Mike Spies:
Yes, it does change the influence that it's had politically, because Wayne was the last symbol that carried any meaning for Americans.
The rest of the organization that people interfaced with over the last bunch of years is all gone. Its messaging infrastructure is dead. Its ability to spend money on political elections went bye-bye once the lawsuit started. And so the last recognizable face was his, and he's gone now.
And so its ability to effect change in the moment, I think, is more or less nonexistent. But its presence is still felt every day because the machine that it created over a period of decades and its success at resocializing a portion of America and the Republican Party is not going anywhere.
And, effectively, we have a split now. It's either you're sort of an absolutist, in which case, you're in the NRA's camp and you're a member of the Republican Party, or you're in favor of regulation, in which case you identify with Democrats.
And so a group like the NRA doesn't really need to cast that kind of influence anymore, because the machine's already working on autopilot, if you will.
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