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The February 2018 shooting deaths of seventeen people at a high school in Parkland, Florida and a subsequent, charged town hall meeting about gun safety with some of the mass shooting's survivors and their families has put the National Rifle Association under intense scrutiny for its opposition to gun control. Against this background, many were surprised to discover that the NRA, despite being well known for its political lobbying and ties to the gun industry, is in fact a tax-exempt nonprofit organization. On 22 February 2018, the Really American Facebook page posted a meme that showed President Donald Trump holding a replica flintlock rifle, along with this message: The National Rifle Association is indeed a tax-exempt nonprofit organization. To be specific, it has 501(c)(4) status, meaning it is regarded as a social welfare organization by the Internal Revenue Service: A 501(c)(4) organization like the NRA is allowed to engage in political lobbying and advocacy, but this cannot be its main activity, and it must be related to the group's primary mission and the issue upon which its tax exemption is based, according to the IRS. Social welfare organizations may also get involved in political campaigns and elections, provided their involvement is related to the group's mission, and again, only if this does not constitute their primary activity. Critics of the NRA have claimed that the organization's tax exemption should be taken away, because, roughly speaking, the NRA spends less time and money providing a genuine service to the public at large than it does on political lobbying, and because the NRA's activities benefit the private gun industry. In its 2015 tax return, the NRA described its mission as Firearms safety education and training and advocacy on behalf of safe and responsible gun owners. In April 2016, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence published a report on this very issue, labelling the NRA a tax-exempt [organization] loaded with private interest. The authors — attorney Alexandra O'Neill and financial analyst Daniel O'Neill — wrote: A spokesperson for the NRA rejected this, telling us in an e-mail that the group's legislative lobbying was textbook social welfare activity, and that any benefits that accrued to gun manufacturers from the NRA's activities were incidental: It was established in case law, the spokesperson argued, that occasional private financial benefits resulting incidentally from a nonprofit group's activities are allowed:
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