★ Private Action
NRA spends record $30.3M to elect Trump in 2016
Filed November 2016$30,300,000
★ The Brief
What happened
The National Rifle Association spent $30.3 million supporting Trump's 2016 campaign — more than any other outside group. Its roughly $52 million in total 2016 outside spending was the largest in NRA history, and it endorsed him again at its 2024 convention in Dallas.
Who enabled it
Who benefits
Deal or steal?
The gun-rights group that spent record sums to elect Trump in 2016 saw his administration sign a reconciliation bill ending the 1934 federal tax on silencers and short-barrel firearms in 2025, a longtime priority of the gun lobby.
★ Cast your vote
The National Rifle Association spent $30.3 million in independent expenditures supporting Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign — more than any other outside group, including the leading pro-Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million. The $30.3 million was the NRA's largest single outlay of the cycle; in total it poured more than $52 million into the 2016 elections, the largest sum in the organization's history, breaking its prior record of $31.7 million set in 2014. The group had endorsed Trump in May 2016 — its earliest-ever endorsement of a Republican presidential candidate — and endorsed him again at its annual meeting in Dallas on May 18, 2024, where he urged gun owners to turn out to vote.
Actors
Who pushed it · 1Who initiated, paid, or pushed the action.
- National Rifle Association
Spent $30.3 million in independent expenditures supporting Trump's 2016 campaign — more than any other outside group — and endorsed him again in 2024.
Beneficiaries
Who gained · 1Who stood to gain.
Donald TrumpBeneficiary of $30.3 million in NRA independent expenditures supporting his 2016 election — more than any other outside group spent, and the NRA's largest single outlay of the cycle.
Further reading
- ★ Government ActionJuly 2025Trump tax law scraps the 1934 levy on silencers and short-barrel guns
- ★ Government ActionFebruary 2026Trump threatens to block Gordie Howe Bridge opening to punish Canada
- ★ Government ActionFebruary 2026Moroun lobbies Lutnick before Trump threatens Gordie Howe Bridge
- ★ Private ActionOctober 2025Corporations pledge funding for Trump's $300M White House ballroom
- ★ Private ActionSeptember 2025Greg and Anna Brockman donate $25M to MAGA Inc.
- ★ Government ActionMay 2025Trump commutes donor Imaad Zuberi's foreign-lobbying sentence