The NRA is holding its annual convention in Houston this weekend. Mark Kelly, husband of Gabrielle Giffords, wrote an excellent–I mean, EXCELLENT–letter to NRA members, suggesting that they need new leaders.

“What most members of the NRA want from the organization and what the leadership is actually doing are not the same. The NRA used to be a great organization, and you can still get practical value out of it as a member–everything from insurance to gun safety courses. But those services are small potatoes compared to where the NRA’s leadership makes the really big money. The NRA leadership’s top priority is to make sure the corporations that make guns and ammunition continue to turn huge profits. Their top priority isn’t you, the NRA member….

“And that’s why LaPierre and the rest of the leadership of the NRA and other gun organizations are spending so much of their time wild-eyed, preaching possible government confiscations. It’s because they don’t want the membership to notice they’ve turned their backs on the very safety measures, like background checks, that the organization used to stand for–in exchange for cold hard cash….

“When LaPierre and his crew of highly paid Beltway insider staff reversed their earlier support of common-sense measures like expanded background checks, they sent a strong message that instead of standing with the 3 million of your members who supported background checks, they were working on behalf of the manufacturers’ profit margins instead. It seems to me that the time is right for a new generation of leaders within the NRA.”