Public Affairs

Sorry for the lack of posting, spent the morning in the NRA Public Affairs committee meeting.  Not much really to report, except what we largely already know here.  There’s great concern about the growing media story, particularly on assault weapons.  NRA is considering doing ad buys and “earned” media activity to try to counter a lot of the disinformation being propagated by the media.  More pressure ramping up on the international front, particularly from Mexico.  We all are aware of the stories being generated about all matter of weapons, assault rifles, grenades, and various other things that are largely illegal or tightly regulated in this country, being bought freely at gun shows and being smuggled over the border.  Now the Mexican government is putting pressure on us on the matter to do something about our gun laws.  Until Jan 20th, we have a President in the White House who is less likely to cave.  Will Obama tell the Mexican Government our gun laws are none of their business?

Got a presentation from Advancement, who are a division of NRA that solicits large donations to the NRA Foundation.  They have launched a Ring of Freedom initiative focusing on larger donations.  The idea of NRA Foundation is to raise money for an endowment that pays for much of the ongoing operations of NRA through grants from the foundation.  The foundation is considered a public charity for tax purposes, so donations are deductible.  This allows NRA to spend more of its income preserving the Second Amendment than running all the shooting sports programs and various other activities which are actually the NRA’s core mission.  The good news is, in 2008, despite a soft economy, they raised a record amount of money, and they are expecting 2009 to be challenging, but seem to be optimistic about it being a good year.  Apparently donations spiked in December.  Apparently this a normal pattern for charities, because of tax issues, but I have to wonder if a lot of that was the election.

BTW, Ken Blackwell spoke at the committee meeting about a few topics, because he’s on the Public Affairs Committee.  I was favorably impressed by him, so he ought to have our support for his bid for the GOP Chairmanship.