Interview: Doug Hamlin, the NRA's New CEO

On May 20, 2024, at the conclusion of the 153rd NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Dallas, Texas, the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association elected former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr as President. Doug Hamlin was elected to serve as NRA Executive Vice President and CEO. Notably, Mr. Hamlin replaced Wayne LaPierre, who held the position since 1991. LaPierre resigned amid allegations of corruption on January 31, 2024. Who is Doug Hamlin?

Hamlin is a U.S. Marine Corps officer who served with the 3rd Marine Division from 1980 to ’86, deploying to Okinawa and completing his service as the Officer Selection Officer in Los Angeles. Hamlin was discovered by Petersen’s Publishing Company (PPC) Chairman Robert Petersen and Tom Siatos, vice president and executive publisher who invited him to lunch at Petersen’s Scandia Restaurant in March ’86. On October 1, Hamlin resigned from the Marines and began working for PPC.

Hamlin became publisher of Guns & Ammo for the November 1991 issue. He continued with G&A until being promoted to executive vice president and group publisher of the Motor Trend Group from 1995 to 2000. After Mr. Petersen sold PPC in 1998, it was taken private in late ’99. Hamlin resigned on January 1, 2000, to start AutoMedia Solutions, Inc. He worked as an independent automotive consultant in Detroit until joining the NRA Publications Division as its executive director in 2014. Due to his affection for Guns & Ammo, the following interview was offered after his selection to lead the NRA.

G&A: What was the process for your selection?

Hamlin: There was an open election. Of 76 board members, 67 [attended] the meeting and the nominating committee nominated their candidate, and then the question was asked, “Are there any nominations from the floor?” My name came up and they took a paper ballot. The votes were counted, and I was elected EVP, CEO.

G&A: What needs to be done to deal with corruption within the NRA?

Hamlin: Number one, we have become very transparent. When they had the elections, there was a motion from the floor to keep the process open to the public. That was the first tangible step that we were going to move away from the cloak of secrecy and let people see the process for what it was. Now that we’re embarking on this new opportunity, the next 154 years, the objectives are to rebuild the trust of the members, because that’s who we work for; the industry, who plays an important role in what we do and how we do it; the donors who back us; and mostly the staff. The staff needs to feel appreciated. I’m not sure about [the Outdoor Sportsman Group], but Publications is down 20 percent, head count, and we’re doing the same amount of work. What I’m trying to do is figure out a way to get the members to reengage with us, the industry, the donors, so we can build the NRA back to where we were. Our membership is down, but you have to understand that we have withstood a billion dollars plus of negative public relations. There is an agenda to hurt NRA, and it’s been very effective. My goals are to try to generate capital via fundraising and restore membership. One of my favorite magazines, Guns & Ammo, your audience, if we can get folks to reconsider, recruit a new member, that would be very helpful. 

G&A: Are you going to allow yourself to be positioned as an NRA personality? Do you feel that is part of the job?

Hamlin: Wow. I’m beginning to realize what this job is about, and it’s overwhelming. There is so much to it. I was running the Publications Division, now I’ve got Membership, Institute for Legislative Action, General Operations, and Advancement. Now, instead of one division, there is five. To answer your question, my hope is to create opportunities. What I mean by that is going places where we haven’t been. NRA members are the backbone of the country. We’re the good guys! We’re the veterans, we’re the first responders, we’re law enforcement officers, we’re truck drivers, we’re teachers, we’re plumbers, the electricians, we’re the white collar guys, too, but the bottom line is that we pay taxes, we have families, we’re pillars of our community, and we need to take credit for that! That’s my hope; to go places that maybe we haven’t been the last 10 years, 5 years, and say, “Wait a minute. I don’t think you know who we are.” And be proud of that.

G&A: Why should people financially support the NRA? How will you safeguard and steward their contributions? The NRA is one of many Second Amendment organizations. Is the NRA still relevant? How does it work with other organizations? Why should we trust the NRA

Hamlin: At the board meeting, the same day I was elected, we elected Bob Mensinger as our chief compliance officer. He’s the guy who will be having regular training and making anyone who is uncomfortable with anything they witness, give them an avenue to report misdeeds. Whistleblowers will have an 800-line, they can report it publicly, they can do it anonymously and we pledge to our staff that there will be no repercussions, there will be no backlash. We pledge to be transparent, open and in compliance. We pledge to be good stewards of our members’ money. I ran a very tight Publications Division, literally saved the NRA over $30 million dollars over the last 10 years and did it quickly. Literally within my first week on the job I exercised the 90-day-out clause and brought all sales in-house, thereby reducing the cost of sales from 22 percent to under 10 percent. When you’re talking upwards of $22 million dollars per year in sales, and you’re taking 12 percent off the top, you do the math. I’ve always been very fiscally responsible. Had I been in this position to maybe look at more contracts, to evaluate more deals, I would have maybe found more savings. But I stayed in my lane because we were highly compartmentalized, and I did what I was supposed ot do and ran a fairly solid business. My point is that I think you can rest assured that I’m going to be very vigilant and make sure that we’re not wasteful, and that we’re good stewards of our member donations.

