NRA Has Given Nearly $17K To NY Schools Since 2010, AP Reports

NEW YORK, NY – Hundreds of U.S. schools have received more than $7.3 million in grants from the National Rifle Association in recent years, according to an Associated Press analysis. In New York state, schools received $16,840.

The NRA awards went to about 500 schools between 2010 and 2016, according to the AP’s report. The money came mainly from competitive grants from the NRA Foundation to promote shooting sports, according to an analysis of the pro-gun group’s publicly available tax records.

Officials in most schools contacted by the AP said they’ll continue taking the grant money.

The Broward County school district in Florida will not. Students there have focused much of their anger at the NRA since Nikolas Cruz was arrested for killing 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14.

Cruz had been on a school rifle team that was funded with an NRA Foundation grant.

Denver’s school district also said it would turn down NRA grants awarded this year.

The grants awarded to schools are just a small share of the $61 million the NRA Foundation has given to a variety of local groups since 2010. But the amount has grown rapidly, increasing nearly fourfold from 2010 to 2014 in what some opponents say is a thinly veiled attempt to recruit the next generation of NRA members, the AP reported.

Aside from schools, other typical recipients include 4-H educational youth groups, which have received $12.2 million since 2010, Boy Scout troops and councils, which received $4 million, and private gun clubs. Overall, the AP reported, about half the grants go to programs directed at youth.

Nearly half of the 773 overall school grants have gone to JROTC programs, which put students through a basic military curriculum and offer an array of small competitive clubs, like the rifle team at Broward’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which Cruz had joined.

Grant funding to schools rose sharply in the years after the 2012 shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, fueled in part by a program the NRA unrolled to help schools make safety improvements, the AP reported. Three districts received safety grants totaling $189,000 in 2014, tax records show, but none appears to have been awarded since then.

Grants are often provided as equipment rather than cash, with schools given rifles, ammunition, safety gear and updates to shooting ranges. Nationally, about $1.3 million was provided as cash, while $6 million was provided through equipment, training and other costs, according to the AP.

The AP said about three-fourths of the grant money went to states won by President Trump in the 2016 election and reflect a deep political divide in America. Most schools awarded grants are in medium-sized counties or rural areas, with few near major cities.

In heavily Democratic Massachusetts, known for its relatively strict gun laws, the AP found that no schools have received any NRA money since at least 2010.

“We were not interested in any way, shape or form endorsing the NRA or its philosophy,” Terry Ryan, a school board member in the Westford district northwest of Boston, told the AP.

However, in Louisiana’s Caddo Parish, a $24,000 grant to its officer training program helped it remain solvent. Other schools said the same.

“Everybody here has guns,” Caddo Parish parent Jana Cox told the AP. “This is north Louisiana. You’ve got a lot of hunters and you’ve got a lot of guns.”

» Read the full report.

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