Tim Mak called the New York Attorney General’s case against the National Rifle Association an “existential threat for the organization.”
Mak, NPR’s Washington Investigative Correspondent, traced decades of the NRA’s conduct at the highest levels, as well as what he calls its “downfall,” in his new book “Misfire.” The revelations include secretly recorded tapes that reveal the mindset of top NRA leaders in the days following the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School.
Mak joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss the organization, and the shooting that shaped the NRA’s playbook for decades to come.
“What you find is that the top strategists and officials at the NRA felt that if they were to pull back, it would be some sort of admission of complicity or responsibility in some way,” Mak said, “and they didn’t want to give off that impression, so they come with a much more, almost, defiant approach.”
In the New York case, which began with a February 2019 inquiry from Attorney General Letitia James’s office, James is seeking a complete dissolution of the organization after “laying out tens of millions of dollars in misconduct and misspending,” Mak says.
WATCH: NPR’s Washington Investigative Correspondent Tim Mak on the NRA's playbook
