An activist organization is challenging the tax-exempt status of the National Rifle Association.
In the wake of the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the liberal Democratic group Call to Activism is circulating a petition asking the IRS to revoke the NRA’s exemption. As of June 6, the petition had received more than 23,000 signatures.
“The NRA is a ‘tax-exempt nonprofit,’ which means it’s supposed to operate in the public interest,” Call to Activism said in a message asking people to sign the petition. “The NRA does not work in the public interest. Instead, they make the gun industry rich — and they destroy our freedoms, the freedom from gun violence.”
“Enough is enough,” the group said. “We are demanding the IRS investigates the NRA’s tax status and revoke it immediately.”
This isn’t the first time the NRA has faced challenges to its exempt status.
In a 2020 letter, House Ways and Means Committee member Bradley Scott Schneider, D-Ill., and more than 30 other House Democrats suggested that the IRS reconsider the NRA’s exemption because of lawsuits filed by New York state and the District of Columbia that accused the group of self-dealing, looting corporate assets solely for personal benefit, and other wrongdoing. That came after Schneider released a report that said the NRA may have engaged in extensive self-dealing and conflicts of interest.
The NRA called the New York allegations baseless, politically motivated, and “an affront to democracy and freedom.”
Schneider also requested a probe of the NRA in 2019.
Also in 2019, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., then the Finance Committee ranking member, asked the IRS to look at evidence of “rampant self-dealing” and other possible violations discovered during an investigation by committee Democrats. Republicans on the committee accused the Democrats of innuendo and said the probe’s findings didn’t prove that the NRA violated the terms of its exempt status.