{"id":13218,"date":"2015-12-07T19:25:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T19:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/articles\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/"},"modified":"2015-12-07T19:25:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T19:25:00","slug":"5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/tl\/articles\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Facts You Didn&rsquo;t Know About The NRA&rsquo;s Political Spending"},"template":"","class_list":["post-13218","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","article_type-blog-post"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":"NRA&rsquo;s political spending has tripled since Citizens United. The NRA has always been a big political spender, but since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and special interests groups in the 2010 Citizens United decision, the NRA&rsquo;s spending on federal elections increased dramatically.","featured_image":null,"article_type":1103,"authors":["{\"site_id\":\"1\",\"post_type\":\"person\",\"post_id\":8296}"],"related_issues":[137,2082],"related_work":false,"location":null},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":null,"name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"content":"<p><strong>(1) NRA&rsquo;s political spending has tripled since Citizens United<\/strong><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\">The NRA has always been a big political spender, but since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and special interests groups in the 2010 Citizens United decision, the NRA&rsquo;s spending on federal elections increased dramatically.<\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><img height=\"296px;\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/lXIS9Nh6Qe-LoXu4jus3Sq-dq4AfNbl8bCbs_CfmFqctVz29m-HDx27Ia9-fFpmJeVsrZ3pqXXUqgMbP4vfOLrD3sL9cJBjm0pu7ZQA-ZaiB4dsVcJQDe9mGMWbj8fYyc4VJH27w\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" width=\"520px;\" \/><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>(2) Most of the NRA political spending is on &ldquo;independent expenditures&rdquo;<\/strong><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong><\/strong>In the 2014 midterm elections, the NRA spent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/orgs\/summary.php?id=D000000082\">$29.2 million<\/a> on congressional elections, but only 3% of that was direct contributions to candidates&rsquo; campaign committees. The NRA instead dedicated the vast majority of its political spending to so-called &ldquo;independent expenditures,&rdquo; where the NRA can spend unlimited money to fund ads for or against candidates. Nearly half of this spending is through the NRA&rsquo;s nonprofit arm, which is not required to disclose its donors.<\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>(3) The NRA receives funding from the Koch brothers&rsquo; donor network<\/strong><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong><\/strong>In 2012, the NRA received $6.6 million from two groups controlled and funded by the Koch brothers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/Freedom_Partners\">Freedom Partners<\/a> at ang <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/American_Encore\">Center to Protect Patient Rights<\/a>. The pattern continued as Freedom Partners funneled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/koch-brothers-2014-election_564b7680e4b06037734b3987\">$4.9 million<\/a> to the NRA in 2014.<\/p><p><strong>(4) The NRA has been accused of lying about its political spending<\/strong><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\">The NRA has faced several investigations into how it reports its political spending. A groundbreaking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/politics\/the-nras-deceptive-shell-game-with-donations-a-116744915796.html\">2015 investigation by Yahoo News<\/a> revealed that the NRA likely violated federal campaign finance and tax laws in recent years by misreporting, or in some cases failing to report all-together, its political spending. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.citizensforethics.org\/press\/entry\/crew-irs-fec-scruitinize-national-rifle-association-finance-irregularities\">Mga Mamamayan para sa Pananagutan at Etika sa Washington (CREW)<\/a> recently filed complaints with the IRS and Federal Election Commission (FEC), calling on the agencies to investigate the NRA&rsquo;s political spending and finances.<\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>(5) The NRA lobbies against campaign finance reform<\/strong><\/p><p dir=\"ltr\">To protect its ability to spend unlimited amounts in elections, the NRA has taken a strong position against sensible campaign finance reforms. Most recently, the NRA lobbied against a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, <a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2014\/09\/11\/nras-chris-cox-letter-to-congress-in-opposition-to-s-j-r-19-an-amendment-to-the-constitution-to-ban-certain-political-speech\/\">warning members of Congress<\/a> that they \"will consider votes on this legislation in future candidate evaluations and notify our members accordingly.\" In 2010, when Congress considered the DISCLOSE Act, which would require political secret-money nonprofits to disclose their donors, the NRA persuaded Congress to include a provision that would have<a href=\"http:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/15\/nra-fights-campaign-finance-reform-disclosure\/\"> exempted it from the bill's requirements<\/a>. A Senate filibuster ultimately killed the legislation.<\/p><p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Join Common Cause Chairman Robert Reich in asking that all members of Congress immediately return all campaign contributions from the NRA or other gun lobbying groups. <a href=\"http:\/\/petitions.moveon.org\/sign\/give-back-the-gun-lobbys.fb50?source=s.icn.fb&amp;r_by=14244592\">Sign the petition now<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p><p><br \/><br \/><\/p>"}}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>5 Facts You Didn&rsquo;t Know About The NRA&rsquo;s Political Spending - Common Cause<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/tl\/mga-artikulo-2\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Facts You Didn&rsquo;t Know About The NRA&rsquo;s Political Spending\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/tl\/mga-artikulo-2\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Common Cause\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CommonCause\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/CC-Share-Graphic-Main9.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@CommonCause\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/articles\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/articles\/5-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-nras-political-spending\/\",\"name\":\"5 Facts You Didn&rsquo;t Know About The NRA&rsquo;s Political Spending - 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