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On a frigid Martin Luther King Jr. Day earlier this year, Philip Van Cleave brought out the big guns to Richmond. As he stood on the steps of the Virginia State Capitol, Van Cleavea 68-year-old balding and mustachioed software programmerdelivered a stern warning to the Democrats who had recently gained control of the state government: Were here today to remind Governor [Ralph] Northam and the general assembly that the last election was not a referendum on gun control. In front of him, an ocean of pro-gun protesters whooped in solidarity. Nearly all were armed, many gripping AR-15-style rifles or other assault weapons. A good number were decked out in paramilitary outfits and tactical gear. Confederate and Gadsden flags waved high and wide.
It was a scene that once would have been credited to the National Rifle Associationthe nations oldest gun rights group, which, over the past several decades, has inflamed and radicalized a broad coalition of conservative gun owners through alarmist messaging, especially during the Obama administration, and cemented itself as a formidable political force. But the NRA has since dwindled in power, and the rally was the work of Van Cleaves Virginia Citizens Defense League, a no-compromise, far-right gun rights group that he once boasted was proud to have been labeled an extremist organization.
Over the past 19 years, VCDLs Lobby Day protests in Richmondan annual event on MLK Day when special interest groups, predominantly ones with conservative ties, advocate to the General Assemblywere relatively mild affairs, with about 600 to 800 attendees. But this year it attracted more than 20,000, and the days leading up to the protest put the state on edge. The FBI arrested members of the neo-Nazi group the Base, who had allegedly stockpiled firearms and ammunition, discussed plans to recruit members at the rally to help kickstart a race war, and talked about committing acts of violence against people of color. Northam declared a state of emergency to ban weapons on the grounds of the state capitol building, but the crowd was so large that most armed attendees couldnt even fit in the area, instead spilling into the side streets of downtown Richmond. Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder, drove around the streets in an armored vehicle screaming through a bullhorn, If they try to take our firearms, 1776 will commence again!
The rally was a bellwether: the sudden downfall of the nations most powerful gun group and the rise of more radical pro-gun organizations and militias seeking to take its place. Since 2016, the NRA has seen a steady decline in its ranks. Meanwhile, theres been a boon in membership for more extreme groups like the VCDL and the Second Amendment Foundation, which recently filed a number of lawsuits challenging state gun control laws, and the National Association for Gun Rights, which paints itself as a more conservative alternative to the NRA.
Theres no doubt a void to be filled by the NRA, but its unclear what groups will dominate. Weve got 100 million gun owners in this country, says Joshua Powell, the NRA directors former chief of staff. Whether its the NRA or some other group, somebodys going to have to fill those shoes. Powell was fired from the NRA last year amid allegations of sexual harassment, and hes since published a memoir detailing the behind-the-scenes corruption within the organization. It is important to have an institution that represents Second Amendment supporters, gun owners, Powell adds. This is part and parcel to the fabric of our country. The Second Amendment is not going anywhere. Van Cleave is also confident that there will be a group, or a splintered coalition of smaller groups, to step into the NRAs shoes. Theres not going to be a void there, he says. Somebodys going to fill that.
The NRAs downward spiral started with its greatest accomplishment: spending $54 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2016. But the first signs of financial trouble emerged the following year, which the NRA ended with a $1.1 million shortfall thanks to shrinking member revenue, probably because it no longer had Barack Obama as a liberal boogeyman to fundraise off of, as well as an increase in spending. The next year, 2018, saw an increase in revenue from membership dues, but the nonprofit again spent more money than it brought in, digging an even deeper hole of $10.8 million in the red, as its debts piled up.
The dam broke for the NRA in 2019 when, just before its annual meeting and convention in Indianapolis, the New Yorker and the Trace published a bombshell report detailing allegations of self-dealing among its top vendors, gratuitous spending, sweetheart deals, and other financial improprieties among the groups leadershipchiefly its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, who has led the organization since 1991. At the meeting, then-NRA President Oliver North unsuccessfully tried to oust LaPierre and demanded his resignation.
LaPierre survived the uprising, as a majority of the NRAs 76-member board backed him unanimously and North resigned. But the damage was done. An anonymous source leaked financial documents that exposed years of corruption, including a damning letter that North penned. In a court filing from later last year Norths lawyers said that LaPierre demonstrating his total dictatorial control over the NRAstopped all of Norths inquiries and prevented others at the NRA from looking into the concerns that North raised.
Days after Norths attempted coup against LaPierre, New York Attorney General Letitia James opened an investigation into the NRAs tax-exempt status.After spending a year investigating, in August her office filed a massive lawsuit against the NRA, accusing it of widespread corruption and seeking to dissolve the organization in its entirety. The NRAs influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets, James said in statement announcing the lawsuit. The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is whywe seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law. The lawsuit has since been tied up in a number of challenges by the NRAs legal team. After years of denying allegations of financial misconduct, the NRA finally admitted in its most recent tax filing that the organization only recently became aware of a significant diversion of its assets between LaPierre and five former executives.
