NRA’s New President: A Rough First Day on the Job

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John Sigler, longtime NRA board member and retired police captain from Delaware replaced Sandra S. Froman as NRA president yesterday. Of course, you’d never know it from their website, where Froman’s President’s Column is still up. Or if you read the news. There were no news stories on Sigler’s first day, nary a press release.

We heard about the changeover via NRA radio (they have a nightly show at 9pm EDT):

As you can imagine this is not the way I wanted my presidency to begin, but it is important for our members to understand that we will do everything we can. If there is any way we can assist with law enforcement or with the families- I have no idea what that would be, it’s probably a hollow offer at best. We hope for an early resolution so the families can put this behind them.

The NRA too would surely like to see this incident behind them. But for now be sure that, yes, they will do everything they can to fight what will surely be a slew of new legislative proposals, on handgun purchases, background checks, concealed weapons, the gamut.

Froman, who was the second female president in the history of the NRA, gave a speech two weeks ago at Harvard Law School where she railed against New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s decision to confiscate guns from residents immediately following Hurricane Katrina. She said that the New Orleans government was “profoundly incompetent” and added that a person having a gun could have served as a safety net: “If the government isn’t protecting you, then it’s an insurance policy.”

Vigilante justice anyone?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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