Gun Rights Organizations – Page 35 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Which Side Law Enforcement is On?

Chris Cox recently did an interview with FOP President Chuck Canterbury, where he noted:

Cox: â€œYouâ€™ve also spent a lot of time reminding members of Congress that FOP members are gun owners who support the Second Amendment. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, you said â€˜I take a back seat to no one in my reverence for the Second Amendment.â€™â€

Canterbury: â€œThatâ€™s correct. I meant it then and I mean it now. Our members and your members share many of the same beliefs about guns and crime. Many department chiefs are political, and they go with the anti-gun line, especially in the big cities. But our members in the rank and file know the reality on the streets.â€

Apparently that has our gift-that-keeps-giving opponents twisted up in knots:

Yeah, he does, doesn’t he,Â Ladd and Josh. It must really be a difficult thing, being on the wrong side of history. For a while I thought I might end up there myself, so I can sympathize. But for now I’m going to enjoy the schadenfreude of watching you come to terms with the lies and distortions you hucksters have peddled over the years coming back to bite you in the ass.

Great Article About Lobbying

Kudos to the Arizona Republic for taking time to actually understand the issue of lobbying, and write a pretty good article on it. It details the kind of work that goes into passing legislation. This is the kind of attitude you gain from victories, and confidence:

He said he doesn’t consider this year’s legislative defeats as failures.

“We are perfectly willing to encounter a defeat and learn from it and learn who our friends are and aren’t and what we need to change to make the bill go through,” Heller said. “We’re willing to be defeated if it moves us forward.”

Rathner said they learned from Brewer’s vetoes, saying the groups will try to craft bills next session that are more specific. He said the lobbyists will work closely with Brewer’s staff to develop something she can sign.

It’s not a defeat, just a temporary setback. The other side used to speak in this manner, but you don’t hear them singing that tune any longer. They can even get their bills heard, let alone far enough along to actually be defeated or vetoed.

Stopped Clock is Right Twice a Day

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence loves to see racism where there is none, so I was quite skeptical when I noticed them tweet about pro-gun activists fantasizing about killing young black men. While do believe this mischaracterizes the nature of the link I followed, I’m hard pressed to argue that the article by Gabe Suarez, passed along in an informational e-mail by VCDL, isn’t racist, or is at the least injecting race into a situation where it does not need to be injected:

Nor where everyone gets along. You may in fact be totally color-blind in a socio-ethnic sort of way, but not everyone is. So even if your liberal sociology professor thinks it is a cool thing to take a strollÂ at midnight through a ethnically homogenous part of town (different ethnicityÂ that you), it is still a stupid idea.

The problem here is that many of the flash mobs in Philadelphia are not taking place in “ethnically homogenous” parts of town. Some of them have taken place in parts of the City I would not ordinarily be afraid to walk. This not only injects race into an equation where it is not relevant, it detracts from the quality of the advice.

Avoid if you can. If you are standing around and see a group of twenty young urban thugs about two blocks away yelling, “kill whitey”, and lookin at your reflection in the store window, realize that you have not been in the sun in a while, here is my advice – “RUN”. If it looks like trouble, it probably is. The gang is not there to debate the effects of american corporate expansion on the development of the urban neighborhoods with you.

And who, exactly, would be yelling “kill whitey?” I seem to recall a number of victims of these flash mobs have been African American. These mobs aren’t going out and targeting whites. They are groups of feral teenagers targeting anyone who happens to look like a good targets for beating or robbing.

Suarez also suggests breaking the law if need be. While I don’t have any particular problem with Suarez offering this advice, I don’t think it’s wise for a high-profile group that’s as well-respected as VCDL forwarding on such advice to members. Whether a law is immoral enough to offer no consideration by a citizen is, in my view, a personal matter, as only an individual is capable of weighing the consequences of breaking the law versus that of obeying it. I believe gun rights groups should be wary of treading on this ground in areas where our opponents, the media, and lawmakers are watching.

