While the National Rifle Association spent over $54 million on the 2016 election, the organization’s political spending has declined in recent years amid legal troubles and scandals. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings compiled by OpenSecrets, the NRA spent $29 million on the 2020 election and $10 million on the 2024 election to date.
Last fall, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, launched a new super PAC — “Protect Liberty PAC” — to complement its conventional “NSSF PAC.” The super PAC was created to “fill the void left by NRA” and “the resources they had in previous election cycles.” But FEC filings show that the NSSF and its PACs spent a combined $1.1 million on the 2024 election as of this writing, a fraction of the NRA’s spending.1According to OpenSecrets, the NSSF and its affiliates disbursed $873,01 to candidates and its affiliated super PAC, Protect Liberty PAC, and the latter made independent expenditures totaling $306,663.
As journalist Stephen Gutowski said days before the election, the NSSF’s PACs were “not even really close to making up the gap” left by the NRA. 2The Reload, “Which Races Gun Groups Are Spending On; DC Circuit Upholds Magazine Ban | News Update,” YouTube, November 1, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuMQ2S-K2Ig&ab_channel=TheReload, at 10:40.
missing the mark
When the Protect Liberty PAC was first announced, the NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel, Larry Keane, who also serves as the PAC’s treasurer, said that it would help elect candidates who would stop “the rise of socialism, the rise of this ‘woke’ culture, the suppressing [of] our Second Amendment freedoms.”
In a July interview, Keane said that the NSSF was “trying to provide new trusted leadership on this issue, the Second Amendment, and provide a place where people can support [the] Second Amendment if they’re not comfortable supporting other organizations.”3Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, “Protect Liberty Pac Ready to Spotlight Harris’s Extensive Anti-2A History,” YouTube, July 25, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgYlSc60Rj4&ab_channel=BearingArms%27Cam%26Co, at 15:00. Keane referred to the NRA’s corruption allegations, saying, “100 percent of those donations go to the cause. You know, there’s no skimming off the top or anything like that. No one’s buying suits or houses on golf courses.”4Ibid, at 15:18.
In another interview, Keane said, “This truly is the most important election of our lifetimes” and promised that “Protect Liberty PAC will give a voice to those who will no longer allow political candidates to use them as a punchline.”
Last month, a ProPublica investigation alleged that the NSSF had created a database of sensitive gun owner data provided by its members — the country’s largest gun makers and sellers — to “rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians.” To learn more, click here.
gun industry donors
The Protect Liberty PAC’s donors include some of the country’s largest gun companies. For example, firearm distributor Lipsey’s donated $25,000 to the super PAC, as did the CEO of Davidson’s, another large distributor. (The CEOs of both companies also sit on the NSSF’s Board of Governors.) The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers donated another $25,000.
Gun manufacturer Taurus, and the CEO of Springfield Armory, each donated $25,000 to the super PAC, and two of the country’s largest silencer retailers — Silencer Central and the Silencer Shop — donated $50,000 and $25,000, respectively. To learn how the NSSF sped up the silencer-buying process, click here.
Other standout donors include Grasso Holdings ($10,000), a company that imports Russian ammunition, and Luth-AR ($10,000), which produces components for AR-style firearms. The latter was founded in 2013 by Randy Luth, the former owner of AR-15 manufacturer DPMS.
Finally, Range USA, a firearm retailer with 49 locations across the U.S., donated $20,000 to the Protect Liberty PAC.5This figure includes $10,000 from “Range USA” and another $10,000 from “Topco America LLC,” which did business as “Shoot Point Blank.” In 2022, Shoot Point Blank rebranded as Range USA. Twenty-nine Range USA locations appeared on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) list of gun dealers who had 25 or more crime guns traced back to them in 2022 within three years of being sold.