While I don't know enough about the SD situation to make accusations, I am afraid that NRL may have contracted what I think of as the NRA disease. When the officials and staff of such organizations become simply professional lobbyists with lifelong careers at stake, I think it is inevitable that they will become more interested in the continuation of their jobs and salaries than in the cause the organization was originally formed to advocate. After all, if the professed goal of such organizations is ever reached, what need is there then for the organization to exist, and what need is there for the high paying jobs it provides for the officers and staff?
I don't know how NRL is organized or if it's officials are well paid professionals, but I am familiar to some extent with NRA of which I have been a member for decades. I am convinced that the higher level officials of NRA are far more interested in keeping their well paid positions than in achieving the stated goals of the organization and it's membership. I am not saying that is the case with NRL, or the reason for what happened in SD, but it is one possibility.
epow your speculation that the NRLC opposed the SD bill because they are trying to protect their high salaries and pensions is silly. You sound like John McCain. When the NRLC opposed the McCain-Feingold anti-free speech act he asserted that they were just trying to protect their six digit salaries. As it turned out no one at the NRLC makes any thing close to a six digit salary, in fact records show that their president is not even paid, and that their employees salaries are so low that many of them are eligible for the earned income tax credit for the poor.