G&A: How does the NRA position itself to get out the vote in November? The NRA was important to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, but in 2020 there was a lot of distraction and failure to get the vote out. What is the plan for the next few months to ensure that races at all levels of government, including states, are deemed important?

Hamlin: That’s a good question. We had $30 million dollars to spend back in 2016, and we had a helluva run. We upset who [people] thought was going to win and we ended up with three [U.S.] Supreme Court justices that gave us some balance in government. That was huge. Think about where we would be without that. We won’t have $30 million dollars, but we have resources. The one thing we do have, a lot of people know this, and that’s why they target us, is that we have the ability to geo-target, we have email databases, that are fairly refined, and in those eight or 10 House battleground seats, and those half-a-dozen Senate seats, we’ll get in there and play. My point is we may not have the money, but we will be operating very smartly, use the resources that we have, literally the millions of voters in our databases, mobilize them to get out there in those districts, in those states where there’s a Senate race or two.

G&A: There have been a lot of calls for Board reform. The NRA Board has been partly blamed for mismanagement of the organization. Neither “Doug Hamlin” or the NRA can succeed if the board is committed to doing business the old way. What do you think it’s going to take to fix the board and prevent future mismanagement?

Hamlin: I think that it’s somewhat of a misnomer that the Board has been stagnant because over the last five or six years, there have been 30 new board members [who] have come in. There’s been a lot of turnover. Without that turnover, you wouldn’t have had the slate of officers [who] was elected [at the NRA Annual Meetings]. There’s just no way. I think the Board understands that they have a fiduciary responsibility. I think you going to see a lot of oversight on their part. I will tell you my job is very difficult because I get a lot of direct outreach from 76 board members. That’s a tall order to be at their beck-and-call, respond, and as much as I think they would like. You’ve got some guys from the industry who are going to be on the nominating committee, and I believe there will be sharper folks coming in. There’s going to be 25 more seats that will be up for election this year, just like every year.

G&A: Should there be term limits on the role of CEO/EVP? Or on the NRA Board of Directors? How do members ensure that people are staying on for the right reasons?

Hamlin: Good question. For me, I have a one-year term. If people are not happy with what I’m able to achieve, or the direction that we’re going compared to when I walked in the door here, I’ll be gone! As far as the Board, they have three-year terms. As far as those seats, that’s not for me to decide, that’s for the members who vote. Term limits, yeah, people should want fresh blood.

G&A: Is it true that you decline a salary increase when you were elevated to CEO/EVP?

Hamlin: No one mentioned an increase in salary, and I didn’t mention it to anyone. With the financial situation that we’re in, that didn’t seem appropriate. I’ll be honest, I did not need to do this. This is a hard job. This is a challenging situation. I’m at a point in my career where I didn’t need to do it, but I’m doing it and I’m going to give it a 110 percent because I feel strongly about our country. I feel strongly about NRA. I’m going to do my best to rebuild it, or at least get it moving in the right direction. I can be a transition guy and hand it off to the next CEO, I’m glad to do that. I’m not an empire builder. I’m not projecting to be here for five to 10 years, there’s no way, but I’m going to do everything I can. We need some continuity. Having been around is an advantage. It’s a hard job, but if you don’t know where to go and who to call, you if don’t know who you can trust right out of the shoot, that takes time. We don’t have time. I’m going to give it my best shot.

G&A: Will audits be established? If so, what would an audit look like? Would the NRA show its members a report of how donations are spent?

Hamlin: Good question. I can’t really respond to audits. I do know that we file through our finance committee annual reports. I know Board members have access to our financial services department; they come in and have access to anything they want to see. I’m not sure if it’s like bringing in a third-party auditor to do that, but I will say this: With this Bob Mensinger hire, he has an auditor with him, and they don’t report to me. They report to the Board. Our chief compliance officer and his auditor, a gentleman by the name of David Medrano, the two of them are ostensibly in position to do what you’re asking.

G&A: How many members does the NRA have? How many were lost since the 5 million claimed when Trump was elected in 2016? And what does the health of the NRA look like?

