The 2015 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits at Nashville’s Music City Center saw 78,865 in attendance over a three-day period (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The National Rifle Association this week announced the previously canceled annual member’s meeting is back on but with a new date and location.
The 149th Annual Meeting of Members had previously been scheduled for April in Nashville, Tennessee but was canceled several weeks prior due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The NRA this week posted on social media that the event has been rescheduled for Saturday, Sept. 5, and will now be held at the Springfield Exposition Center located in downtown Springfield, Missouri.
“The Meeting with take place in Halls A/B/C of the Expo Center and commence at 9:00 a.m. Central Time,” said the group. “All members are invited to attend.”
The Springfield Expo Center boasts some 170,000 sq. ft. of space and is smaller than Nashville’s Music City Center where the NRAAM was originally set to be held earlier this year. The rescheduled event will likewise be a more scaled-down affair than originally planned. While the NRA’s meeting last year in Indianapolis featured 880 exhibitors and vendors and drew over 80,000 attendees, the Springfield Visitors Bureau told local media that between 1,000 and 1,250 people are expected to attend the September members meeting.
The NRA, founded in 1871, boasts over 5 million members.
“But with their bylaws, they still have to have their membership meeting,” Dana Maugans, director of sales with the Springfield Visitors and Convention Bureau, told the Springfield News-Leader. “They are going to have their membership portion of the meeting here. But it will not be nearly as large as the convention trade show that was planned.”
Maugans said the down-sized event will still likely bring almost $1 million to the city.
The next scheduled event is the 150th NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Houston, Texas, May 14-16, 2021, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, where the group last met in 2013.
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