Alex Ooley (00:01)
Episode of the Forge of Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Uli. And today I'm joined by NRA Board of Directors ⁓ member John Richardson and also the man behind the Only Guns and Money blog. John, welcome back to the show. Thank you. I mean we were you and I spoke the last year, ⁓ so this is like the first anniversary of me being on the board. So yes.

Yeah, so last year in Atlanta it was your first ⁓ meeting as a as a board member. This is now your second here in Houston, right? Correct. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what's going on with the internal workings of the NRA and also kind of your perspective about ⁓ what it's like to be on the board of directors, what what's

Different than you expected, what's the same and and be glad to. And talk about some of the lessons learned in in that regard. So if you don't mind, just briefly, most of our listeners know who you are. This is the fourth or fifth ⁓ podcast I think we've recorded together about. Something like that, yeah. But if you don't mind, just do a brief ⁓ in introduction of yourself and talk a little bit about the blog, what ⁓ your involvement with the NRA and and why you ran for board of directors. Sure. ⁓ I have the blog, No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money, no offense to Alex here being a lawyer.

⁓ but I was a financial planner for many years, retired. ⁓ had the blog since two thousand and ten. I back in the heyday of blogs and people I started reading all these blogs. I said, Hey, I can do that and so I did. And towards ⁓ let's say from twenty nineteen on I got to be well known for talking about the inner workings of the NRA because I had people that would send me information ⁓ to get it out. And

Finally, ⁓ about July of 2024, a friend and I, my friend Todd Vandemite, who's on the board now, and we got to talking and said, you know, why don't we run? And I I had a chat with my wife and I said, I think I can do more on the board to correct things than off the board. And so we threw my name in the hat.

I literally was shocked to be nominated by the nominee committee given my background. And then I also ran by petition and I made that by the skin of my teeth thanks to ⁓ Hurricane Helene. ⁓ We got our mail restored on t Thursday. I got enough signatures in hand to qualify by Friday.

I overnight it on Saturday and the cutoff was the next Tuesday. wow. So I was one of two candidates running both by petition, which for me was incredibly important. And the reason was it was that the members put me on the ballot, not a committee of the board. Yeah. And some people I don't think realize the significance of that 'cause there are two ways, right, which you've just described how to get onto the the how to get into the ⁓ election by petition or by

nominating committee. And the reason that it was a big deal for you to get on by both was one, you have sort of the endorsement of the membership to get on by petition. But the nominating committee for a long time had been sort of a protective layer for the inner workings of the NRA and some of the corruption that had been had been occurring. And so you were not exactly a an unknown outsider or somebody who had been an unknown critic of the NRA. I was a known critic and you were a known critic.

I mean, I lit you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out. I literally was on a hunt in South Africa and I get this email saying, You've been nominated like what? and then la this past year is as and it was due to the New York A G the law case the final judgment from the New York

in the New York Attorney General's case, we opened it up so you didn't have to get just get you could go and get electronic signatures. Okay. Petitions electronically which was not available to me in twenty twenty four when I ran by petition. Wh everything had to be pen and paper and original wet signature, everything. Now it's you could do one or the other or both. Yeah.

So to you got on by petition and by nomination, but that doesn't mean you're elected, right? That just means you're on the ballot. That w I'm just on the ballot. And and that year and in twenty twenty five we had forty-nine people on the ballot. Okay. And to fill twenty-five positions? Is that it's a third every three It's a third, but I think we were filling There may have been a couple extra spots. Because of res resignations and stuff, I think we were filling

Well twenty-five full three-year terms. I ha a couple or two two-year terms and like two or three three year one year term. So we had a total of eventually thirty spots to fill. And one of the reasons that we had as many candidates as we did is number one, they had to put more new candidates on the ballot. Plus we ran

twelve to fourteen people who were on the ballot strictly by petition. And that was an organized campaign. And of the reformers, we did really well. We had twenty out of thirty. Yeah. So you were elected known reformers. Right, right. So you were elected as part of this NRA two point this reform effort. Absolutely. And

What did and and I want to say too, I don't wanna I wanna plug your blog again here. You still contribute to the blog and talk about the there are some things you can't talk about on the blog. But you still talk about a great deal about what's going on with the NRA and I appreciate that you use that as sort of an outlet to keep people informed, whether they're members or not. Absolutely. you and

NRA and danger were sort of the two Exactly two sources at the time to find out what what was happening with the NRA. And ⁓ I do have some constraints now. I mean one of the things I always preached in my blog was fiduciary duty. The I want to call I don't the old guard. Many didn't understand, I'm just gonna say they did not understand fiduciary duty.

