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NRA’s Marion Hammer isn’t really retiring, just dodging lobbyist disclosure requirements

marion hammer
Marion Hammer reacting to applause from the crowd and musician Charlie Daniels at the NRA’s 2005 convention in Houston. Photo: Houston Chronicle

By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org

Last week, the National Rifle Association announced that its longtime Tallahassee-based lobbyist Marion Hammer will “step down” but “continue to serve as an advisor to the NRA.”

That’s a curious turn of a phrase. But it has a simple, unstated meaning: Hammer, 83, will soon be able to dodge once again regularly disclosing to Floridians the splendid sums the NRA slips regularly into her purse, currently more than $50,000 every three months.

This time, perhaps, legally.

Three years ago, after Florida Bulldog disclosed that Hammer, former NRA president, hadn’t filed any lobbyist compensation forms, a potentially costly infraction, since the state began requiring them in 2007. She tried wriggling out of trouble by saying, among other things, that she was “a consultant and not a lobbyist,” according to then-state Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, and therefore not required to file such a report.

Hammer’s tale didn’t work – among other things, she’d been a registered NRA lobbyist for years – but her Republican allies in high places came through for her.

LAPIERRE AND MARION HAMMER

The Florida Senate brushed off its obligation to investigate complaints about Hammer, steering her case to a bureaucrat under the Senate president’s control. The bureaucrat told Hammer to retroactively file some old reports, then referred the matter to the state ethics commission, which found “no probable cause” to think Hammer hadn’t followed lobbyist disclosure rules.

Wayne LaPierre

So, for the duration of Hammer’s 10-year, $220,000 annual contract with the NRA, signed in April 2018, she’ll continue to rake in the gun group’s money, but won’t be obliged to fill out those pesky NRA lobbyist disclosure forms.

But that’s not the only NRA money that’s softening Hammer’s old age. The woman who has been the NRA’s face in Florida since the late 1970s collects another $180,000 annually via the NRA’s lobbying arm, NRA-ILA, as well as NRA grants funneled through Unified Sportsmen of Florida, the group Hammer founded and has run for more than a generation.

How do we know that? Hammer’s old pal, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, disclosed it in testimony he gave while defending against New York’s lawsuit that accuses top NRA executives of multiple financial improprieties and seeks to dissolve the NRA.

Earlier this month, a New York judge dismissed the NRA’s claims that the case is a political vendetta by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat. In March, New York City Judge Joel Cohen also dismissed the lawsuit’s attempt to shut down the NRA, but ruled the state’s two-year-old case can proceed. Should the state prevail, other remedies including fines could be imposed.

The NRA’s June 16 press release announcing Hammer would no longer serve as a “state lobbyist for the NRA-Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) in Florida” quoted LaPierre as calling her “a dynamic and legendary advocate who has led the way with many laws that started in Florida and then served as a blueprint across the country.”

MARION HAMMER AND SCHOOLS

It wasn’t always that way. In the 1980s, following nationwide headlines about a string of shootings in Miami-Dade that left 30 children under the age of 18 dead, Hammer unsuccessfully pushed an audacious plan for statewide gun education in schools, for students from kindergarten to the sixth grade.

Logo of the NRA’s Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program

“Children don’t understand the finality of death. They see people on TV programs shot and killed and then see them walking around on another show next week. Why should a child die needlessly for lack of education over an implement, a tool? What we need is basic safety information,” Hammer told The Miami News in July 1988.

Hammer had more success in the decades that followed. For example, she was a key force behind Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground Law,” that abolished the duty to retreat and allowed the use of deadly force if a person has a “reasonable” fear of death or great bodily harm, and the ‘’Castle Doctrine,’’ which gave individuals the right to use deadly force against an intruder into their home. While NRA president between 1996-1998 Hammer launched the Eddie Eagle Gun Safe program, which she has said is her proudest achievement.

