National Rifle Association files for bankruptcy

Bankruptcy protection, ultimately, is meant to protect a debtor and ensure fair treatment of creditors, while preventing certain types of harassment from creditors.

Using bankruptcy as a means to strengthen chances of an organization's survival seems entirely consistent with the purpose of the law, and at a minimum, is not a showing (in and of itself) of fraud.

Especially so, if the NRA isn't misrepresenting it's financial obligations and status to the courts.

>that will get the corporate veil pierced

Intent and eventual result is not enough on its own to show this. If the letter of the law was followed in its actions, an organization's liability should be protected as provided by corporate law.

Obviously, bankruptcy also isn't meant to allow jurisdictional avoidance. But the NY AG's actions are themselves a legally questionable means of pursuing a political motive, for which they are skirting the spirit/intent of the law.

And they certainly fit the spirit/character of an overly aggressive creditor, if not the letter.

Which results in a potentially interesting dilemma for the NY AG- claim interest in the case as some kind of a creditor, which might afford NRA relief from them, or claim sovereign interest as a state, which might preserve since of their legal claims, but sideline them until the federal bankruptcy proceedings are over (with NRA emergence from protection in Texas).

From a practical/ethical perspective, if NY's pursuit/prosecution is just in NY, it should also be just in Texas.

If NY can't pursue the same prosecution, (or the same equitable relief) once the NRA moves, is that not an implicit admission of misusing jurisdictional authority?

> Is using bankruptcy and re-incorporating in another state to avoid a lawsuit

It's regular practice in USA/Canada.

E.g. tobacco companies in Canada filed for bankruptcy the second they lost a big lawsuit against them. They were also careful enough to structure their Canadian ops as highly dependent subsidiaries. So even when whatever cash was left gets distributed, the parent still profits from its Canadian ops.

https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/imperial-tob...

The nice thing about North american bankruptcies is that it's a public process, so you get a view into their operations that may never otherwise be/become public.

https://documentcentre.ey.com/#/detail-engmt?eid=402

Lots of opiate manufacturers going down the same road.

As far as I understand it’s a common tool to get rid of liabilities and other problems. There is the term “strategic bankruptcy “. It’s definitely not a stain on a business person’s record as Trump has shown.

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And it puts them outside the reach of the NY AG.

Honestly I'm surprised you can file for bankruptcy while making public statements like these: https://www.nraforward.org/questionsanswers

Is the NRA going “bankrupt?”

No. In fact, this move comes at a time when the NRA is in its strongest financial condition in years.

To facilitate its reorganization, the NRA and one of its subsidiaries filed voluntary chapter 11 petitions in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. The NRA is not insolvent.

This comment made me curious about school shootings in 2020 considering that many schools were closed a lot of the time.

First result for my search was https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year...

So turns out that there have been fatal school shootings in 2020. Not a lot and I wouldn't really classify all of the items as school shootings. I was still a bit surprised though.

The one about the ROTC accident I found especially strange. I don't know anything about ROTC. I for some reason assumed that learning to shoot was something they would do. Reading the article it seems that the weapon is contraband.

I posted it because I thought it was 1) an interesting legal maneuver/hack on the NRA's part, and 2) social problems can sometimes be turned into tech problems. A lot of tech workers do tech in pursuit of a deeper social cause, and the NRA is tied to many such causes.

If you're living in the U.S. - perhaps check the pictures I posted in another comment.

If that doesn't make you slightly curious about what some heavily funded groups are doing in your own backyard... I guess I'm slightly envious.

> The most hilariously sad thing about NRA supporters is that they're either completely unaware of the Mulford Act, or completely deny how things actually went down, acting as if what was literally written into law was actually not written into law and that any document of the Mulford Act you can find online is actually a democratic hoax being propped by big tech. I've legitimately had these conversations with people. It's deeply saddening and outright fucked. They simply deny what was written into law.

Or they just throw out the “T” word and it’s all justified.

Honestly this is part of the reason I’m apprehensive about getting in the gun scene. I’d like to practice shooting and purchase a firearm for myself, but I absolutely despise spam and every store/range I’ve looked at in the past years seems to buy into this sort of nonsense.

Explains why most of their 20 top unsecured creditors are ad/marketing agencies.

The state AG has very limited power over the Bankruptcy which is a Federal law.

It is entirely possible the Federal Courts will reject it on the fact that the organization is not actually bankrupt but the State of New York can not "block" the Bankruptcy they can only petition the federal court to toss it