And you have a duty of care, a duty of obedience, and a duty of loyalty and

Before I was on the board, I if somebody slipped me a memo that was listed privileged and confidential, I had no problem talking about it and printing it. Now that I'm on the board, I can't. Right. And if it's something that's been said in executive session, I can't. And given I'm on a number of committees, and one of which is the audit committee.

So virtually everything we do in audit is in executive session. Yeah. So I can't I can't talk about it s in in detail. Yeah. So so at the time you were running, the NRA was sort of on the heels of the litigation in New York by Attorney General Letitia James. And it kind of s seemingly in a in a bit of a free fall in terms of membership, in terms of fundraising dollars.

The good news is it seems like that's been ⁓ addressed, that that the NRA's kind of gotten its budget under control. Absolutely. ⁓ that I think the reform effort has had a significant impact to some degree in that regard. But when you were running, I I I know you had a certain goal or maybe a vision about what what you might be able to help accomplish when you were running. Talk a little bit about that and then talk about how that has changed or what what was different than what you expected.

Well, one of the my key things running for the board was that we needed more transparency with for members. At that time, if you were a member and you wanted to see the bylaws, you could not go online and find and get the bylaws. Literally the only place that you could get a copy of the bylaws other than requesting it from the Secretary's office, was going into the documents filed in the New York case. So I mean that's where it was.

or if somebody took it and had scanned it and put it online. And that was it. And you know, bylaws change. So I had proposed a resolution at last year's meeting of the members that we put online that we asked the board to consider putting online the bylaws, our form nine nineties, which are our tax filings, to put online our

me minutes of our board meetings. I did ask for listening to the committees and their members and I also said to this to investigate streaming our board meetings. Now

It got changed a little and some had to change. So there were some members concerned, committee members concerned about having their names listed. So we my by once I was on the board in the September meeting, introduced a resolution that you would have the Form 90, 990, the bylaws, the committees and their purposes or their mission statements.

But we were not going to put you know stream live meetings because the cost was too much. It was gonna be fifteen to twenty thousand dollars to do it adequately. So yeah, for that reason, you know, I I can live with that. and there were some some committee members worried about their I hate to say it, but the you know

They p ⁓ being targeted because in this day and age, ⁓ if you are on the right or if you're a pro gun person, somebody somewhere will eventually want to target you. And so they were

I understood that. S the good news is that resolution passed and on December 6th, pardon me, December 2nd, if you were a member and you went to ⁓ NRA.org, logged in on manage my membership, you would see under its governance information and you would see our commit our our compliance report which was mandated.

But you will also now be able to find, if you're a member going online, you will get the bylaws, the Form 990s, the board minutes, and some other information. So that's out there now. And I was talking with a board member at breakfast yesterday. He was complaining that there he could not print out the board.

the bylaws because in BoardVantage which is our internal very secure ⁓ court mandated I don't know what you would call it a way to pass documents you can't print from there and everything's watermarked and I said ⁓ you just need to go to the NRA.org and you can log in with your membership number and you can get it

He never realized it. So that that was to me one of my big accomplishments. Yeah. And it got passed and people the board agreed and here we are. Yeah. I remember there was a lot of discussion at the membership meeting last year about not wanting to make that sort of information public, which is a legitimate concern. Right. But also but at the same time providing some transparency to the membership and

think that's a a a nice compromise. And we made it so there was members only. Now I will say the four nineties nine nineties, which was our IRS filing, it's a public document. and you don't have to you can find that in many places other than the NNRA website. You can go GuideStar or ProPublica and you will find it. Yeah. So I think it's a little bit of a mystery to many members

Myself included to some degree, what does a board member do? What what is what does it look like for you as a board member in terms of meetings that you attend, responsibilities that you have, committee assignments, and and I know it looks different for every board member. It is different for every board member. But if you could give us some sense about what what a board member does. Board members most board members have you know said what committees they would like to work on and why they want to be on it.

they can bring to the committee. In my case, you know my you know advancing the Second Amendment is one of my big things. So legislative policy and then the sub the state local subset of that. And membership because I know we need to be pushing, that is a critical issue for us right now is bringing people back, those who have left.

