Former National Rifle Association executive director Joshua Powell has switched sides since the organization fired him in January, calling for more gun control in a new book while blasting his former employer for fueling “a toxic debate.”
The NRA has lost “its roots as an organization focused on gun safety and education,” Powell claims in his book, Inside the N.R.A.: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia Within the Most Powerful Political Group in America. Writing in reference to Wayne LaPierre — the group’s executive vice president and most prominent public face — Powell claims: “Wayne was out there selling the program to our members, raising money off it, claiming we were protecting kids’ schools. It was another example of the wizard behind the curtain — lots of inflamed rhetoric and fireworks and noise, but very little effective action on countering gun violence.”
Powell, who began working for the NRA in May 2016, departed the group in January on what it described at the time as “leave” amid allegations of sexual harassment. By February, NRA General Counsel John Frazer clarified that he was no longer employed.
In excerpts of the book first reported by The New York Times, Powell said he regrets his time working for the NRA, writing, “I was part of a message machine that helped to perpetuate the problem and exacerbate the extremism of the gun debate, something I wouldn’t fully appreciate for a long time. I would become lost. And my experience would ultimately convince me that the NRA itself had lost its mission, and lost its way too.”
Powell’s book is tentatively scheduled for a September 8 release.