Noah Feldman, Columnist

New York’s Attorney General Shouldn’t Dismantle the NRA

By seeking such an extreme remedy, the progressive state sends the message that conservative political organizations are not welcome.

August 6, 2020 at 7:03 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Exercising his rights.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

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The attorney general of New York has sued to seek the dissolution of the National Rifle Association, alleging fraud and abuse in the way the NRA’s chief executive and other officials ran the operation. Given that the NRA has played such a powerfully destructive role in U.S. politics, fighting against gun regulations that demonstrably save lives, it’s tempting to react with applause.

Yet even liberals who oppose the NRA’s mission should take a deep breath and ask: Do we really want an elected attorney general to try to destroy a prominent nongovernmental organization that is arrayed on the other side of the political spectrum from her? What if this were Alabama and the organization were the NAACP? Or Tennessee and the ACLU?