CHARLESTON — Hours after New York’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit seeking to disband the National Rifle Association, West Virginia’s Attorney General invited it and other gun groups to relocate to West Virginia.
New York AG Letitia James filed a lawsuit August 6 in the New York Supreme Court accusing the NRA of “self-dealing and illegal conduct that violate New York’s charities laws and undermine its own mission” for years and said NRA officials “diverted millions of dollars away from its charitable mission for personal use by senior leadership,” including NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.
James’ lawsuit claims the actions of LaPierre and three other NRA leaders “contributed to the loss of more than $64 million in just three years for the NRA.”
Soon after news of the New York lawsuit broke, West Virginia AG Patrick Morrisey issued a statement “in response to recent attacks on gun rights.”
“While others engage in a crusade to destroy the Second Amendment, West Virginia will remain very supportive of gun rights and will treat gun organizations fairly under the laws of our state,” Morrisey said. “We invite all national gun groups and gun manufacturers to consider relocating to the Mountain State and working with my Office to protect gun rights for citizens in West Virginia and across our nation.
“We vigorously enforce all of our state laws and never let politics impact our enforcement.”
Also, shortly after James filed the lawsuit against the NRA, the gun group countered with a lawsuit of its own against James in federal court.
That lawsuit alleges James “made the political prosecution of the NRA a central campaign theme” of her 2019 AG campaign and hasn’t been fair to the group since she took office.
“Despite hopes that playing by the rules would procure a just outcome, the NRA has not been treated fairly by James’s office,” the complaint states. “The New York Democratic Party political machine seeks to harass, defund, and dismantle the NRA because of what it believes and what it says.”