The NRA has always been notoriously cagey about its membership numbers, but its tax returns and other financial documents offer a glimpse into the dire situation. An audited financial statementshows that revenue from member dues dropped from $170 million in 2018 to $113 million last yeara 34 percent decline marking the lowest annual membership revenue figure that the NRA has posted since 2012, which is especially troubling considering that the cost of membership dues has sharply increased in that timeat least twice in the last four years alone. (The NRA did not respond for a request for clarification on membership numbers and the decline in revenue from member dues.) That drop in revenue, along with the millions of dollars it has tied up to fight the New York attorney generals lawsuit and other litigation, meant a far smaller war chest for the 2020 election. This time around, the NRA spent only $24 million on federal electionsless than half of what it did in 2016 and barely more than the combined $22.1 million spent by two of the nations largest gun reform organizations, Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords. Meanwhile, the Gun Owners of America spent $900,000 in the 2020 election cycle, 14 times more than in 2016.
Thats a huge decrease in political spending, Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor and gun policy expert at UCLAs School of Law, says of the NRAs involvement in the 2020 election. Especially at a time when the gun control side is becoming more active, more engaged, putting more money into elections, and doing better get-out-the-vote mobilization efforts than ever before. All the while, more and more NRA members became disappointed and disillusioned with the organization. Theyve certainly lost members over this, says Van Cleave, who claims that his groups membership more than quadrupled in the six weeks following its 2020 Lobby Day rally, growing from about 8,000 to more than 35,000. Many of the new members of his group, he says, had quit the NRA. I see a lot of disappointment, he adds. The way a lot of the money is being used. Thats the concern.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League came into existence in 1994, just as congressional Democrats pushed through a pair of gun safety billsincluding a decade-long ban on assault weaponsthat sparked the modern gun control debate. Paul Moog formed the group to fight gun safety legislation not on a national level, but locally in Virginia. Originally called the Northern Virginia Citizens Defense League, the groups first order of business was to pressure state lawmakers to change the states concealed carry laws from its may issue legal statusmeaning that the state may issue a concealed carry permit only to people who can prove they have a good reasonto shall issue, granting anyone eligible to own a firearm to also obtain a concealed carry permit.
Building on the early success, Moog soon dropped the Northern from VCDLs title and set his sights on ensuring that the whole state was as gun-friendly as it could possibly be. To do so, the group established a playbook of lobbying lawmakersmuch like the NRAcoupled with public protests meant to intimidate any push for tightening Virginias gun laws. In 1998, VCDL members protested a Northern Virginia churchs gift-for-guns program, which encouraged people to surrender their unwanted firearms in exchange for gift certificates to local businesses. In 2002, the group led a boycott against the Valley View Mall in Roanoke over its ban of firearms in the mall. And in 2004, after a slew of gun control bills failed to make it out of the states general assembly, the VCDL encourage firearm owners to turn up at restaurants and shopping centers with their sidearm strapped to their hip in celebrationin turn intimidating some clientele.
In 2001, Van Cleave became the groups president and, one year later, members staged their first Lobby Day protest. Under his leadership, the VCDL has expanded its national profile, showing an eagerness to go on national news programs to defend his extremist views on the Second Amendmentespecially in the wake of mass shootings. After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Van Cleave gleefully defended the semiautomatic military-style rifle used by the shooter, Adam Lanza, to the Washington Post. Guns are fun, and some of them are much more cool than others, he said. Its just like we have television sets that look cool, and others are much more boxy. He has also criticized the NRA for not going far enough in their comments calling for armed guards in schools. If you have got a permit, if youre carrying everywhere else you goa school is no different, Van Cleave told WWBT, Richmonds NBC affiliate.
But Van Cleaves most notable brush with public notoriety is also his most embarrassing. In 2018, he was duped by notorious prankster Sacha Baron Cohen for his Showtime series Who Is America? in a segment where he films a faux-PSA for a gun-training program for kids, KinderGuardians. Despite the embarrassment (which he attempted to distance himself from by claiming he knew he was being set up but went along in an attempt to protect other gun advocates from similar ploys), Van Cleave and the VCDL have managed to greatly broaden their coalition within Virginia, acting as both a blueprint for local grassroots gun rights groups in other states and as fodder for national ones seeking to capitalize on the NRAs decline.
