EXCLUSIVE: CEO who profits from Bushmaster assault rifles helps run the NRA

[Tx4obama]

EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA's Inner Circle
The NRA's shadowy leaders include the CEO who sells Bushmaster assault rifles and a top director who lives in Newtown.

The resurgent debate over gun control has put a spotlight on the hardline leaders of the National Rifle Association. In the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, executive vice president Wayne LaPierre delivered a full-throated rejection of gun control and called for more firearms in schools, while David Keene, the group's president, predicted the failure of any new assault weapons ban introduced in Congress. The two NRA figureheads purported to speak for more than 4 million American gun owners, though the group's membership may in fact be smaller.

But whatever its true size, today's NRA, widely considered to be disproportionately influential in politics, operates more like a corporation or politburo than a typical nonprofit or lobbying organization. Its 76 board directors and 10 executive officers keep a grip on power through elections in which ordinary grassroots members appear to have little say.

The NRA leadership is known as much for its organizational secrecy as its absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment. That may be why, until now, little has been known about some of its most powerful insiders. They sit on the NRA board of directors' nine-member Nominating Committee, which, despite ballots distributed annually to legions of NRA members, closely controls who can be elected to the NRA board. Mother Jones has uncovered key details about the current Nominating Committee:

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Full article here (with names): http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/nra-board-newtown-bushmaster

A Good Read

[patrice]

1. Hence . . . S. 2205 introduced by Jerry Moran in the 112th Congress

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022193033

[Tx4obama]

2. Lawrence O'Donnell has the author of the article on his Last Word show right now!!! n/t