While attending the 2025 National Rifle Association’ Great American Outdoor Show, we had a chance to talk to NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Doug Hamlin. Hamlin was elected to the position in May of 2024 to help reform the organization. In the wake of damage done by the association’s former executives, Hamlin has had his hands full trying to right the ship. We talked about the past, the present, and the future of the NRA. Portions of this interview have been cleaned up for clarity and readability.
Petrolino: I’m here today with Doug Hamlin, the executive vice president of the NRA. Doug, how are you doing today?
Hamlin: I’m doing great. Good afternoon, John.
Petrolino: We’re at the 2025 Great American Outdoor Show and I heard a rumor that this is your first time taking a walk through the Pennsylvania Farm Complex for this show.
Hamlin: It is. I’ve been well aware of it. We’ve always covered it from the NRA publications, my previous assignment, but this is the first time I’ve been here.
Petrolino: What do you think about the show so far?
Hamlin: I should have been here many years ago. This thing is unbelievable. It’s fantastic.
Petrolino: And you guys have, what, probably 900 vendors, I’d say a little bit over that, maybe around 900?
Hamlin: Yeah, coming up on 1000 and plenty of booth space. It’s been…it’s really been a spectacular turnout.
Petrolino: The most important question that I have to ask about the show…did you make it into the gun room and get a milkshake?
Hamlin: Well, the milkshakes are on the list of things to do today. But yeah, I definitely have been in the gun room. Yes, I made the rounds.
Petrolino: One of the things that I noticed over the last couple of months, maybe six months, I’m trying to check my memory here, I started to see the NRA joining other organizations in briefs on litigation. And that’s the first time I’ve seen that in maybe four years or so. Can we expect more litigation coming out of the NRA? What’s the plan?
Hamlin: We’re always tuned into what’s happening out there and listening to our members and we’re going to be out there advocating on behalf of law-abiding citizens. When opportunities arise to defend the rights of the law-abiding, we will intercede. We will bring suits.
Petrolino: One of the things that I looked into while getting ready to talk to you is there’s a lot of criticism of the NRA. And I just kind of want you to address some of these things that I hear other people talking about, other people covering, and one of them has to do with…is the NRA, a nonpartisan group? And by that, I mean, people might say that, “Hey, the NRA is an extension of the GOP, and they’re getting into issues outside of 2A.” Do you want to address maybe some of those views that are out there? What’s your take on that?
Hamlin: That’s a really good question. I’ve been interviewed a number of times, people asking me about taking a look back at the election that took place on November 5th, and, “Wow, how did the Democrats go so far astray? What led to the landslide, the Republican landslide?” And so my answer has been that the Democrats better look at the 2A issue a little bit more seriously, because Democrats are buying guns too, and back in let’s go back to ’94 when you had the assault weapons ban, you had 60 Democrats that voted against that bill. So today, it’s zero. When you have a Second Amendment case that’s brought to the floor and there’s a vote, it’s straight down party lines. There’s zero Democrats that are voting Pro 2A these days. And I believe that that should change.
Petrolino: As far as the other ancillary issues, we’re just looking at 2A, that’s all we’re worried about, right?
Hamlin: That’s our issue. It was really easy for us to support President Trump. On a personal level, for me, a lot of reasons. But, in the job that I do, in the organization that I represent and the members that we’re advocating for, it was a clear choice. That kind of goes unsaid.
Petrolino: You and I discussed this a little bit the other day, and on January 19th, Donald Trump, then President-elect Trump, was in [D.C.] doing a celebration, and he gave a speech. I’m going to pull this quote directly out. It’s what he said. It’s not what anyone else said. He said, “I have to tell ya, we had great support from every gun group, including the NRA. Really worked hard.” And the NRA was the only group that was called out by name for the support that you gave to Trump and the administration, and there [were] murmurs maybe two, three, maybe four weeks ago – I can’t really remember – that allegedly, the Trump campaign and the Trump camp has lost faith in the NRA. What is your take on that?
Hamlin: I was at the Starlight Inauguration Ball on Monday night the 20th of January the next day and I had been at the victory rally where he called out the NRA by name, and I had three current cabinet ranking officials – that have since been confirmed – that I shook hands with on Monday evening, and three of them said to me, “You guys got a shout out from the President yesterday.” So people in Washington are well aware of the influence and the level of the relationship, the deep relationship that NRA has had with President Trump going back to 2016.
Petrolino: Are there other conversations maybe going on that you want to let people privy of that [are] happening between the NRA and the Trump administration now? Because I think people are very interested in that involvement.
Hamlin: We’re going to have ongoing communication at the highest levels of the Trump administration for everything 2A-related, you can count on that. I’ll give you our word on that.
And just to back up a little bit, to talk about NRA as an organization, compared to some of the other three letter groups. When I look back to the last 30 years, I mean today, if you get to go to a gun show. Thank the NRA. If you’ve purchased a modern sporting rifle since 2004, because of the sunset provisions written by the NRA in the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, thank the NRA. We’re the ones that made that possible.
There’s so many things that the NRA has made possible, and people want to forget all of that. Beyond that, if you look at a lot of these other groups, and I have great respect for all of them – as a matter of fact, we train most of the people that work there – but we do everything. And what does that mean?
We have a law enforcement death benefit. So if you’re a law enforcement officer, for $10 you can become an NRA member, and if the unthinkable happens, you’ll receive $35,000 within seven days of the unthinkable happening. All right, that’s just one minor example of the kind of things that we do that no one else does.
You talk about education and training. We’ve got over 100,000 NRA certified instructors that are out there, and we’ve been doing it for years. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that are out there that are training first time gun buyers. That’s wonderful. We need all the training out there that we can get, but the NRA, we’re the gold standard. We’re the ones that have written the programs that people emulate.