Since the Lobby Day rally, a number of militias have formed throughout Virginia, something that Van Cleave says the VCDL wasnt involved in organizing but welcomes. But his group has been busy this year: the VCDL fought Northams actions to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including a successful legal effort in April to overturn part of the governors executive order that classified shooting ranges among the businesses forced to close as the state went into lockdown. The VCDL has also been heavily involved in the growing number of towns and municipalities in the state declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuariesand vowing not to enforce any new gun control laws passed at the state and county level. Through VCDLs email alert system, which Van Cleave says has tens of thousands of subscribers, they are able to send an SOS to its members whenever gun control legislation is on the table anywhere in the state, mobilizing members to voice opposition to any such measures in public comment forums. We dont let these localities take our basic civil rights and do with them what they please, Van Cleave told a local Virginia newspaper in July. When it comes to guns, thats when the rules go out the windowwere not going to let them get away with it.
Several groups have already ramped up their operations over the past year, such as Gun Owners of America, a national group that former Texas Rep. Ron Paul once called the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington. Van Cleave says the VCDL has been working quite a bit with Gun Owners of America on both state and national issues. I think whats going to happen is as the NRA ends up being pretty crippled for a while, there are other organizations that are going to step forward, he says. Theres not going to be a void there, somebodys going to fill that.
As the coronavirus sent much of the country into lockdown this spring, more new armed groups emerged in protest. Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia stormed the states capitol building in protest of the tyranny that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was imposing with her strict stay-at-home orders. As unrest in the wake of George Floyds murder spread across the country, so too did armed militia groups, from Portland to Wisconsin, Texas, and Virginia, where authorities claim that the antigovernment extremist group known as the boogaloo boyswhose rise this year started at the Lobby Day rally in Richmondstoked violent confrontations between police and Black Lives Matter protesters. In mid-October, the FBI announced that members of an extremist militia group had plotted to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, as well as take over the states capitol building, where they would hold televised executions of public officials. The group also discussed taking Northam, Virginias Democratic governor, according to the FBI. But Van Cleave dismisses any connection between VCDLs Lobby Day protest and the rise of violence from extremist militia groups, calling it overblown lies from the media. Im very skeptical of a lot of that, he says.
Still, as groups vie to fill the NRAs void, extremist gun violence is increasing in ever more concerning ways. Two armed men from Virginia were arrested outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center on November 5 after police received a tip about plans to raid a truckload of fake ballots. One of the men, Joshua Macias, co-founded the group Vets for Trump and had attended VCDLs Lobby Day rally in January, according to a review of his Twitter account. In a video taken during the rally, Macias can be seen, with a bullhorn in hand, firing up a crowd of hundreds on a downtown Richmond side street: There are veterans out herewho made an oath to defend this constitution against foreign and domestic enemies!
In the aftermath of the election, as Trump refused to concede and peddled conspiracy theories about election fraud, thousands of his supportersincluding violent extremist groups like the Proud Boysmarched in DC to protest the results. Though DC law forbids carrying firearms in most public places, includingat public demonstrations, the Oath Keepers, an extremist militia group, posted a note on its website to supporters saying that our men will be standing by, awaiting the Presidents orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.s ridiculous anti-gun laws. At least four people were arrested on gun charges at the rally.
Not all gun owners are flocking to these far-right groups. Other gun groups like the Socialist Rifle Association and the National African American Gun Association have also seen membership increase, though theirs is much smaller than their ultra-right counterparts. And in October, Giffords, the gun safety group co-founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords (D), launched a new national firearms group for gun owners that it hopes can take the NRAs mantle while also pushing for gun control measures.
It would be convenient to link the rise of extremist gun groups this year to the NRAs downfall: At a time when gun control groups are more impactful than theyve ever beenspending millions of dollars to successfully boost political candidates running on a gun control platformtheir biggest foe is down and out, leaving gun owners across the country feeling powerless. But Winkler doesnt think the narrative tracks. He explains that the rise in militia activity and armed protesters this year seems to be the natural growth of something that started about 10 to 12 years ago with the tea party movement when guns became a symbol of protest. I dont think the vast majority of people who bring guns to a protest are planning on starting a firefight, he says. Theyre not planning on starting a war. Theyre doing it symbolically for protest. Still, Winkler worries that it can go awry, especially given the spate of right-wing violence from extremist militias at protests over the summer. Theyre suddenly shifting to self-defense, he says, the moment they see someone or something happening that they feel threatened by.
Van Cleave sees his groups Lobby Day protest and continued advocacy for gun rights not so much as a protest, but as a battle. Thats especially true in a Joe BidenKamala Harris administration, which Van Cleave says has basically declared war on the Second Amendment. His group was planning another massive Lobby Day protest next month, but that went awry when gun control groups got permits for the space where VCDL typically holds its event. In retaliation, VCDL sent a message to members with plans for a caravan rally similar to the Trump rallies that took place across the country before the election. VCDL is going to do thatbut on steroids! the email stated. Beyond Lobby Day, Van Cleave hints at other events and strategies to fight any gun control laws that the new administration may try to pass, whether through litigation or on the streets. Our job is to protect that [Second Amendment] right by whatever means is necessary.
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A More Extreme Gun Rights Movement Is Emerging in the NRA's Wake - Mother Jones
