Apparently some members are not too happy NRA is going after Debra Maggart. I’d say that if this isn’t a story cooked up by Maggart’s campaign, I’ll eat my hat. Even if NRA pissed me off enough to cause me to resign my life membership, I wouldn’t feel that was something worth going to the press about.
NRA is supporting a primary challenge against Maggart in the GOP primary.
” Maggart merely wanted to take another look at the piece of legislation next year, because she felt the bill was flawed.”
Anyone that knows how legislation works knows this quote is a huge pile of horse$hit!!
Well, the story even admits Maggart committed an anti-gun action while in office, their complaint seems to boil down to being upset the NRA is involved in politics at this level. Having followed Tennessee gun politics to some degree due to the Instapundit, it’s very clear there’s an active role for them, there have been a lot of “pro-gun” politicians in the state house who are anything but.
Even if Maggart wins, fellow politicians are going to take note of the price they might pay when they act against us, $100K in a state primary is probably quite a bit of money and the NRA’s explicit blessing must count for something. Certainly something’s got Team Maggart squealing like stuck pigs.
“”All I wanted to do was register my complaint – but by the end of the conversation they had mishandled it so badly, I said look I didn’t intend to do this but I am resigning my membership to the NRA,” he said.
Without registering an opinion about the election in this case, because I can’t talk to the people involved, firsthand, this reminds me of my observation of the other day, about the NRA taking the approach with locals, “We’re going to have our way, take it of leave it, and eff off in either case.” The sentence quoted above could very well have come out of the Act 17 fights in PA, back in 1995 and after.
The key to member loyalty is always making people feel they are an important part of something bigger — if possible. When they find out they’re ignorable — which they are, as only one of umpteen million members — they feel betrayed. Their reactions may not always be wise, or rational, but they are completely understandable. And realize that in this example, the NRA could give a chit less about losing a handful of members.
This is a hardball political enforcement action, where the NRA views the politician as having crossed them and is using its considerable money and influence to generously allow Maggart to spend more time with his family, hopefully starting tomorrow (today is the state primary).
I don’t see how the NRA could manage this without losing some members, given that the politician and his associates are at least nominally pro-RKBA, and I don’t think that should hold them back from doing this sort of thing. Without more details of how they “mishandled it so badly” (refused to reverse their position???) or knowledge of person saying that I don’t think we can judge that interaction.
Any Republican picking a fight with the NRA in a state like Tennessee should be disqualified from office on the basis of intelligence alone.
I don’t know about that. There are probably enough members there (and in many areas) who are perfectly happy to have someone refuse to help with pro-gun legislation as long as they are with the right party and know the right people.
I’m willing to acknowledge political reality when it comes to these things, but when there’s a quality candidate who is better for the cause, I say NRA and any other interest group getting screwed should go for it.
It’s good that Chris Cox is concerned about his home state of Tennessee. It would be really nice if he made sure ILA showed a similar level of concern for other states.
It’s the NRA. They don’t care how you voted on taxes, abortion, schools, or any issue beyond increased freedom for law abiding gun owners. If you vote against their legislation or stonewall it don’t be surprised when they back somebody better on their one and only issue.
You don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell members of the GOP here that, no, NRA is not willing to give an anti-gun person an A just because of their party affiliation. It’s pretty sad.
Sad for sure, but hardly surprising; after all, this is what a lot of the Tea Party is all about. They’re not driven by RKBA issues (after all, we’re pretty much winning on all fronts despite tepid support from most “pro-RKBA” politicians), they’re largely a revolt against our ruling class, most certainly including the Republican political establishment. Just ask David Dewhurst as he watches Ted Cruz spend less time with his family while a Senator in D.C. and Dick Lugar as he spends more time with his family after January 2013….
Getting back to our issue, it’s very interesting, and probably a reflection of our success, that the NRA is intervening more and more in primaries. They now have the time, money and attention to spare for this sort of thing and it should further cement our success for the foreseeable future.
I admit that after doing some minimal investigation, I too smell a rat about this NRA choice of candidate.
Allow me to say first, cryptically perhaps, that if it were GOA we were discussing, I’d be ready to pronounce that there was “another” factor than gun rights involved; but I am not yet ready to say that about the NRA, though I have my suspicions.
Debra Maggart seems to have too good a proven record on gun rights to just be thrown by the wayside over one vote, relative to an issue that even many hardcore gun rights advocates are on board with; especially since her opponent appears to have no record on guns at all, discounting her rhetoric.
See Maggart’s gun votes at:
http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/48807/debra-maggart/37/gun-issues
I will invite anyone who cares to, to look into Courtney Rogers background and hypothesize for themselves what additional factors someone may have found that qualified her better than Maggart.
If I’m wrong-wrong-wrong please straighten me out, because I’ve been stumbling over this kind of thing all the time with other groups, and have been hoping the NRA isn’t slipping into the same pattern.
BTW, it’s a little silly to say the NRA never considers “other issues.” In this race, aren’t they pitching Roger’s military service as an asset? Frankly, as a veteran, I don’t see where anyone’s status as a veteran is indicative of one damn thing about their approach to the RKBA.
” an issue that even many hardcore gun rights advocates are on board with;”
Make that AREN’T on board with. . .
To save you all some time, Courtney Rogers is a board member of something called the Black Robe Regiment.
http://www.blackrobereg.org/
What do you make of that?
It is true that the NRA has gotten a lot more strident in the last few years. It seems that inaction on the partof the feds in the way of gun control is just a sinister and subtle trap of some sort.
They can’t seem to believe that while Obama is not a gun lover, he’s got too much political sense to buck this particular tide.
And they want your money.
We seem to have a lot of professional advocacies these days,and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I’m kind of thinking that when the NRA started the ALL IN 2012 program it would be all talk. But now, with a 58% to 42% landslide victory, the NRA sure looks strong.
With an NRA office now serving my congressional district, they are truly putting their money where their mouth is!
If I said the government had money, someone here would point out that it’s the peoples’ money.
The NRA is putting your money where their mouth is.
And collecting some pretty good salaries doing it.
I would love to compare salaries structures at the NRA between 1960 and now.
And I’m a member.
But it seems to me that we have a lot of professional advocacies nowadays.
Think about how, over time, the labor unions got corrupted. And how it happened.
Wouldn’t be entirely useful since there’s a much larger market for the politically savvy than for those who are right for positions managing training, target shooting, etc. (Without the NRA getting much more political, often at the insistence of the membership (e.g. Cincinnati), the latter wouldn’t have jobs anymore….)
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of living in the D.C. is much higher now. I was born around then and in the dozen years I spent in the area in the ’90s, the natives around my age would point out how much things had changed, how thus and so built up area was where there was e.g. a miniature golf place, etc. I lived in the Balston area of Arlington and it got built up markedly during the time I was there, one memorable Washington Times picture showed a straight row of 4 or so construction sites (albeit the last was adding a level to a big box anchor of the Balston Mall).
I don’t think the NRA could get much more political, they are primarily a lobbying organization these days.
I see parallels between them and AARP, who used to be a grass roots collective, but has turned into a shill for any company willing to pay the fee.
The people employed there worry more about their salaries and benefits than they do about any cause.
If you looked at what the top five execs got at NRA in the 60s, even accounting for inflation and everything else, I’ll bet a small sum that pay scales have risen more than tenfold.