Month: September 2008

I knew Legal affairs would be iffy to attend.  Mostly because discussion of that stuff tends to be sensitive — when you’re dealing with attorney client privileges, and with NRA being a party to lawsuits, I had a feeling we might not get to stay long.  After a brief introduction by Chris Cox, where he outlined two pronged legislative and legal approach with getting Washington D.C. to comply with the Heller ruling, the committee went into executive session and we had to leave, along with Dave Hardy, who doesn’t have a seat on that committee.

Hunting policy was actually a pretty interesting committee meeting.  Legislative affairs is mostly stuff I’m already pretty aware of, so it’s not really anything surprising.  Most of the really interesting information comes out in the discussions in executive committee.  But this had several issues that I wasn’t wasn’t at all familiar with.

One thing NRA has been working on is right-to-hunt constitutional amendments.  Oklahoma has been the first state to pass one of these consitutional amendments, which has strong language and actually offers protection for hunters.  Other states have such amendments, but usually include wording such as “subject to the state regulatory powers.” which makes the right effectively symbolic.  Oklahoma’s has real teeth.  Right now they are working with states where the game commissions are constitutional entities, since it makes it easier to create right-to-hunt provisions, while still maintaining the comissions’ ability regulate hunting in accordance with sound wildlife management processes.

Another thing that’s happened is that the Bush Administration has declared a conference to rethink this whole North American Wildlife Conservation Model, which was established by Teddy Roosevelt nearly 100 years ago.  Some updating of policy would be beneficial to sportsmen, but obviously this model has worked for nearly a century, so major changes would not be in the interest of sportsmen.  NRA is working with various other groups to make sure this turns out to be beneficial to sportsmen.

One issue that was brought up that I think is very facinating is the issue of the fence between the United States and Mexico, which has serious implications when it comes to hunting and conservation.  The fence is apparently not planned to consistently follow the border, but will cut off significant parts of United States territory to hunters.  The fence is also meant to stop people, but it wll also stop a lot of wildlife and game species which range across Mexico and the southern United States, which will have the effect of cutting some populations of from another.  Understand that NRA is not taking a position for or against a border fence here, just that it was discussed in terms of its impact on hunters and wildlife.

I had the opportunity to attend both The Legislative Policy Committee, and also the Hunting And Wildlife Policy Committee, which I’ll talk about later.  All the NRA committee meetings are starting out this year with a disclaimed about the Biparisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, and asked if anyone was working as an employee of a volunteer for a campaign for federal office.  Committee members or attendees who raised there hands were asked to recuse themselves from the proceedings as to avoid any charge of “coordination”.

After that Chris Cox went into his address.  Although Norton’s bill has been voted out of committee, if the House leadership lives up to their end of the bargain, it will be HR6691 that ends up getting passed.  Once out of The House, it will be an uphill battle to get the Senate to pass the bill before the end of their session, but NRA intends to try.

The next big issue is the National Park rule change to allow carrying of firearms for self-defense.  We were told that the new rule could be expected on or around October 8th.  Cool.

Then onto BATF reform.  There are two issues on this front.  Ongoing is the effort to get The BATF Modernization and Reform Act, HR4900 passed.  The other is that NRA has been working with Sullivan’s office at ATF in an attempt to fix ATF new ridiculous definition of “manufacturing” which even includes giving a paint job to firearms.

They are also actively working with the Transportation Security Administration to change the new rule that prohibits checking .50BMG or larger rounds in checked baggage.  This has been a big problem for big game hunters, who use the larger rounds.  Apparently a more legitimate interpretation on the DOT rules would allow calibers up to .75, which covers just about all the cartridges out there which are currently lawful.

I would also note that one of the committee members asked Chris about their blogger outreach efforts, and Chris said he was very supportive of the effort, and there was every intention of continuing these relationships.  He mentioned the NRA-ILA mix and mingle happy hour in Louisville, as something ILA did as a thank to for the work we’ve done.

The rest of the committee was done in executive session, which is limited to committee members.  Right now the Legal Affairs Committee is starting, so I need to wrap this up and head over to that.