Hamlin: Financially, we’re going to make it. Things are tight. You name it, we’ve cut it. And I think, now, we’ve reached a point where we can only go up. We’re going to start staffing up again, and I believe, if we do what I hope we do, and folks that are around me, are able to communicate with [media such as Guns & Ammo], and people are told ‘Give the NRA a shot,’ I think we’re start stemming the losses. We’re down about a million members! We’re down [to] around 4 million members from five, but 4 million is nothing to sneeze at. There’s not a lot of organizations that could have withstood the last five years that we’ve been put through. This is a tough group of people and our members, yes we’ve lost a million members, but we’ve got a 4 million [who] have hung with us. I’d rather think of those folks, mobilize those folks, renew and upgrade, and recruit a new member.

G&A: To existing members: What do you see as the NRA’s core mission, and has it changed?

Hamlin: There’s five objectives when you go back to 1871, but mostly we want to be advocates for Second Amendment rights. You have to admit that despite all of the fall out over the last five years, we have been able to increase the number of [Constitutional Carry] states to 29, we have won two U.S. Supreme Court cases, including one massive case, the Vullo case. If you haven’t studied it, I think the implications and the impact in America, and the organization of government, it’s a huge win for the NRA. And we funded that. This is a multi-million-dollar investment that our members made, and we’ve continued to win! There are other Second Amendment organizations out there that are doing great work, too, but at the local, state and federal levels, we’ve continued to perform and provide a good return on investment from our members. We’ve never had more firearm freedoms than [we] do today. I don’t think there’s any dispute [about that.]

G&A: You mentioned NRA v. Vullo. There was a suprising amount of collaborative effort between the NRA and the ACLU. The case centered on a call-to-action for banks and insurance companies to discontinue association with gun promoting groups [and businesses], made by the former New York State Department of Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo, and it has become obvious that our rights are under attack. Are we going to see the NRA start to partner with an organization like the ACLU more frequently as a combined effort if it means saving the Bill of Rights.

Hamlin: I thought it was a brilliant move to partner with the ACLU; their advocacy is about the First Amendment. What the case told me was, when Justice Sotomayor [wrote] the opinion, and we know where she sits on the liberal-conservative scale, they realized that, as an example, if you’re in a Red State, and you’re Planned Parenthood, the Red State could go after you! I think cooler heads prevailed, and it’s obvious that with that unanimous decision that the Court decided that’s not the direction we want to go in this country. The NRA, to call it what it was. Outreach. Over-reach. I’m trying to come up with the right word. The New York Department of Financial Services, conspiring with the banks and insurance companies, to not do business with NRA because of our First Amendment political advocacy point of view. Very important landmark decision. Based on that precident, I don’t see why not. I can’t predict the future but [the collaboration with the ACLU] worked pretty darned good this time.

G&A: What areas outside the political field will the NRA need to reestablish or move into. For example, some readers have observed that there are some services such as support for competitive shooting events, education and training, have been reduced. Do you see funds available to reinstate these programs anytime soon? Or add support personnel? And if so, how long do you see that taking?

Hamlin: My hope is that this next year, we start turning the tide and we bring people back into our education and training department. We can bring more people to our Eddie Eagle program. Our NRA Foundation, as an example, pledged just over $8 million dollars, 2100 charities, just this past year alone. Despite all of the challenges, we were still able to have really robust and a generous NRA Foundation year. We also have the NRA law enforcement death benefit that people don’t realize. I didn’t know about it until just recently. Basically, for $20 a year, a law enforcement officer has insurance, that if they are an NRA member, for $20 there is a death benefit if the unthinkable happens, paid out, and its $35,000 within a week! We know how important that is in a time of tragedy. We’ve dispersed over $4.3 million dollars in the last 20 years. I didn’t know that. I don’t think many would know that. We also have the friends of NRA local community events. We used to have over 1,000, now were down to 740 or so, but those are NRA programs in local communities. Half of the money raised goes to the local community. These are really important programs that our field staff administers. We have 30 field staffers that are out there. Each of them has 15, 20 of those events that they manage, or more. [They] are really important in their local community.

G&A: There was an attempt to move the NRA incorporation from New York to Texas, but it raised the question of moving the headquarters out of Northern Virginia. What’s your attitude about that? Does it diminish the lobbying clout of the NRA? Will you keep offices in Northern Virginia?

Hamlin: ILA, our lobbying arm, would always stay in Virginia. At this point, everything is on hold. We have looked at Texas; that was on the table. Because of the financial situation right now, it’s just not advantageous to do that. We’ll continue to evaluate it. It’s not just Texas. When you think about it; Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia, and Texas. These are all great states, great red states that are very pro-gun. For now we have our NRA Headquarters, our museum, and we’ve got the vast majority of our staffers from the D.C. area, and in Virginia. With everything we’ve got going on, let’s put a moratorium on this, wait and see how things develop.

