Dear NRA Members,

As I visit with NRA members across the country, they often ask about our efforts to confront attacks on the NRA and the freedoms for which it stands.

Politically motivated government officials and the regulators they appoint in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the State of New York continue to attempt to weaponize their powers to try to silence the NRA. We are determined to confront this behavior directly to safeguard the NRA’s right to free speech and to protect you – our members.

You should know that constitutional scholars, opinion leaders, and members of the national media are taking notice. The NRA is fighting back and winning in the courtroom – and in the court of public opinion.

Please see the following National Review editorial by legal writer Walter Olson, “Progressive Governments’ Economic War on the NRA Fails in Court.”

In the editorial, Olson addresses efforts by government officials in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York to “take down the hated National Rifle Association by targeting its pocketbook.”

Olson writes in support of the NRA’s legal advocacy and observes that San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are “facing a legal reckoning in court, based not on the Second Amendment but on the First. Without needing to even consider the issue of gun rights, federal courts are recognizing that boycotts enforced by government power can menace free speech and free association.”

Olson places particular emphasis on the NRA’s advocacy against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York state regulators. We are fighting back against a premeditated attempt to coerce banks and insurance companies to refrain from doing business with the NRA and groups like it lest they suffer the wrath of New York state regulators.

Olson observes, “While Cuomo was of course free to express his own views, the Constitution would have something to say about it if he or his appointees had made veiled threats against banks and insurers to encourage them to disassociate from the NRA.”

I know that the NRA would not be winning without your tireless support and financial commitment. Thanks for standing with us and being our partner in this hard fight for freedom at this crucial time in our country.

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work. You and I have a country to save this November.

Wayne LaPierre

You can read the article by clicking following this link or on the hyperlink above:

In California and New York, efforts to target the gun-rights group’s business relationships are failing on First Amendment grounds.Some politicos just can’t stop grandstanding, even if it means their court case goes down in flames. Consider what just happened in a federal court in Los Angeles.

Not long ago, progressive state and local officials nationwide were vowing to take down the hated National Rifle Association by targeting its pocketbook. When city authorities in Los Angeles and San Francisco gave that idea a try, they were following the lead of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had unleashed New York financial regulators to go after the gun-rights organization’s access to insurance and banking services.

Now all three are facing a reckoning in court, based not on the Second Amendment but on the First. Without needing to even consider the issue of gun rights, federal courts are recognizing that boycotts enforced by government power can menace free speech and free association.

The amusing part is that the public officials themselves are helping to provide the basis for these rulings by tweeting and speechifying about how much damage they intend to do the NRA.

In December, a federal court in California granted a preliminary injunction against a Los Angeles ordinance requiring city contractors to disclose any business links to, or memberships in, the gun group. It found the evidence “overwhelming” that the city’s intent in passing the law was “to suppress the message of the NRA.”

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Public officials have been on notice about this sort of thing for at least two decades, since the 1996 Supreme Court case Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr. In that case, the Court held that a county’s having terminated a government contract in retaliation for the contractor’s persistent and annoying political speech could violate the First Amendment. Controversial and unpopular speech is protected speech; officials cannot yank a contract from some business, or threaten to, just because it has donated to, or partnered in some venture with, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, or the NRA.