According to the NRA's 2010 form 990[1], total revenue in that year was $227 million. According to your link, only one corporate donor gave the NRA between $5 million and $10 million and four gave between $1 million and $4.9 million, etc.
$100 million alone was from membership fees, $11 million from royalties, $11 million from sales of goods, $20 million from advertising, etc.
Those who claim that the NRA is just an arm of the firearms industry don't understand the fervency of gun owners in the US.
EFF needs to be the NRA of privacy and electronic freedom and everyone needs to get as fervent about privacy as gun owners are about the 2nd amendment.
In related news the EFF should definitly clean up their merch offerings. Especially their fashion section looks like crap. I would definitely leave more money there for apparel that appeals beyond a DefCon crowd. With a single blog post "submit t-shirt designs" and a followup with a bit of voting would fix that problem. Or just having one getting design by somebody like Fairey.
Your post made me think that the EFF logo is pretty cool, and I would totally wear a T-shirt with that on it. I went to their merch page, and...they don't have one. The only shirt they have is the "Kingpin", with a metal-band-ified version of the handle of a hacker I've never heard of. What?
I never claimed that the NRA is an arm of the firearms industry. Firearms are a viable enough commodity that they generate such revenues. Large corporate donations indicate the industry's health. Certainly it is because people like, and often need, their guns.
Bottom line, there's vastly more money going into fighting against privacy than for it.
There is also vastly more money against the NRA than for it. With Bloomberg around, it's essentially infinite. You don't need money. You need people who care.
Hasn't been true for some time, except for a few companies. For most of the last century and continuing into this one, the US civilian market has been the most healthiest and reliable. E.g. while there are fads and fashions, we don't select guns because of politics or direct bribes.
Fabrique Nationale of Belgium is a great example, they've been selling to the US market since the '20s or '30s, the first shotgun in my family is a Browning Auto-5 with FHN markings bought by the grandfather I'm named after, we still have the papers for it.
As far as their money goes. 4 million members at ~$25 per year = $100 million in annual revenue from dues alone. That doesn't count donations. The industry does of course contribute, but the mistake gun control activists make over and over again is that they assume the NRA is about money. They think they can outspend the NRA and win. They can't because the NRA is not about money. It's about people who are well organized and passionately engaged in the cause.
If you listen to people talk, you'd assume the NRA is one of the big spending DC lobbyists. They're not. Look up where they rank on open secrets and how much they donate to candidates. They have a presence, but it's no where near indicative of their power.
About a week before each election every NRA member gets a bright orange postcard in the mail with a list of the candidates, local and national, that are up for election and exactly what the NRA thinks of their stance on guns. Those members pay attention and vote. That is what makes the NRA powerful.
I have the impression that the following are true of the NRA (with comparison to the National Association for Gun Rights)
1. They don't file audited accounts (the NAGR are as bad)
2. 4 million members is widely seen as a large overestimate (the NAGR figures don't attract as much noise)
3. The NRA board aren't really accountable to their membership (the NAGR says they are)
4. It's unusual for a grassroots organisation to have most of its money come from sources other than membership fees and merchandising. The NRA seems to be around 40%, the NAGR claims that most of its money comes from subscriptions. It is common for corporate supporters to make donations on behalf of lobbyists, rather than to the lobbying outfit, and pay the lobbying outfit "consultancy fees".
> About a week before each election every NRA member gets a bright orange postcard in the mail with a list of the candidates, local and national, that are up for election and exactly what the NRA thinks of their stance on guns. Those members pay attention and vote. That is what makes the NRA powerful.
That's a good argument. I'm not sure what I think, to be honest, but the EFF seems to be grassroots to me in a way that the NRA isn't.
The NRA has had the freaking IRS audit it; I know during the Clinton Administration, I'd be surprised if that was the only time. And I'm pretty sure it has an independent auditor, it's huge, the NAGR is completely obscure and very close to being a lifestyle company/scam.
The NRA has serious credibility and no serious person doubts their 5 million cited membership number. You do realize that's only a fraction of the country's gun owning population?
OK, today the NRA is not accountable to its membership, I'll grant you that hands down. But it was during the critical period of the '70s.
I don't mean tax returns, I mean regularly filing audited accounts. If they have filed those, I'd be delighted to find out where I can obtain them.
> no serious person doubts their 5 million cited membership number
The figure for NRA membership has been an active controversy for the last decade, after a former NRA board member asserted that the NRA was lax in a number of ways about how it maintain its membership list (e.g., not taking people of their list of life members when they died). The WaPo did a short Q&A about it - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/does-t... (a rare example of a WaPo story on the NRA that didn't get attacked by the 2nd-amendment media)
> only a fraction of the country's gun owning population
At what, 2%? Which makes the fact that they are de-facto the voice of gun-owning voters kind of odd.
Do you really think an organization of that size and under that much political scrutiny would get away with such a lie? Not to mention the defrauding of their advertisers that would have to take place.
Even the Washington Post's fact checker column couldn't find fault with their numbers. And that's as anti-gun a newspaper as exists.
Look up the profits of the two major (only?) publicly traded gun companies (Ruger and Smith & Wesson). Compare them to any single tech giant. The sporting arms industry is tiny.
As far as the NRA pushing the industry around, there was a very public spat with Smith & Wesson around 2000 that nearly ruined the company. Google it. These days, the industry is more in line with with the NRA, but make no mistake about who has the power - it's the NRA (i.e. the customers).
I'm not talking about largest at all, that's not important at all. They surveyed lawmakers and congressional staffers and asked them which lobbying group is most INFLUENTIAL. That's what the data is about. Size doesn't matter, influence does. I looked for later data, but it looked like Fortune stopped doing the survey in 2001 and in 2001 the NRA was #1.
"NRA ranks no. 1 in this year`s "Power 25", Fortune magazine`s listing of the most influential lobbying groups. Compiled by Fortune`s senior writer and Washington bureau chief Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, the "Power 25" is based on responses to a survey sent to over 2,900 people, including every member of Congress, senior Capitol Hill staffers, senior White House aides, professional lobbyists, and top-ranking officers of the largest lobbying groups in Washington."
That's the clearest response possible. I think the radical part is that we are going to have to convince the general populace that PAYING for privacy is going to be the way going forward. If we move into that realm because the government will not stop spying, then it might be a lot easier to have the privacy organizations band together with financial might. (The EFF is awesome, but they are not nearly big enough)
Very true, the network effects work in our favor when it comes to guns. E.g. if you're set on many designs you only have one company you can buy it from (but almost always many ammo companies), but the more popular ones out of patent protection have multiple companies making them, e.g. AR-15 and M1911 pattern rifles and handguns, dating from the '50s and, well, 1911 ^_^.
And there's no single category I can think of that's sole source, not counting curiosities like FNH's PS90 (as seen in original full auto mode in Stargate).
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-14/the-nras-cor...