NRA board member and former president Marion Hammer obtained low-interest loan from affiliate she leads

By Beth Reinhard and Tom Hamburger
September 6 at 3:30 PM

A past president of the National Rifle Association has taken out loans totaling more than $250,000, at an interest rate as low as 2 percent, from the NRA’s Florida affiliate, a nonprofit that she has led for decades and that employs only her, according to the organization’s tax filings.

Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida, which receives most of its budget from the NRA, took out the loans to refinance or purchase homes, according to the tax filings. Since 1995, when Hammer began borrowing money, she has bought or helped buy several properties in Tallahassee — including one where a daughter resides and another where a granddaughter resides, property and other records show.

The disclosure of the below-market interest rate granted to Hammer, an NRA board member who is one of the nation’s leading gun lobbyists, comes as the organization is being battered by reports of economic benefits flowing to its top leadership. Those reports have fueled internal warfare at the nation’s most powerful gun lobby as well as investigations by the Democratic attorneys general of the District and New York.

Revelations that chief executive Wayne LaPierre spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury menswear and travel, and that the NRA considered buying him a multimillion-dollar estate, have spurred calls for his resignation. NRA officials, including Hammer and LaPierre’s representatives, have staunchly defended their stewardship of NRA funds.

Nonprofits are not prohibited from making loans, but five lawyers who examined the Florida affiliate’s tax filings at The Washington Post’s request said the terms of Hammer’s loan may violate Internal Revenue Service guidelines on “excess benefit transactions.”

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