Month: December 2008

I read something the other day that just didn’t sit with me very well. I mulled over it a bit, and decided to focus on the one section of a much longer post about building infrastructure for a conservative movement. Patrick Ruffini, while calling on the right to stop popping out new groups all the time and focus on the good ones we have, broke down the grassroots into three segments. The way he worded it was what jumped out at me.

Right now, the balance of power in the conservative movement when it comes to grassroots muscle rests with the economic (AFP, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, etc.) and social (AFA, Focus, etc.) wings. You also have the NRA.

I agree with Sebastian on coalition building in order to advance our pro-gun efforts. I realize that we are not the only issue the GOP can cling to, and in fact, it’s actually pretty far down the pecking order of day-to-day political issues, even with the most anti-gun leaders in office. (We are lucky to have that be the case. Can you imagine hearings in 6 different committees on a dozen different versions of gun control every few months? I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea.)

However, reading that, I’m curious about the fact that NRA members are singled out. One, we’re last. Two, we don’t even get put into the same sentence. While I’m glad that it’s recognized that among those who commit to grassroots work for gun rights, we may differ on our social and economic views, it’s still troubling to just be casually thrown in like that at the end. (That’s not to nitpick Ruffini’s sentence structure, I’m just explaining my thought process as I read his piece.)

I had to ask, are we the “oh yeah, them, too” members of the movement? Many of us certainly feel that way.

Considering NRA’s membership numbers far out pace all of the other listed groups, we shouldn’t be. When you also consider that most of those other groups define member as anyone added to their email list in the last 5 years, vs. NRA requiring you to fork over $35 every year, it’s even more daunting. By simply having a mandatory paid membership model, NRA members prove every single year that we’re more willing to engage at the grassroots level than any of the other group lists.

So why do so many of our activists feel like when they do engage with others in the movement that we’re taken advantage of? I don’t think it is quite as simple as an attitude of “who else are they going to vote for? Barack Obama?” from the other conservative activists. I think a big part of it is our fault. When I think about events where a standard right-of-center activist might encounter gun nuts, I realize that gun nuts aren’t there. NRA is, and they try to give our issue presence. But we’re not.

For example, in my years of going to CPAC, I was used to seeing people there who spotted the NRA booth and their reactions are generally limited to variations on these themes:

• Oh look, guns. Sure, gun rights, sounds like part of liberty! I like Liberty! Jerry Falwell gave us Liberty!
• Gun owners. They like low taxes, too. No one wants to pay high ammo taxes.
• Cool! It’s the bitter clingers. I wonder if they have any candy or free stuff to fill my backpack.

That’s not the entire crowd by any means, but for most people, the issue is not a serious thought. They don’t know the political battles we’re fighting. They don’t know that beyond NRA, we have even more local communities like our gun clubs and even commercial ranges.

I think there are ways that NRA has successfully managed to rise above getting a pat on the head from the crowd by doing things like having Cam broadcast live from radio row. It reminds folks that there is a real issue to deal with in the political game. It’s not always an every day issue, but when it comes up, it’s usually big one way or the other.

But where are the attendees who make it clear that they are there for the Second Amendment? Where are the folks sitting in the crowd between speakers talking to the people around them about how guns are targeted more often at the state and local level? You don’t find us there.

When going door-to-door for the campaigns this year, the Victory Office gave us a bag full of buttons to choose from in case we needed them to identify us with a volunteer effort. There were no sportsmen buttons in there. There were clipboards with various coalition group bumper stickers plastered on there – not one had sportsmen. (At least until Sebastian got his hands on one with no stickers at all…) People complimented our Sportsmen for McCain t-shirts we created online, and that was the extent to which they saw gun owners involved. We had to create our own visibility.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I think every gun owner needs to go out and make their own “Sportsmen for X-Candidate” gear to make us visible. When I was in the main phone bank room one afternoon and we took a collective breather, I talked to the other volunteers about why I was there – gun rights. Plain and simple. Yes, I liked other issues, but gun rights were the top of my activist agenda. We attended the local GOP volunteer party even though we’re not Republicans. Sebastian talked to a candidate about why he needed to return his NRA questionnaire next time, and we met one of his fellow club members who was brought to the event by a friend – another discussion in front of conservative activists about gun rights as an issue.

There is a lot of work to do to solve this problem. But, if we want more proactive candidates, and we want a hand on the proverbial steering wheel of any political party or social movement, we have to become more visible. For those of us who identify on multiple fronts of the conservative movement, we need to mix it up in those circles a bit. Get in those other circles and talk about guns as an issue we face, and why it is one that inspires your activism.

We can’t keep making excuses that our guys would rather just be at the range instead of out talking to the other members of the movement. Every issue has that problem. We just need to get over it if we want that position of “you also have the NRA” to change. If we don’t, then we can keep on being keyboard warriors and resign ourselves to sitting in the back seat instead of with a hand on the wheel.

Just to note, this is an even bigger problem in the Democratic circles since gun rights are marginalized within their activist base. But everyone here is pro-gun and can at least acknowledge that many of our political friends (though by no means all) are on the right side of the aisle – especially at the federal level. I definitely don’t have any special solutions there, but I’d love to hear ideas from those who lean left on other issues