Gun Owners of America Discloses $545,728 in Fourth Quarter Lobbying
Gun Owners of America filed its fourth quarter 2025 lobbying disclosure reporting $545,728 in expenditures, but offered no details about what it was actually lobbying Congress on. The filing lists no specific issues or legislation, marking a departure from earlier quarters when the organization named particular bills and legislative priorities.
Why It Matters
Gun Owners of America's blank disclosure raises a basic transparency question: What was the organization pressing Congress on during the fourth quarter? The filing shows a well-funded operation with five in-house lobbyists actively engaged, but the public record contains no window into their specific agenda for that period. This makes it impossible to assess what legislative priorities drove the $545,728 quarterly expenditure or how GOA's lobbying strategy may have shifted from earlier in the year.
By the Numbers
GOA operates entirely as an in-house lobbying operation—it is both the registrant and the client. The fourth quarter 2025 filing reports $545,728 in lobbying expenditures, sitting between the organization's recent quarterly highs and lows. In 2024 GOA spent $2,435,586, averaging roughly $608,897 per quarter. The Q4 2025 figure is slightly below that average.
The lobbying team consists of five in-house lobbyists: Aidan Johnston, J.P. Pichardo, Erich Pratt, Ben Sanderson, and John Velleco. One lobbyist who appeared in earlier filings—Mike Hammond—is no longer listed as of Q2 2025, representing the only notable change to the team's composition in the past year. Three of the five lobbyists have documented congressional experience: Johnston interned for Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Pichardo interned for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Velleco served as an administrative assistant for Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX). Pratt and Sanderson have no congressional staff records on file.
The Agenda
The fourth quarter 2025 filing lists no specific issues lobbied and no legislation. This stands in contrast to GOA's three prior quarterly filings in 2025, each of which named specific legislative priorities: the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 38) in the first and second quarter, and the "One Big Beautiful Bill" (H.R. 1) and Iron Pipeline Review Act in Q3. Given the blank filing, it is not possible to state with certainty what GOA was lobbying on during the fourth quarter.
Broader Context
The fourth quarter 2025 lobbying period came after a consequential stretch for firearms legislation. In October 2025, a press release from Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) co-signed by 29 House colleagues called on the ATF to continue processing National Firearms Act applications during a government shutdown. The release directly quoted both Erich Pratt and Aidan Johnston from GOA, making it one of the clearest on-the-record demonstrations of GOA's active congressional engagement during the filing period. In December 2025, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) pushed legislation to close the so-called Charleston loophole in the background check system—a measure GOA has historically opposed.
The Bottom Line
GOA's fourth quarter 2025 congressional lobbying disclosure reports $545,728 in spending but offers no window into what the organization was actually pressing Congress on. The blank filing represents a departure from the specificity of earlier quarters. The lobbying records show a consistent, well-funded in-house operation with a stable team, but for this quarter, the public record on GOA's specific agenda is thin.