Thoughts and Prayers: The NRA Says It May Go Out of Business

We here at Paste cover a lot of horrible stuff, mainly because the news right now is largely one big, waking nightmare. Well, it’s time to take a break from the despair and celebrate a news story that can’t help but get us grinning from ear to ear. Per Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone:

The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon “be unable to exist… or pursue its advocacy mission.” (Read the NRA’s legal complaint at the bottom of this story.)

The reason, according to the NRA filing, is not its deep entanglement with alleged Russian agents like Maria Butina. Instead, the gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led “blacklisting campaign” that has inflicted “tens of millions of dollars in damages.”

In the new document — an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in late July — the NRA says it cannot access financial services essential to its operations and is facing “irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm.”

The central problem is that the NRA is having trouble finding both insurance carriers and banking partners who are willing to support their agenda of stuffing as much blood-soaked cash into the pockets of gun manufacturers as possible. This is largely thanks to activists like the Parkland teens who have brought intense public pressure upon NRA partners. The irony of this situation is that the free market radicalism espoused by the NRA and the like is the chief culprit behind this existential threat to their existence. The market has spoken, and it has deemed any relationship with an organization defined by its indifference to murdered children to be harmful to its bottom line.

Another reason behind this struggle, and the main complaint in the NRA’s filing, is the lawsuit brought against it by the state of New York—proving that even though (a Republican-controlled) congress will never act to curb gun violence, states and cities can take measures to reduce the influence the NRA has within their jurisdictions. The NRA says it may need to discontinue its magazines and TV service—the latter of which is like if Fox & Friends and Sean Hannity had a child and put it on bath salts.

This is one of the few news stories of the modern age where there is no caveat (outside the fact that news like this will almost surely lead to a spike in donations from its most die-hard members, but it’s clear that the broader damage to the NRA’s image has been mostly set in stone). Just enjoy the schadenfreude as one of the worst entities in America struggles with the fallout from its inherently evil agenda.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.