NRA Breaks 15-Year Fundraising Record, Raising $2.4 Million In The First Full Month After Parkland Shooting
The National Rifle Association (NRA) raised more money in one month – specifically, the month after the Parkland school shooting – than they normally raise in three, breaking a one-month fundraising record in the process, McClatchy DC Bureau is reporting.
March 2018 was the first full calendar month since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, left 17 people dead. According to publicly-available documents submitted to the Federal Elections Commission, during that month the gun-rights organization raised $2.4 million. That is the most the NRA has ever raised in one month; $1.5 million more than it raised in March 2017, when it took in $884,000; and around three times what it makes in donations in an average month.
In fact, it seems that school shootings tend to precede big fundraising months for the NRA. In January and February 2013, the months after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA raised $1.1 million and $1.5 million, respectively.
Nearly $1.9 million of the $2.4 million raised for the NRA in March comes from small donors, who donated $200 or less.
By way of comparison, the March for Our Lives movement, founded in part by Parkland survivors, has raised $3.5 million since March 18.
Since the February 14 Parkland school shooting, the NRA has been front and center in the discussion about gun control. Several of the teens who survived the shooting, including David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, have become prominent gun-control advocates in the weeks and months since.
The #Parkland students are on @TIME‘s list of the world’s most influential people #TIME100 https://t.co/mPJYZP7SUE
— Sandy Hook Promise (@sandyhook) April 24, 2018
In the days and weeks immediately after the shooting, several businesses began discontinuing their partnerships with the NRA, putting aside discount programs and other perks for members. As ThinkProgress reported at the time, some of the bigger names to cut ties with the NRA included MetLife, Hertz, Budget Rent-a-Car, and Lifelock, among others. FedEx, meanwhile, stuck with the NRA.
In fact, the dust has far from settled on the matter of businesses partnering with the NRA. Even as these words are being typed, cooler manufacturer Yeti finds itself drawn into an NRA-related controversy. As CNN reports, NRA members are blowing up their Yeti coolers in anger over the manufacturer supposedly canceling a discount on its products for NRA members. Specifically, according to former NRA president Marion Hammer, the manufacturer “suddenly and without prior notice declined to do business with the NRA Foundation.”
Yeti, for its part, said that Hammer’s words are “inaccurate.”
“When we notified the NRA Foundation and the other organizations of this change, YETI explained that we were offering them an alternative customization program broadly available to consumers and organizations, including the NRA Foundation. These facts directly contradict the inaccurate statement the NRA-ILA distributed on April 20.”
Further, the company noted that it is “unwavering in its commitment to” the Second Amendment.
