Category: Gun Rights Organizations

I’ve gotten a steady stream of questions in for our board candidates. Most of them quite good. However a number of them are on legislative topics, and legislative priorities, which the NRA Board is only tangentially involved in. Those decisions get made by ILA. For those that asked questions of this nature, I will see if I can get an interview with a decision maker at ILA after we’re finished with all the board stuff.

Good for us, bad for the Administration. Maybe it’s time for him to come around a full 180 and help push a major piece of pro-2A legislation through Congress. Maybe then we can lend President Obama some of NRA’s popularity with voters. Unfortunately, I give the odds on that somewhere south of having Rahm Emanuel showing up naked and screaming obscenities on Chris Cox’s lawn one morning.

Looks like Thirdpower will be at Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day (IGOLD), but if you want to track the happenings live, check out Illinois State Rifle Association’s Twitter Feed.

Same as last year, we will be conducting interviews with selected candidates for NRA Board. Also the same as last year, I’ve set up a form so that people can submit topics they’d like to see covered or submit questions.

[contact-form 1 “Board Questions”]

In the interest of respecting the candidates’ time, I won’t be able to ask every question, but I will try to cover the best ones submitted. Questions will be kept entirely anonymous to the interviewee, and will not be revealed, so don’t be shy about asking anything. The interviewee will have no idea whether it’s a reader question or one of mine.

I’ve included every candidate we’ve endorsed in the question list, but I won’t be interviewing all of them. Though, I will make a special effort to get an interview with a candidate if there are a lot of questions for them.

Carol Bambery
As everyone who reads Dave Hardy knows, Carol Bambery is one of the hardest working Board members at NRA. For us, her skills and background with the National Firearms Law Seminar stand out because she works hard on this program to help keep other attorneys up-to-date on the latest issues in the gun legal world. Carol also serves as Vice Chair of the Women’s Policies Committee and also worked to make sure that women’s voices were heard in both McDonald and Heller with special briefs. Carol is the kind of hard worker who can often be overlooked by those who don’t pay close attention, but that should indicate she’s not doing this for any glory. She’s in it because she’s clearly passionate about our rights.

Graham Hill
Graham would make a great addition to the Board based on his background working the Hill for sportsmen and gun owners. His addition to the Board would be a great infusion of fresh energy and perspective. He knows how to make things happen, and I believe he’ll serve gun owners of all stripes particularly well. You can read his bio in the magazine that shows he’s got experience with the favorite EBRs while being selected as Hunter of the Year for SCI and promoting access to the shooting sports for the disabled. This guy is truly well rounded – a shooter and hunter who also knows how to work with Washington.

Ken Hanson
Ken Hanson is an accomplished Second Amendment attorney with a long record of pro bono work on gun rights. He hold the legal chair of the Buckeye Firearms Association, and the author of “Ohio Guide to Firearms Law” now in its Third Edition. Ken was also Counsel of Record for briefs filed in both D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago for both the Buckeye Firearms Association and the US Concealed Carry Association. In addition to that he fought a number of cases in Ohio State Courts, including the Ohio Supreme Court, fighting to preserve Ohioans right to carry and upholding state preemption. Ken’s record of accomplishment on the legal front is highly impressive, and I think he’d make a great addition to the NRA Board.

Bob Sanders
Bob brings a very useful background and specialty to the Board – two decades with the Department of Treasury. As an attorney who represents gun owners and folks in the industry, his specialized knowledge is worthwhile for many of the issues that NRA deals with in its various divisions from ILA to reviewing court cases. We consider this an asset worthy of your vote, as do other Board members who cite him as a great candidate.

Pete Brownell
Pretty much anyone who knows guns knows the Brownell name.  In addition to being a great company, Brownell’s is also an unwavering supporter of the Second Amendment, and does quite a lot with the community. We’re very pleased with Brownell’s efforts with new media outreach, and believe Pete can bring some of that knowledge and expertise to the NRA Board. Pete already serves on a number of related board, including Knife Rights, POMA, USA Shooting, and Pheasants Forever.

Tom King
Tom has been an early supporter of NRA’s outreach efforts to leaders in New Media. In addition to that, he’s a successful blogger in his own right, being one of the few members of the NRA Board to have a blog hosted with a mainstream media outlet. Tom is President of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, and is a seasoned fighter for gun rights in New York State, which as you can imagine, is not an easy state for gun owners. Regardless, his record speaks for itself. New York State has not passed any anti-gun or anti-hunting legislation for a decade, and gun owners have managed to make some progress in the other direction. New York is an important state for gun owners, and it’s important to keep Tom on the NRA Board.

