attempting to make significant changes in the way NRA’s finances were being handled back in 1997, when NRA was “only” $46 million in the red.

We lost, and all of us are now off the board. If NRA goes bankrupt, the Second Amendment will have lost.

I’ll be at the Gun Rights Policy Conference at the in Houston International Airport Marriott hotel this weekend, speaking on ballistic imaging, among other things. That’s an issue that isn’t very far below the surface.

Hope to see you there. 

[Ed. Your WMSA webmaster plans on being there.  Gotta brag on Missouri getting the LTC.]

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