Anti-gunners were crowing loudly after H&R Block announced it was ending an affiliate program with a marketing firm representing several organizations including the National Rifle Association (NRA), but the big loser in this flap is likely to be Block, not the gun rights movement.
Since the announcement, the Internet has been sizzling with e-mail traffic between angry gunowners, all vowing to take their business away from H&R Block. Some have sent incendiary letters to the big tax-preparation firm, condemning Block for caving in to a threat from anti-gunners to picket Block offices around the country on March 16. The protest would have involved the Brady Campaign, “Million” Mom March and Mid-Atlantic Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.
A statement issued by Block on March 12 said the tax-preparation firm was ending the affiliate program “after it became clear that some organizations were leveraging the agreement as part of a debate on gun control issues—a debate we do not belong in . . . H&R Block does not take a stand on social issues outside the realm of tax and financial services.”
After Block made the announcement, Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign, gloated, “The termination of this agreement is a tremendous victory for everyone who was outraged that a reputable business like H&R Block would support an extremist organization like the NRA.”
It will not be a victory for Block, which may now face the long-term wrath of millions of enraged gunowners, as opposed to a few hundred pickets at Block offices around the country for what would have amounted to one Saturday morning in March.
Gun Week has received copies of some correspondence to H&R Block, containing comments like this: “You just made the mistake of insulting a very large and very politically active group of Americans. When gunowners get upset at you, they stay upset. When gunowners stage a boycott, you stay boycotted. . . . Ask Citibank or Dell Computer—companies that acknowledged that lesson and corrected their offenses. Ask Smith & Wesson or K-Mart—companies that never did, and paid the price.... ”
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and NRA Treasurer Wilson H. “Woody” Phillips, in an exclusive interview with Gun Week, said the association’s involvement with H&R Block had been part of a larger affinity program conducted between Block and an independent marketing firm called Memberdrive, based in Fairfax, VA. The overall project involved some two dozen non-profit organizations, ranging from the American Bowling Congress to the National Wildlife Federation, and NRA simply happened to be one of those, insisted H&R Block’s Janine Smiley.
Block’s decision affected all of the organizations involved in the Memberdrive project, not just the NRA, the company’s statement indicated.
Under the affinity program, participating organizations encouraged members to use H&R Block for tax preparation, with a percentage of the fees coming back to those organizations. Phillips said similar arrangements are made with major credit card companies, such as VISA and MasterCard.
But Block never worked directly with the NRA, Gun Week has confirmed. All organizations involved in the affinity program worked through Memberdrive. NRA announced the affiliate program in the February issue of The American Rifleman and The American Hunter magazines.
Although Block’s statement insisted it “does not take a stand on social issues,” many gunowners see the company’s termination of the Memberdrive program as just that: A corporate statement against their Second Amendment rights.
LaPierre, Phillips and other NRA officials told Gun Week that they are disappointed over Block’s decision, but they plan to move forward.
“We’re not going to let this slow us down one bit,” LaPierre said. “We’re going to continue to build the strength and power of the NRA.”
LaPierre, in a followup conversation, expressed surprise that Barnes had turned this into such a flap. He recalled that an H&R Block representative had called him and simply said that the company was ending the affinity program.
“I thanked them for the call, and that was it,” he said. “There was no big conversation, nothing like that. It wasn’t that big a deal. They had decided they were going to drop their affiliate program, and we were just going to go on about our business. Then comes this press release from Barnes, making a lot of wild claims. I think anybody can read between the lines of that press release and see how exaggerated it was. Take it for what it was.”
Even an official at H&R Block, who requested anonymity, told Gun Week that the Barnes press release was loaded with “inaccurate rhetoric.”
The initial anti-gun protest was spearheaded by a student group called Gun Industry Watch, which is apparently a front group for the anti-gun Alliance for Justice. They were openly supported by the Brady Campaign, MMM and Mid-Atlantic Coalition.
Perhaps most upsetting to LaPierre was a reference to his wife in the Barnes news release. Coindentally, Susan LaPierre is senior vice president for marketing at Memberdrive, but both Wayne LaPierre and Phillips insisted that she had no involvement in the NRA project. They further stressed that Memberdrive was never paid any money by the NRA.
“Susan,” said LaPierre, “does not work on the NRA account and she has never worked on the NRA account. She works with other companies.”
He called the attempt by the Brady group to link his wife to the NRA effort a “cheap shot.”
“They’re cheap shot artists,” LaPierre stated. “They’re getting their butts kicked on Capitol Hill and they’re trying to smear people.”
Phillips recalled the conversation he and LaPierre had with Block: “What they told Wayne and me was that it wasn’t just us. They . . . just decided that affinity marketing was not where they wanted to be.”
Phillips insisted, though, that the contract with H&R Block extends through this tax season, “no matter what.” Because of that, he explained, the program gets through what would have essentially been the trial run, regardless of Block’s decision.
LaPierre offered one hint as to why the anti-gunners protested the NRA-H&R Block agreement.
“What these relationships do,” he explained, “is provide dollars to the cause at no cost to the association. It helps people to help the cause by buying products they were going to purchase anyway.”
Phillips said this experience will not deter NRA from pursuing other affinity program opportunities. In fact, he said the association is currently studying several potential agreements that could involve a broad variety of services and products.
The NRA and other pro-gun organizations, such as the Second Amendment Foundation, which owns Gun Week, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, have a number of affinity program contracts in force, including those involving banking and long-distance telephone services. Many of these programs have been producing revenues for pro-gun groups for several years.
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