Right. And then also I did hunting and wildlife conservation and I will admit we will meet maybe once a year on that. and then I I got elected to the audit committee, which is a different committee in the sense that it is a committee of the board. And under New York nonprofit law, that means we can speak for the board and we can bind the board by our decisions. they have given we have the authority

You know, through our decision, you know, through what we do to bind the board. Yeah. And so it's and we are all elected by the board. so that that really that really has been my most critical committee.

And you could be elected to the board and and do almost nothing. You could. Yeah. there there have been historically many board members like that. And I will say that in this past year there were people who were on the board who knew they were not gonna run against that. I really don't want any committee assignments. And to me that was that was almost sacrilegious. Because y you were elected to the board for a reason and the reason was to represent the members and if you were not

I mean maybe you were a competitor, maybe you were interested in finance, maybe you were interested in legislative policy, but not the real work of the board is done in the committees. the best way to explain the board as a whole is we're like a legislature. And ⁓ looking at it as a legislature is probably the best way to do it in that fact that

There people that whose concern sure is the NRA overall, but their specialty is competition. I have no clue about high power rifle rules. And I don't understand why there is a high power rifle committee and an F-class high power c rifle committee. It's stuff I had no clue about. And I will admit that freely and I'll say, you guys do what you do so well.

And we will support you on that. Conversely, you know, on you know, litigation for the advance of the Second Amendment. I want you to support us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, the F clash shooters on the board may not know what's going on legislatively. Right. Yeah. So ⁓ the committee assignments are meant to sort of take the expertise from the various board members and ⁓

focus their attention on those issues. Well it's also where we do the work. You have to remember that we only meet as a board three times a year. Some committee well, we won't go into audit because we met a lot more than that, but some committees, you know, may meet monthly, some might do it quarterly. They may be working, you know

like a membership meeting much more frequently or clubs and associations. How can we reinvigorate clubs and associations? How can we get them back to being a hundred percent NRA members? And you know, working that with the membership committee to make it to their advantage to come back on board. so there's a lot of things like that, yeah. So looking back, what has

about about being on the board. What has been different than you anticipated? What surprises have there been?

surprise is that we were have we all have worked well together. ⁓ There's not the us versus them is not there w like it was in the past. And I I put down a lot of that to the the reformers. The reform the NRA two point wing now actually having a supermajority. ⁓ I also put it down to

Many of the old guard have actually resigned their positions and have gone to the foundation where there's where they are trustees. ⁓ and that's that that is another issue and we can discuss that later. But some just never showed back up after they lost power. And literally, well I'm ⁓ I'm ill this I can't do this travel so I'm not gonna show up.

I mean it's a good excuse. I mean I can't say it's excuse they just didn't show. Yeah. So the supermajority is the the influence of the supermajority of the reformers is even more accentuated by the fact that the a lot of the people who were not on the reform movement just don't show up or aren't engaged. They don't show up or they have resigned. Yeah. ⁓ the other thing is that, you know, all the officers come from the reformers. They are all

ac actually all three of them are have are business owners or have been business owners so they bring a business perspective and that has helped with our budgeting. the reformers have all the committee chairmen well not I can't say all the committee chairmanships, they have many of the c key committee chairmanships. ⁓

I mean there are fights within committees, ⁓ and that's good. And not it's not a fight over do we have a balanced budget or not. It's more of a fight how do we work with staff on legislative issues, let's say. And there's some that say no, we let ILA do what they want, and there's others say no, but we have to have oversight.

So you mentioned the the officers and the influence that they've had. I think that there's some somewhat of a top-down effect there, right, in terms of you that pleasant surprise, your your ability to work together. Can you talk a little bit about maybe Doug Hamlin, any of the other officers and their influence on on sort of the internal workings of the Sure ⁓ board? Doug the one thing that Doug has done since twenty twenty four

Is that if you look at the the second level of managers, you have Doug as executive vice president and he's been very open and really reached out to all constituencies. But you go to the next level down and he's brought in some new people. They're younger people. some of the old managers have retired. so you have ⁓ like JP Carter, he brought in

JP, you know, they're all in the late 30, early 40 range. So you have a younger cohort who's more energetic. ⁓ John Cumberford in Isla is, I think, just turned 40. Josh Savani, same age. ⁓ Mike Ursling might be a little older, but he came in, he moved up to be our new treasurer, our compliance officer.

has changed our chief compliance officer. and in that change we literally

how we reconfigured it we met all the court requirements and saved a million dollars in salaries and other benefits. So it's all working together well. Good. Now I c I can't speak to education and training, I can't speak to competition because I just don't know. What what about the

We alluded to the litigation out of New York earlier. Are there any lingering effects from that? What's going on with that? Sure. one of the I will just go to my audit committee. It specified that certain people could who had people who had been on the audit committee at any time prior to twenty twenty two could no longer serve on the audit committee. So that just that was like that was a clean slate.

with the exception of one two members of the audit committee, Charlie Beers and Rocky Marshall, who's second VP, had been on audit, they could still serve on audit. And then there was three new three of us that were new members. ⁓ so you had that court ordered change. because I will be frank, the audit committee in the past would they didn't do their job.

