The NRA may repair its finances—dues did rebound in 2018, though the recent scandal seems likely to reverse that trend. The organization may also effect a transition to a new leadership with cleaner hands. It may even survive relatively unscathed the inquisition of the New York attorney general. But the cracks have appeared, the aura of invincibility is gone. The Parkland students and their allies in states like New York have succeeded in opening a door to reform, and lawmakers are less afraid to walk through it. Whether this will reduce America’s annual toll of gun deaths—nearly 40,000 at the last count, of which three in five were suicides—is yet to be determined, but this much can be said: the era of NRA supremacy is over.