The Tampa Bay Times interviewed Hammer after the announcement of what it termed her “retirement.”

“Hammer’s retirement means she will not be the NRA’s lobbyist during the 2023 legislative session, where a bill addressing permitless carry has been promised by a top Republican lawmaker. But she said she will try to push for the legislation from afar in her new role,” the paper said.

That sure sounds like Hammer intends to continue lobbying.

NEW YORK VS NRA

The New York Attorney General’s office amended its lawsuit against the NRA, LaPierre and three other current and former NRA executives in early May. On page 132 it discusses how the NRA’s audit committee “purported to retroactively approve existing NRA contracts” with Hammer’s Unified Sportsmen of Florida and other groups that “presented conflicts of interest.”

The first example cited in the lawsuit of “related party transactions and conflicts of interest that were improperly approved by the Audit Committee” was its April 28, 2019, retroactive approval of “approximately $3,692,000 paid by the NRA to Unified Sportsmen of Florida over a nineteen-year period.” (Emphasis in the document)

The lawsuit notes that Hammer, identified only as NRA board member No. 5, is the executive director of Unified Sportsmen. “At the same meeting, the Committee also prospectively approved future payments by the NRA to Unified Sportsmen of Florida,” the amended lawsuit says.

The New York lawsuit recounts how, under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA “routinely entered’’ into agreements with board members while ignoring both NRA policy and New York law requiring the full board to determine in advance that the transactions were “fair, reasonable and in the NRA’s best interests.”

Among the complaint’s listed examples were a pair of lucrative contracts given to Hammer. The first was a one-year contract in December 2017 for $168,000. The second was Hammer’s 10-year contract for $220,000 annually, both “negotiated” by her ally, LaPierre.

“Upon information and belief, LaPierre did not notify or receive approval from the Audit Committee in advance of executing the April 2018 contract,” the lawsuit says. “Upon information and belief, LaPierre did not receive written approval in advance from the President or a Vice President before executing the December 2017 or April 2018 contracts…LaPierre did not follow appropriate legal and internal procedures.”

In court filings replying to New York State’s assertion that he failed to follow proper procedures, LaPierre’s lawyers wrote, “Mr. LaPierre lacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations set forth.”

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Latest comments

  • I a Native and 2nd generation Floridian. I Am an NRA Life member, 68 yrs old. I own many guns, ammunition, other accessories. They are benign objects no different than tools. I have never killed any human. I carry a loaded weapon every where I go. I have once drew my concealed weapon to defend myself from attack by a larger and deranged man while walking my dog one morning. Police investigated and released me on the scene I thank the NRA for its work on Floridas concealed carry and stand your ground laws. Those laws most certainly saved me from possible death, and costly legal fees defending my God given right to armed self defense. Florida codified Mans Natural rights to armed self defence in Florida. Marion Hammer helped this become law.

    Why do I carry a loaded gun everywhere I go ? Because Communist Liberalism has turned America into a country where criminals are celebrated and the police are neutered. Where prison doors are opened, borders are unsecure, where felons are celebrated as national heros as police are imprisoned for doing their jobs. Where the Federal Government operates on the principles of Joe Stalin and not the Constitution. I alone am the only one that can protect my family and myself from attack by criminals. I thank Marion Hammer and the NRA for their tireless work on behalf of Floridians.

    Never forget. Like it or not. The Second Amendment was created not to provide Americans the ability to hunt game or shoot paper targets. The Second Amendment is a written order, a law, to the US Government that it does not have the authority to infringe on the natural right of Americans to posess guns. It was written to give the citizens of the new Republic the right to own and use arms and ammunition for lawful purposes of self defense and defense of others.

    Let those whose mission is to turn America into a Communist State know the Founding Fathers also wrote the Second Amendment anticipating people like you.

  • @JB: Sure, Jan.