They would allow stuff to go through and stuff would get done and then they would approve it after the fact. Well you can't be approving stuff after the fact if you're an audit committee. If something's going if there's a conflict of interest, you look at it in advance, determine whether it's a conflict or not a conflict, and then allow it to happen or not happen. ⁓

So yesterday, today's Sunday at the NRA annual meeting, April nineteenth, yesterday was the membership meeting. Yes it was. You mind to talk tell us a little bit a wha about what occurred there, what what it resolutions were made, what progress was made, ⁓ points of contention. Well, it was about a three hour meeting. There was no time limit on it, unlike sometimes in the past. The officers all spoke, but it

What there the biggest difference is that Bill Bakenberg, President Bakkenberg,

reached out to the membership and said, here are two bylaw resolute two bylaw changes. We are in the middle of considering it and we want to discuss it with you. We want to hear what you think about it. And we put they put it up on the screen so you could read it. and so that way they saw at the input of the members and n it that had never been done. In the past was

Here's what we're gonna do, take it or lightly. We don't care if you don't like it or not, here's what we're gonna do. And one of them is a change to the executive committee, which right now is a has 20 members on it. I'm shocked since the winter meeting I've actually been a member I'm a replacement member on the executive committee. And that their goal is to change executive committee into a governance committee.

To handle business oriented things in the interim between the board meetings. And anything, and so it would consist of the three officers, the committee chairs for audit, finance, legal affairs, and membership. And people say, why membership? Because membership is so critical. And went from there, and then two at-large members.

Opinion that maybe we need four at-large members. I go back and forth on that. to me there's not much difference between nine and eleven. And there's some some people express the concern that you have the three officers and four committee chairs, so five of the people are either the president

or responsible to the president. The committee chairs 'cause he appoints committee chairs. So there i there's that consideration.

It I think it's a work in progress and a something to think about. ⁓ there was another resolution and ⁓ I'll be honest, I can't remember what exactly it is, but it it is something that would have to go to the vote of the members. Because if you look at the bylaws, if you have an actual physical copy or online, there are

Stuff in regular script and then there's stuff that is in bolded black italics. And if it's in bolded black italics, it can only be changed by the members. And how does that happen legit how does a vote of the membership occur on an issue like that? When you go to vote for ⁓ the committee pardon me. Once a year when you vote for the the board

⁓ that's how we do it. Yeah. And so it is a costly thing.

Alex Ooley (26:29)
So at the membership meeting yesterday, ⁓ we were talking about what resolutions were made. In your mind, and I don't want you you don't have to go into detail about all the resolutions that were made, what what's other significant resolutions do you Well actually it's easy because there was only one resolution presented. Okay. from Ron Andring who presented s a similar resolution last year that needed work and the difference was that Ron got appointed

because he had concerns. So we put him on the bylaws and resolutions committee. And he worked on it. He brought it back. This year it passed virtually unanimously the only resolution. ⁓ in what it dealt with was a conflict of interest. in the past there were had been members of the board that had

For lack of a better word, profited from their service on the board. It they may have been paid to give speeches, they have been may have been paid for consulting. Some ⁓ some were actually writers, like the late Skeeter Skelton was a writer. So he got paid to write for American Riflemen or Americ you know, American Hunter. And it now he only got paid he got paid the going rate. So that was kind of

That was cool. But being paid to give speeches, isn't that kind of what your job is to do? Maybe you should getting your expenses covered if you have to travel, I can see that. But being paid to make the speech, no, I don't. And so stuff like that will not be allowed in the future. Okay. And I will say that from my experience on the audit committee, when we have even potential conflicts of interest

For example, let's say somebody is the president of a state association and they're on the board and their state association gets a grant from, well, in the past from the NRA Foundation or from the Freedom Action Foundation or the new NRA Patriots Fund.