Sandra Froman
Bitter did a very long post about Sandy’s endorsement-worthy background during her last campaign. Much of that still holds true today. Froman is one of the most feisty advocates you’ll meet at NRA. She is out raising money to endow the programs side of the organization and testifying before the Senate against Sotomayor. She is a wildebeest hunter who got into the issue due to self-defense after a man tried to break down her door. As a Harvard Law & Stanford graduate female from the Bay Area, her activism is the kind that makes the folks at PETA, HSUS, and the Brady Campaign cry at night. Keep them shedding tears and vote for Sandy.

Governor Matt Blunt
We decided to endorse Gov. Blunt as a fresh political voice on the board. There are a handful of lawmakers on the Board of Directors with varying levels of involvement and sway in the world of politics. We believe that Gov. Blunt would bring a youthful new energy as a politician, provided he participates on the Board. Learn more about Gov. Blunt’s biography here.

I don’t really want to tell folks who to vote for, and who not to vote for, but since the Nominating Committee has decided to keep him on the ballot, I thought I’d remind everyone of this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSGySNLyACE[/youtube]

Joaquin Jackson is hardly anti-gun. I’d classify him as having varied beliefs on the topic much like many Americans do, and as Cam so thoroughly documents each night on NRA News. He’s also rendered good service to NRA up until that incident, and for that I want to thank him. The problem with what he said is, Jackson isn’t just an ordinary American, he’s a candidate for the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association, and with that comes certain expectations. One of those expectations, at least in my opinion, is you don’t throw high-power shooters and collectors under the bus. I’ll let you all decide for yourself, but for you I present this evidence.

We’ve traditionally done yearly NRA Board endorsements here on this blog, where we’ve promoted board members we either know or like, and encouraged readers to mark them on their ballots which should be in this month’s copy of your NRA magazine. We’re still planning on doing that this year, but are running kind of behind because of how little time I have with my current work load. Last year we did some interviews with candidates, and I would like to do that again this year. So stay tuned.

Wayne LaPierre has an editorial on Opposing Views:

Brady gave California its best grade, for having the most gun control, even though California’s murder and total violent crime rates are 10 percent and 13 percent higher, respectively, than the rates for the rest of the country.

Utah got Brady’s lowest grade because it has the fewest gun control laws, a fact lamented with all the feigned sorrow and indignation that gun control supporters in the Beehive State can muster. Fortunately, every cloud has a silver lining. Though certainly disillusioned with their low standing among the nation’s anti-gun fringe, the good people of Utah can take at least some comfort in the fact that their murder and violent crime rates are 76 percent and 56 percent lower, respectively, than California’s.

Is it our imagination, or are Brady’s state grades getting worse as the nation’s crime rates go down?

As a matter of side hilarity, if you don’t pick your graphic for the article, Opposing Views staff will do it for you. In this case they picked an NRA logo, but it’s not the right NRA. Dave Hardy told a story once of how both NRAs once shared the same building, which created quite a bit of confusion for the mail, with the National Recovery Administration getting packets full of targets people had mailed in. More than 60 years later, with the National Recovery Administration thankfully part of the past, people are still getting them confused. Of course, today there is still another NRA, but it has nothing to do with economic recovery. Of course, neither did the old other NRA :)

It’s interesting that NRA had to go on the warpath against…. Bill Clinton at CPAC. The fact of the matter is there just hasn’t been all that much Obama has done to us, save nominating Sotomayor and Holder:

“If you think that’s all ancient history, I’m going to tell you it’s still going on today,” LaPierre said, before cutting to a clip not of President Barack Obama but of Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.

I hate to say it, but at this point, I think even I’d suggest that Rendell is a bigger threat to gun rights than Obama, though Obama remains a larger potential threat. Rendell has been actively undermining the lock we have on Pennsylvania, and if that lock is broken it won’t bode well for the rest of the country. Pennsylvania has one of the highest percentages of NRA membership of any state. If they can break us, none of you are safe.

As mentioned in the previous post, PAFOA was approached by the Daily News to comment on the “Florida Loophole” article. If you’d like to see the entire statement sent to the Daily News reporter, Dan has posted it on the PAFOA blog.