Filing Summary

On January 15, 2021, the NRA filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. The initial filing contains very little information, but does disclosure between 200 – 999 creditors, estimated liabilities of $100 – $500 million, and estimated assets of $100 – $500 million (p.3). 

Wayne LaPierre signed the Chapter 11 filing (p.4). The attached corporate resolution indicates that LaPierre consulted with the NRA’s “Special Litigation Committee” prior to filing.  That committee includes NRA Board President Carolyn Meadows, NRA board member Charles Cotton, and NRA board member Willes Lee.

Attached to the petition is Official Form 204 (p.11 of the PDF below) and includes a list of the top 20 unsecured creditors. The list includes longtime NRA vendors like Infocision Management Corp. and Membership Marketing Partners, along with entities it is currently in litigation with like Ackerman McQueen, Mercury Group, and Under Wild Skies.

The NRA filed the case in federal court in Texas, despite being organized in the state of New York and having its headquarters in Virginia.  It’s jurisdictional hook for filing in Texas appears to be that – simultaneously – the NRA is putting a single member Texas-based LLC, Sea Girt LLC, into bankruptcy.  Corporate records indicate that Sea Girt was only created in November 2020, potentially just to be used to facilitate a Texas bankruptcy filing for the NRA. It remains unclear whether the bankruptcy court will allow this Texas filing to stand or transfer the case to another state.