The former second-in-command at the National Rifle Association is calling for gun control measures, including universal background checks and red flag laws, in a new book out next week, The New York Times reports.
"Inside the N.R.A.: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia Within the Most Powerful Political Group in America" by Joshua Powell is set to be published next week by Twelve, a division of Hachette Book Group. Its release comes as New York Attorney General Letitia James seeks to dissolve the NRA amid allegations of corruption.
Powell is the former chief of staff to NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre, and he focuses the book on his former boss, who he says "couldn't run an organization on a fiscally sound basis to save his life" and resorted to courting "the extreme fringe" for funding.
He noted that after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, the NRA touted a "School Shield" program that it said would review school safety and recommend additional measures if needed, but that in the four years following the massacre, only three schools were assessed.
"Wayne was out there selling the program to our members, raising money off it, claiming we were protecting kids' schools," Powell writes. "It was another example of the wizard behind the curtain — lots of inflamed rhetoric and fireworks and noise, but very little effective action on countering gun violence."
He also claims that LaPierre "reminded" President Donald Trump of "who had helped elect him," after Trump "seemed to support imposing some of the toughest new restrictions on guns in decades" in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
"After the meeting" with LaPierre and the NRA's top lobbyist, Chris Cox, "the president did a one-eighty, completely changing his tune," Powell writes.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.