Petrolino: And I think that’s an important point to make, because if you look back at the history of the NRA. Why was the NRA formed in the first place? It was to teach people how to shoot and shoot responsibly and shoot well.
Hamlin: That’s exactly right, and we’re proud of that. I just saw some statistics the other day where over the last seven years, we’ve trained over a million people. Actually, it’s closer to a million-two, and of that, roughly 135,000 of them are instructors. We’re training the trainers. Those are the ones that are then going out and training millions of law-abiding citizens.
Petrolino: Oh sure. And that also includes those trainers that go and incorporate their own programs that aren’t even being registered and logged as NRA trained, but by virtue of the seed of where the knowledge came from, they’re NRA trained. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
This is another question about critics, because this is something that I hear all the time, and people be like, “The NRA, they’ve supported gun control.” Okay, so the NRA supported some provisions in the 1968 Gun Control Act, and we don’t need to debate those. Whatever. They happened a long time ago. You had nothing to do with them. The NRA of today had nothing to do with them. The most recent one would be the bump stock ban. Okay, so the NRA is alleged to have supported the bump stock ban and again, this wasn’t on your watch.
This is a new NRA. What is your answer to critics that say the NRA supports or has supported gun control efforts?
Hamlin: My personal belief is that I’m not advocating for any control of any law-abiding citizen and their right to own and possess either firearms or accessories. The bump stock is in the courts these days, that particular case, and so we’re just going to let that play out and see where that goes.
Petrolino: I think they delivered us a really good gift through the Supreme Court ruling on that. And you know now it’s getting finished, getting fleshed out. I just talked to Michael Cargill about this, like a couple weeks ago. He’s said, everybody should be finishing up on this. Like you said, it is kind of signed and sealed now.
Since the New York case, the lawsuit, have you guys been able to come up with membership numbers? How many NRA members do we have?
Hamlin: Our membership is just under 4 million. We have lost members. There’s no question about it.
Let me back up. I was elected on May 20 [2024] at a board meeting in Dallas, and literally within days, I was subpoenaed by the New York Attorney General, I was testifying under oath, and spent 10 days in the month of July in the courtroom that was literally next to the courtroom President Trump had been in roughly the same time frame.
The weaponization of government and lawfare is real. I quite honestly was surprised that I was pulled into this situation, but what I realized was I now am the CEO of the National Rifle Association. This is not your average CEO position in this country, and so I became targeted, and the organization was targeted unfairly.
I might say you had a couple of executives that made some poor decisions. They’re no longer with the organization, and it’s my pledge to our members that we are going to be extremely judicious with any expenditures that come from their membership dues. We have a chief compliance officer in place now. Malfeasance will not be tolerated. We have a whistleblower policy that’s available. You can do it anonymously, you can do it by name, but we take the responsibility to manage the funds of our members extremely seriously, and you can count on, under my leadership, that we’re going to do a good job of it.
Petrolino: Out of the lawsuit with New York…I mean, they did uncover some stuff, all the documents are out there, and we can read them and look at that and everything. Would you say anything positive came out of it?
Hamlin: That’s a good question. I would say that, yeah, we realize that we have a much higher calling at NRA, and that because of the special trust that’s placed in us by our members. We have some seriously high standards to uphold and maintain. And it was somewhat of a wake up call for everybody within the organization, from top to bottom. We need to live it every day.
Petrolino: Right now, what would you say, and you know, maybe you touched on some of that in your last answer, the highest priority right now, going forward for the Association?
Hamlin: The highest priority, John, is for us to rebuild the trust of the members, the industry, our donors, and mostly though, our employees, our staff. Rebuild that trust.
And then the priority for me is to rebuild the membership, because our clout on Capitol Hill comes from our members. We are really good at getting people to the polls. And if you look at the seven battleground states that we just witnessed on November 5, each one of those states was won by a margin of 1% to 3%. While the post script is that it was a landslide victory, 1% to 3% in those states, very, very close margin of victory.
We take nothing for granted, and we also know that we’re looking forward to 2026 and those midterm elections. We’re starting to make decisions today that will position us to be victorious again in ’26. There’s no rest. This is no time to gloat. This is a time to stay focused and stay serious on the mission.
Petrolino: As we wrap up here, do you have any other final thoughts or any other messages that you want to get out to members, prospective members, or anything else like that? I would definitely love to get your perspective on that.
Hamlin: Yeah, I just want to remind the members, and I also want to remind the law-abiding, gun-owning public that we’ve been through a rough five year period. I will admit that it’s not been fun for those of us that have been on the staff and had to go through it. But despite this challenge, we have won two Supreme Court cases in the last two years.
Bruen, being a huge case because it just validates the fact that we have a right to carry firearms outside the home. Concealed carry is a big part of that. And then also a landmark decision called Vullo. NRA versus Vullo, there’s a First Amendment case, and it’s going to have widespread implications across the United States.
Your NRA does everything. We are not just a 2A fundamental education and training group. We do all that. We do it better than anybody else, but we’re involved in so many other things as we fight for freedom and the rights of law-abiding citizens in this country.
Petrolino: Well, Doug, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Where do you want to direct everyone? My readers, anybody that’s listening in, where are we sending them to?
Hamlin: Go to NRA.org. We need you to join. When you go to NRA.org, the upper right hand corner has a join button, a renew button, and a donate button. And we need you to join now. Get your friends, your family, if they’re not members, to join. If you’re a member, upgrade your membership. But we need your support more now than ever before.
Petrolino: Thank you very much, sir. It’s been a pleasure.
Hamlin: Thank you, John. My pleasure.
If you’d like to watch the interview in its entirety, you can check it out HERE or in the embed below.