By Logan Metesh
I worked for the NRA Museums as their Firearms Specialist from January 2014 until October 2018. I’ve got a pretty good understanding of how things are run there – the good, the bad, and the likely illegal ugly.
Back in 2023, I sounded the alarm that Wayne LaPierre, the now-former Executive Vice President of the NRA, had been given unilateral control over the NRA Museums’ collection of firearms – valued on the NRA Foundation’s 2023 IRS Form 990 at $31.7 million – due to a recent change in the organization’s bylaws.
Before going any further, it’s important to understand that almost all of the museum’s firearms are owned by the NRA Foundation, which is a quasi-separate organization from the NRA. The NRA itself owns only a very small portion of the museum collection. That’s important to remember.
Back in 1989, the bylaws were set up in such a way that provided safeguards against disposition of the collection’s firearms. The applicable section read:
Moved that all firearms received through bequests, donations and other means be reviewed by the NRA gun collectors committee to determine items suitable for museum accession or deaccession. Furthermore, that after such review, all firearms deemed in excess or suitable for deaccession may be sold or disposed of after consultation with the finance committee in a manner best serving the interests of the National Rifle Association with such funds received from the disposition to be earmarked for museum purposes.
In 2023, that section of the bylaws was amended to read:
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the May 1989 resolution is hereby rescinded and be it further resolved that the Executive Vice President is hereby directed to continue to establish such procedures governing the gift of firearms as may best protect the assets of the National Rifle Association and maximizes the value of firearms donations to the National Rifle Association and its affiliates, taking into account both the value of such gifts to NRA museums and the value to the National Rifle Association and its affiliates of the disposition of any of such firearms.
That change removed any checks and balances that existed and gave all the power to the person executing the role of executive vice president.
Wayne LaPierre resigned in 2024 and in the ensuing lawsuits was issued a 10-year ban on his eligibility to hold a leadership role in the organization, which he of course appealed. Over the next two years, most of LaPierre’s supporters on the NRA Board of Directors either resigned or were not reelected by the membership. Again, this is important to remember.
In early June 2026, his appeal was denied; the ban stood.
On the same day that LaPierre’s appeal was denied, the NRA Foundation announced that it was rebranding itself as the 1791 Foundation – and its board is made up of many of the LaPierre supporters who left or were ousted from the NRA’s Board of Directors.
An interesting side note is that the 1791 Foundation launched new social media channels and they’re posting regularly on all of them, but there’s one thing missing: comments. They turned off the ability to comment on anything. That’s never a good sign.
For decades, people donated their firearms to the NRA Foundation with the understanding that they would be a part of the museum collection. Now, that’s not to say that some museum objects don’t get sold or removed from the collection from time to time; that’s standard operating procedure at museums all over the world.
They did not, however, donate their firearms in the hopes that one day they would be owned by a wholly separate foundation with goals unknown.
The value of the firearms in the collection makes up approximately 18% of the $176 million (in 2023) purse controlled by the 1791 Foundation. That’s a large chunk of their assets.
If the newly-rebranded 1791 Foundation is successful in separating itself from the NRA, there’s absolutely nothing stopping them from gutting the collections out of the galleries in both the Fairfax, Virginia and Springfield, Missouri museums, as well as clearing out the vault in Fairfax, selling it all, and adding the funds to their coffers.
What — exactly — would they do with the funds? Who knows? Perhaps they’d use it to “reimburse” Wayne LaPierre the $4.1 million he has been ordered by the court to pay as restitution to the NRA. They could easily do that through an NIL – name, image, likeness – contract. It would also allow him to bypass his leadership ban. That might seem far-fetched, but it really isn’t when you consider those who is on the 1791 Foundation board.
Or they could use the funds to continue to fight legal battles against the NRA, and those battles will come with hefty lawyer bills that can quickly drain funds, especially with the caliber of lawyers they’ve been dealing with in the past. At one point, NRA paid their law firm millions of dollars per month to fight their cases.
In the end, what they would do with the money is irrelevant. If it gets to the point where they’ve got the cash on hand from the sale of museum collections, then the damage will have already been done. The goal is to prevent the sale of the collection from happening at all.
What happens next?
I don’t have any answers, just a lot of questions. The best case scenario would be for the NRA and the Foundation to work something out – financially or otherwise – that would transfer ownership of the museum collections to the NRA. If that happens, then the collection will be safe. But that’s a big ‘if.’
Very little is certain at this point. All I know for certain is that whatever the 1791 Foundation chooses to do, the museum collection and NRA’s Museums Division will be at their mercy.
When I left the NRA Museums in 2018, we were a full-time staff of eight. Today, there’s just one. Yes, you read that right. There’s one person left to oversee thousands of museum firearms in two museums in two different states.
That one person will have no ground to stand on should the Foundation come calling, and whatever is left over that’s owned by the NRA will be damn hard to defend with just one staffer.
In the end, nothing would make me happier than to look like Chicken Little when this all shakes out. I hope I’m wrong about all this. I really, really hope I’m wrong.
Wrong for the hundreds of past donors; wrong for all of us former staff members who worked so hard to make the museums great places to visit; wrong for all of the tens of thousands of visitors who come through the doors every year; and most of all, wrong for an exceptional 89-year-old museum collection that doesn’t deserve to be caught in the middle of bitter infighting.
Logan Metesh has worked for the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, and the National Firearms Museum. This post was originally published at his blog, High Caliber History, and is reprinted here with permission.