And that’s really my issue with this. Suarez is certainly free to write racially laced and colorful narratives on how to deal with flash mobs. His choice of language and flashy style aside, I’m not sure there’s all that much fundamentally wrong with the advice. But I believe VCDL should have known better than to send this out to members. It’s certainly not out of line to speak of advice on how to deal with violent flash mobs, but in the entire world of self-defense training, I have a hard time believing this was the best anyone could come up with.

Like a stopped clock that’s right twice a day, CSGV is correct that Suarez’s article is racially charged, and VCDL never should have sent this out to members.

P.S. – If anyone can tell me what a “panga swinging killer” is, I’d be grateful. A Panga seems to be a fish, and urban dictionary was no help if it’s slang.

NRA Doesn’t Do Squat for _____________

I actually haven’t heard people say it about this state, but because I know there are so many NRA program supporters out in Arizona, I’ll highlight what NRA has been doing for them lately.

In 2010, the NRA Civil RIghts Defense Fund provided assistance in three cases. Two of them were in regards to personal situations with firearms and the third involved a shooting range.

The year also saw more than $314,000 in grants flow through the state courtesy of The NRA Foundation and the generous attendees of Friends of NRA banquets. (See how many are left? Go to one and the join your fellow Arizona gun nuts for some NRA sandwiches when you win the NRA toaster.) Back to the money. That cash went to 35 organizations that support shooters around the state.

NRA Doesn’t Do Squat for _____________

Today’s NRA-hates us state is Massachusetts. Sure, sure, bitch and moan that NRA isn’t spending any of your dues in your backyard. You’d be wrong.

The NRA Foundation spent more than $47,000 on grants for 18 organizations in the state last year. If you want more, well, get thee to a Friends dinner. Because I know quite a few of the gun blogging folks like to shoot at Harvard, you can support an upcoming dinner not far down the road in Leominster. And tell your buddies at the Leominster gun clubs to get their butts into those seats as well.

The Civil Rights Defense Fund gave financial support to two Massachusetts cases in 2010.

NRA Doesn’t Do Squat for _____________

Fill in the blank, and you have a complaint I’ve heard for years, especially from those in anti-gun states.

Today, we were putting a few things away when Sebastian came across the 2010 annual reports from The NRA Foundation & Civil Rights Defense Fund. And guess what? There’s hard evidence that they are working in whatever state you’re bitching about.

We’ll take New Jersey since it’s nearby and that’s what I hear the most bitchin’ about these days. For you New Jersey shooters, The NRA Foundation spent more than $57,000 in the Garden State for shooting programs in 2010. Those grants went to 21 different organizations. The grants are only available because of participation by gun owners in programs like Friends of NRA. You get to be all social-like, laugh with fellow gun nuts, win guns, win other cool stuff, and know that your tax-deductible expenditures at said event are coming right back to your state for programs and groups in need of a little extra funding to reach new & experience shooters and get them into the community.

For the Civil Rights Defense Fund, New Jersey had 9 funded cases last year. Yes, most of them are shared expenses, but the NRA is putting up some of its limited legal dough to support the court cases for New Jersey gun owners.

Playing the Political Game

NSSF recently issued a report on their 2010 election activity with the recently founded NSSF PAC. It’s nothing too exciting – they gave to equal number of Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate. But, what I find relevant about the report is that this is a PAC that just started taking donations last April. While it only existed for the last 8 months of the two-year election fundraising cycle, NSSF donations topped what the Brady Campaign PAC raised in the entire cycle. NSSF was also able to contribute nearly as much as the Brady Campaign’s PAC.

Now, I know that the Brady folks have been winding down their PAC. It’s clear if you look at the history that they don’t make raising money for it a priority, and that’s understandable if they are shifting their strategy away from political fundraising. But, they’ve still been around for years and clearly still have some donors who consider it important and worth a donation. NSSF just started and is already putting up comparable numbers.

I find it funny since the line from anti-groups has always been that the gun industry is buying Congress. Heh. The NRA money is from gun owners. Now the gun industry is finally officially coming to the table. And we’re still winning.

What Does it Take to Win an NRA Board Seat?

I’ve been told by successfully elected NRA board candidates that the data & explanations I provide about how NRA elections work and what it takes to win are actually pretty useful. So, if you’d like to see a change made to the NRA Board of Directors, here’s a peek at what it takes to help your preferred candidate win.