  • The current U.S. Supreme Court is as phony and doctrinaire as it can be. If the ultra-conservatives on the Court, especially Thomas and Alito, are as wedded to the concept of “originalism” as they claim, there is no way that they could find that the founders intended for citizens to have the right to carry guns with no controls imposed by state governments.

    The Constitution’s language is clear regarding militias, not individuals. And that interpretation stood until 2008, when a conservative majority expanded it to include individuals. Prior to that ruling, the Court’s interpretation of gun ownership was older than Roe v. Wade.
    If the Democratic Party does not recognize that it is involved in a war with today’s reactionary Republican Party, and needs to respond by either getting rid of the filibuster or by expanding the size of the Court, then the Democratic Party deserves to lose. The problem is that the rest of us do not deserve to lose.

  • @ROBERT MONROE, Too bad you didn’t study much before RvW.

    Even the legislature in the early 20ith century recognized the unorganized militia.

    ” The 1903 act (repealed the Militia Acts of 1795 and) designated the militia (per Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 311) as two classes: the Reserve Militia, which included all able-bodied men between ages 17 and 45, and the Organized Militia, comprising state militia (National Guard) units receiving federal support. ”

    Even some States made clear provisions: “Article XIII of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights of 1776 read:
    That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state.” But I expect “the people have a right to bear arms in defense of themselves” means something that what it clearly says to you. Gotta love advanced rationalization, smh.

    And any serious review of SCOTUS cases will find numerous references to the individual rights. For example:
    “Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) – The court ruled Scott did not enjoy the protection of the Bill of Rights because of his racial background. However, in its ruling, it implies all free men do have the right to bear arms by indicating what would happen if he was indeed afforded full protection:
    It would give to persons of the negro race, … the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, … the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

    Regardless, the 2nd does not limit the people. It limits the government, originally, just the federal government. And, like the others in the Bill of Rights, it has now been incorporated to to the states through the 14th Amendment (an amendment that was, in part, necessary due to the black laws during reconstruction after the Civil War.

    Books have been written that demonstrate cases like these. They definitively prove your myopic perspective not only myopic but biased and wrong.

    So, no. Not even close.

  • And @Robert Monroe, just in case you have trouble with the first part of my reply, I will help you out a bit more regarding the unorganized militia (and even provide a link for you):

    https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title10/subtitleA/part1/chapter12&edition=prelim#:~:text=(2)%20the%20unorganized%20militia%2C,Guard%20or%20the%20Naval%20Militia.

    10 USC Ch. 12: THE MILITIA
    From Title 10—ARMED FORCES
    Subtitle A—General Military Law
    PART I—ORGANIZATION AND GENERAL MILITARY POWERS
    CHAPTER 12—THE MILITIA
    Sec.
    246.Militia: composition and classes.
    247.Militia duty: exemptions.

    Editorial Notes
    Amendments
    2016—Pub. L. 114–328, div. A, title XII, §1241(a)(1), (o)(2), Dec. 23, 2016, 130 Stat. 2497, 2512, renumbered chapter 13 of this title “THE MILITIA” as chapter 12, redesignated item 311 “Militia: composition and classes” as item 246, and redesignated item 312 “Militia duty: exemptions” as item 247.

    §246. Militia: composition and classes
    (a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

    (b) The classes of the militia are—

    (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

    (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

    (Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14, §311; Pub. L. 85–861, §1(7), Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103–160, div. A, title V, §524(a), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656; renumbered §246, Pub. L. 114–328, div. A, title XII, §1241(a)(2), Dec. 23, 2016, 130 Stat. 2497.)

    Historical and Revision Notes
    1956 Act
    Revised section Source (U.S. Code) Source (Statutes at Large)
    311(a)
    311(b)

    32:1 (less last 19 words).
    32:1 (last 19 words).

    June 3, 1916, ch. 134, §57, 39 Stat. 197; June 28, 1947, ch. 162, §7 (as applicable to §57 of the Act of June 3, 1916, ch. 134), 61 Stat. 192.

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