Is that a conflict of interest? And we looked at it and said, okay, this person was not involved in the grant request, this person was kept out of the loop. They it was an arm's length transaction. That was okay. Because it was doing what the grant request was valid and this person had no influence over it. Yeah. Well I was glad last year I didn't get to attend the membership meeting yesterday, but I've attended the last two.

And I was glad that last year when that resolution came up that Ron Andring accepted the opportunity to to participate in the committee because I think he did have legitimate concerns. But they weren't concerns that could be hashed out, at least not the minutiae in in the membership meeting itself. ⁓ so I mean it it the people spoke in favor. I really there was nothing

No one spoke against it other than asking just questions about it. And I will say Bill Bachenberg, our president, acknowledged that Ruan was a member of the committee and had worked on it and we made him a part of the process. Yeah. The committee process. And speaking of the committee pro back we talked about it earlier, one thing that has been done

is that we've added over a hundred non-board members to committees. So you have well known trainers ⁓ like Carl Rain on education and training. ⁓ you have on the hunting and shooting sport hunting and wildlife conservation. I have a degree in hunting and shooting sports management. That was my that's how I kept occupied during COVID. But on that committee we have

Aurelia Skipworth, who used to be the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We have the former the director of the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation. So we have other outsiders who are not board members. Yeah, that's fantastic. ⁓ so last question before we start to wrap up here. So yesterday was the membership meeting. Correct. Tomorrow, the tw April the twentieth is the board meeting. Correct. What are you expecting out of the board meeting and ⁓

Do you have any particular missions or goals at as yourself as part of the board meeting?

I don't know if I have any particular mission or goal from this board meeting. The first board meeting was last year at this that first board meeting that I attended ⁓ went from nine in the morning with breaks f you know for coffee and lunch and dinner to eleven fifty eight PM. It was a long day. Yeah. I don't think we'll go nearly that long because ⁓ even our September meeting ⁓ we finished by about five thirty.

No. Do we do all the work? Yes. And we did a lot of ⁓ the bylaw change type stuff in our interim meetings. we will have elections for committees. We will ⁓ and off and officer elections too. Officer elections. Yeah. I my feeling is that on the officer elections they will be unopposed. Okay. I don't know

We normally would then also vote for the trustees for the s ⁓ the Whittington Center, the trustees for the Civil Rights Defense Fund. In the past we would have voted for the trustees for the foundation, but they changed their bylaws without telling us, so we don't do that anymore. I'm trying to think. Obvious whether or not we'll vote for

the executive meet committee, I don't know, because it would have to depend on whether we adopt the resolution on changing it to a governance committee. Okay. Normally we would be voting and that's what took a lot of the time, because you have to have over fifty percent of the votes cast and when you had twenty people running, you had many I think we had ten or fifteen iterations of the vote. Okay. To get to that. Yeah. so there's that

⁓ not expecting any major fireworks to tomorrow. I mean we're looking at right now twelve different bylaw changes, some that we have already decided to postpone until September to for more work. For example there are a number of changes about from the compliance chief compliance officer to make

the bylaws ⁓ more consistent with the New York rulings. ⁓ the bylaws overall need to be rewritten because it's like anything that's been changed over time, a little so it it's like building a house, the difference between building a house from scratch

and doing add-ons to a house over a period of fifty years. You have a I'll add a room here. Well it does it match what everything else is. And you know, times change, stuff is contradictory, so there needs to be work there. Yeah. ⁓ so tomorrow's the board meeting, this that'll mark your first anniversary first anniversary of your first board meeting. Well actually as my granddaughter says actually

My first anniversary was the close of the meeting of the members. That's when you become a member of the board. Now you're not sword in until then, but you do actually become a member of the board at the close of the meeting of the members. Okay. Well, happy anniversary. Delayed anniversary, yes. how do you see just last question here. Obviously when you were elected

⁓ and when you were campaigning for the board, the NRA was still sort of dealing with the wake the turbulence of the the lawsuit in New York. Right. It seems like things have stabilized a bit since then. They have. How do you view the future of the NRA and what does success look like in a in a couple of years? Well, right now in terms of success, we have a balanced budget. First time in a number of years. We had a clean audit and to me that's we were clean.

⁓ there were maybe two items, like a miss a check that got sent to the wrong division and on a charitable trust it was improperly calculated. If that's the only thing that you found and they've been rectified, that was really good. Internal controls are excellent.

