@ConorMcGregorsBeard
Here are different articles and some very relavant chunks of information.
"The NRA" and Trump actively lobbied against reducing the size of gun magazines. The Las Vegas killer did not even have to reload."
"According to a report by Open Secrets and Trace, the
NRA gave $30.3 million to Trump's campaign.A month before the election, NBC reported that $9.6 million (of the then-$21 million contribution) had been spent on ads and spreading a pro-Trump message, while the majority — $12 million — had been spent towards
attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton, the most the NRA has ever spent on an election in history. So, where is the NRA getting all this money? According to
the NRA’s website, a one-year membership costs only $40, but, in 2015,
The Washington Post reported that the NRA had about five million members, equaling out to $200 million a year, just from membership dues. That’s not even counting donations or any other type of fundraising efforts."
"But when it comes to funding, the NRA may have finally gone too far: the FBI recently launched an investigation to determine whether a Russian central banker, and Putin ally, illegally funneled money through the organization to help the Trump campaign.
These allegations have prompted
a complaint to the Federal Election Commission and
an effort by Sen. Ron Wyden to obtain documents from the Treasury Department and the NRA. As shocking as other Russia-related revelations have been — attempts to hack voting machines, vast Internet propaganda, leaking of stolen campaign information — this allegation illustrates a problem of even broader scope.
Although much of the reporting on Russia has focused on whether there was "collusion" with the Trump campaign — a genuine concern — the investigation is also revealing another disquieting reality: that American democracy has a money laundering problem."
"Moreover, in the case of the NRA, the FBI is now investigating whether illicit funds were spent in support of Trump's political campaign. We
have long warned that our broken system of campaign finance disclosure creates opportunities for foreign governments to illegally influence American elections, undetected.
The NRA is among the largest "dark money" organizations, reporting the greatest amount of campaign spending without revealing the source of the funds —
over $35 million in the 2016 election cycle alone. Still, this amount was just a fraction of the
over $175 million in
reported campaign-related spending that came from unknown sources."
"according to an 18 January 2018 McClatchy D.C. Bureau
report, the FBI is investigating allegations that Alexander Torshin, an official at the Central Bank of the Russia and life member of the NRA, funneled money through the gun lobby group to the Trump campaign."
"The NRA's annual lobbying expenditures come to millions of dollars a year: Gun rights advocacy groups, of which the NRA is the kingpin, spent more than $135 million on lobbying in 1998-2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Gun manufacturers spent an additional $21 million. Those figures swamped the spending of gun control advocacy groups, which mustered only about $19 million in that period."
"The NRA's use of independent spending — on ads, mailers and emails — to mobilize voters has made it "one of the most powerful political organizations in America," said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of 2011 book,
Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."
"Politicians don't listen to the NRA simply because they spend money, they listen to the NRA because the NRA's money is effectively spent swaying voters," he said."