For those of you who are a little confused by my terminology, it is based on how directors are elected. Â There are 25 seats up every year on the mailed ballot. Â There are typically around 30 or so nominees, but only the top 25 of them will receive a seat on the board. Â (There were 37 nominees this year, a higher number than usual.) Â By “top winner,” I mean the person who earned the most votes. Â By “last winner,” I mean the person who had the least number of votes, but still enough to win one of the 25 seats available.

This year, the top vote-getter was on 91% of the valid ballots. Â Considering that exactly 3 years prior, the number was similarly high, it’s not hard to guess that this year’s top winner was once again Tom Selleck. Â The final person to actually win a board seat was on almost 56% of the valid ballots. In raw numbers, that means that in order to serve on the board, candidates had to earn at least 53,029 votes this year. (This is actually the second lowest number of votes needed to win since I’ve been keeping track, typically the number is closer to 60,000 votes.)

The difference between the last winner and the “first loser” (for lack of a better term) was just 866 votes this year. Here are the candidates who did not win a seat and the number of votes between them and the next person in line.

“Losing” Candidates	Vote Tally	Difference from Previous Candidate
Timothy W. Pawol	52,163	866
Harold W. Schroeder	51,566	597
David G. Coy	50,611	955
Carl B. Kovalchik	50,244	367
Steven C. Schreiner	49,952	292
James L. Wallace	45,157	4,795
Eddie Newman	45,154	3
Joel Friedman*	43,906	1,248
Dennis DeMille	37,970	5,936
Marion Townsend	36,744	1,226
Anthony J, Chimblo III	36,722	22

*Elected as 76th Director to serve a term of one year. The election process for this seat happens at Annual Meeting & is open to all NRA members.

You can see where encouraging any friends and family members who can vote to support your favorite candidates can easily pay off in boosting numbers. You don’t have to convince all 4 million members of NRA to support your guy or gal in order to make a difference in the election.

Fast and Furious All NRA’s Fault

That would appear to be the conclusion of the Washington Post.

Now, the very critics who have tied the bureauâ€™s hands are expressing outrage over a novel, and we would agree questionable, ATF operation intended to curb gun smuggling into Mexico.

If they get any deeper in the tank for this Administration, they are going to need one of these. Their conclusions do not fit what’s come out so far in the hearings. We know, for instance, that ATF did not “lose track” of these weapons. They did not bother to track them at all.

NRA Election Participation

Ah, it’s time for the annual peek at how NRA members are participating in their elections. And this year, the data gets a little more interesting. But just a little. It’s still ridiculously easy for members to get their ballots in and actually influence elections. Let’s get on with the pretty charts.

The y-axis should say that the numbers are in the millions, but after battling with Excel and Google which have both altered their charts just enough to make it a pain in the neck, I figured you fine folks were smart enough to figure that out.

So, why were fewer ballots mailed out? Is NRA shedding massive numbers of life members or 5+ year members? While I don’t have direct access to data, I’m going to go ahead and rule that out. The fact that an even number of ballots went out indicates at least the beginnings of a membership list cleaning operation – putting real effort into finding out who is alive, who moved, etc. Every organization has to do it periodically, and timing to when you have to mail out ballots makes the most sense. One of NRA’s biggest expenses is mailing out the magazines to nearly 4 million members, it gets more expensive when you add stuff to it like the ballots.

I make my assumption with some evidence to back it up. The number of ballots that came back was actually the third highest since I started keeping records, and the number of invalid ballots (those with mistakes) is on par with previous years as well. Those numbers did not see a proportional drop.

Because of the drop in number of mailed ballots, the participation rate went up. Since it’s unlikely the dead people were voting, this makes sense. This isn’t Chicago, after all.

When I emphasize that it’s, in theory, ridiculously easy to influence the election, it’s totally based on the fact that so few eligible members actually vote. If the majority of Snowflakes in Hell readers are voting-eligible members of NRA and every one voted, they alone could throw the participation rate up to 10% based on this year’s numbers. In that spirit, if you do receive an NRA ballot and choose not to vote, I’d be curious as to why you don’t vote in the association election.