I would encourage people to read the compliant annual compliance report. Nobody flew on charter. Nobody flew first class. There were three instances of flying business class as opposed to coach and they were all pre approved for medical reasons. And only two of the flights occurred and one person decided to drive. So in that case, you're not seeing the fluff.

that used to you know, yeah, we're gonna stay at the Ritz Carleton. We're not gonna stay at a Hilton. A lot more disciplined internal discipline. Very much internal discipline on finances. Yeah. We've cut ⁓ board meetings from four days, board and committee meetings from four days to three days. ⁓ we do a lot more stuff electronically. We have meetings, you know, using Microsoft Teams or Zoom or whatever. ⁓

We have come out and I would encourage everyone who is a member to download it. ⁓ the NRA app. ⁓ go to either your Apple Android st or the Google store, Android store, or your Apple iTunes store and download it. It's free. ⁓ you'll be able to read back copies of the the magazines. You'll get discounts on a number of things.

Maybe a free holster if you buy a certain firearm or free membership. So there's we're that came out of the membership committee because we wanted to make it bring membership up to date. ⁓ hopefully in in the future we can s we're still we're holding about even on membership. We have lost a lot of members over the years. Since twenty nineteen we're down about two million members.

down from five million approximately. From about five, five and a half, and now we're down to about three three point three, three point five. Okay. ⁓ but we are finding that new ⁓ first time members, people signing up for an annual membership, are not quibbling about cost. I mean we've held our costs stable for a long time and they're they're not getting discounts and they're not objecting to that. They're seeing the value of that.

I mean if you can get a membership you pay forty five dollars for a membership, but you get hundreds of dollars in discounts, that kind of works. The what we need to do is keep people renewing and go back to the people who had been members and find a w and or say, you know, things have changed. This is not the NRA of twenty nineteen.

This is the NRA of twenty twenty-six and it's a whole different organization. Yeah. NRA two point right. 2.0 and we're probably moving to 2.5. Yeah. Yeah. Well and the bottom line is right that the NRA can only be effective at defending, protecting, advancing individual liberty in the Second Amendment if it has the support of its members. Absolutely and it can only have the support of its members if the members or potential members trust that the NRA is a good steward.

of their dollars and their membership I mean in and on gun rights issues we're suing across and we I think we have sixty active two a lawsuits and the smart thing is we're not doing it alone. We're doing it in co we're spreading our litigation dollars. ⁓ we're working with the Second Amendment Foundation. We're working with NSSF we're working with GOA we're working with the Firearms Policy Coalition.

Taking a more big ten approach. A big ten approach. ⁓ we work we're working with American Suppressor Associ American Suppressor Association. But we have a joint lawsuit against the NFA. We work together with them on ⁓ all these groups on the one big beautiful bill to get the for suppressors and short barreled rifles and short barrel shotguns to have a zero tax. Zero tax is a standing

The challenge the law which was only approved as a tax item. So Yeah, well we're working together and I will say the more members we have, the more we can be effective in Congress, because that's the first thing a congressman's gonna ask. How many members do you have and where how many do you have in my district? Yeah.

Well John, thank you so much for being on the Forge of Freedom today. It's glad to be back. Really appreciate your time, really appreciate your your effort on the board and thank you and on your blog, Only Guns and Money. happy anniversary. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I hope you keep up the good work. You've got a couple years left. Two more years. And hopefully you see that it's worth your while and decide to run again. Well one of the things I really made an effort of this year

And I thought it was incumbent upon me, is I nominated four people and I lowered the age of the board by doing it. And one person who should arrive sometime later today, James Cruz is thirty-three. I know we have another board member who just got elected who's twenty-five. And another board member who I met yesterday who's thirty. So we are lowering the overall age.

from above Medicare age to maybe the if we could get down the you know the average age to sixty, we would be doing really good. Right, yeah. We'll hopefully continue to make progress in in that area and and in many others. I think.

⁓ it's evident if you pay attention ⁓ that the NRA is being more disciplined, is being a better steward of membership dues. And I think there's reason to be hopeful for the future of the NRA. Yep, there is. All right. Well thanks again, John. I appreciate your your time here today. Thank you, Alex. Thanks to everybody for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the show. I want to thank Beretta Holding for sponsoring the Voices of the Second Amendment here at the NRA annual meeting in Houston. As always, you can find the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, and X and all the most popular podcasts.

streaming platforms. Until next time, remember, you are the Forge of Freedom.