G&A: What are the plans for the National Firearms Museum?

Hamlin: No changes. We were talking about Robert Petersen of Petersen’s Publishing. His was the single largest donor to the NRA. We have the Robert and Margie Petersen gallery in the National Firearm Museum. Phil Schreier, who G&A readers knows [works with Garry James], probably one of the best curators, if not the best in the country. I welcome people to come to the National Firearms Museum, take a look around; phenomenal. No plans to change anything about it; just keep it open to the public.

G&A: There are divides along the spectrum of gun owners. How does the NRA become more considerate towards the conflicting ideologies and cultures regarding subjects such as Black Rifles, magazine capacities, bump stocks, arm braces, private sales, etc.?

Hamlin: I think the marketplace will dictate the products that people want. First of all, if you’re law abiding, you should not be restricted. For example, high-capacity magazines, a highly charged issue. When you have four assailants on your property, I need more than 10 rounds! Crime is on the upswing, and I don’t think now is the time to restrict high-capacity magazines or AR-style rifles, my firearm of choice for home defense. If I’m a law-abiding citizen, why would I lose my rights? Why should I be the one who pays the price because there are others out there who are irresponsible?

G&A: Our country is facing rising crime, and certain groups target gun rights in their immediate response. How does the NRA differentiate the law-abiding gun owner from the armed criminal element?

Hamlin: I think the term “gun violence,” where you have the inanimate object that’s out there creating violence. At the NRA we call it the “criminal misuse of firearms.” If people break the law using a firearm, I think there’s a five-year minimum sentence that’s on the books. We’ve all said, “Enforce the laws on the books!” Let’s take these criminals who are misusing firearms, and let’s put them away! Let’s stop them from becoming repeat offenders. That seems to be what’s happening. The other thing, two, every one of these horrific shootings that we see, there were plenty of signals, but for some reason no one took action! People [say], “What does the NRA think?” We normally just take our time to figure out what happened because there’s a lot of confusion immediately following, in the aftermath of these tragedies. Every one of them, the signals were there. We talk about Red Flag Laws. Well, if the neighbor sees a problem; if the parent sees a problem; if the sibling sees a problem; there’s nothing that says you can’t intercede and stop that from happening. Too many times, these signals are left unattended. No one does anything about it. The law abiding, we’re the ones that pay the price. We’re the one that are the “bad guys.” We’re the ones that get persecuted and prosecuted.

G&A: There’s a large movement behind the suppressor industry. They’ve been legalized in many states, and legalized for hunting, as well. The time to get ATF approval for stamps has been reduced, and there’s more education being shared to the benefit of G&A readers and NRA members. However, the topic crosses over the the NFA subject. Do you feel we should repeal the NFA?

Hamlin: I’ll say this, through folks like Silencer Central, they’ve created the marketplace because the process of application has been streamlined. So, I’ve hunted with suppressors; there’s no recoil, no noise. We hang around hunters; we hang around shooters; we’re all hard of hearing. I think that, without getting into the juris prudence of it, I think that more people have access to them, and I think that’s a great thing. I think that [suppressors] are becoming more mainstream. In the last five years, it’s accelerating. I use them. I think they’re great.

G&A: How do you feel about the tax stamp system and a person subjecting themselves to the regulation of such a device that is like using a muffler on a vehicle. How do you feel about the NFA as it applies to short-barreled rifles, select-fire firearms, etc.?

Hamlin: On a case-by-case basis, there needs to be some latitude. I’d probably defer to my ILA guys to get their take. Again, I go back to the promise that [we] aren’t the problem. We shouldn’t be restricted, and I think we’re doing a pretty good job creating opportunities to have the products that we want over the past 15 to 20 years.

G&A: How about mailers? Are we going to keep getting mailers asking for donations? This question refers to the persistent requests members received to sign up or to become more than a Life member, including donations of assets.

Hamlin: That’s a great question. I’m getting my arms around what the frequency is. I will give you my word that I’m going to look at it hard and close, to not badger our great members as much as we do. I think you realize what we’re facing, and it works! Direct mail works.

The next time we meet, I would like to talk about Robert E. Petersen, his passion for shooting and hunting. I’d love to talk to readers about meetings with President Ronald Reagan, Bill Ruger, Sr., Gaston Glock, Daniele Perazzi. It was a real treat to interact with many people in my career, and I think readers would enjoy that information. Guns & Ammo is a great brand. When I go places, I’m so happy to tell people that I was a staffer at Guns & Ammo. Keep up the great work. I read what you produce. Thanks for doing what you do.