Category: Gun Rights Organizations

Once again, GOA is off its rocker, this time on the federal land bill.  They are quite correct to raise concerns about the status of carrying firearms for self-defense on all this new federal land and wilderness area, a concern that is shared by NRA.  But I find this passage in their press release unproductive and divisive:

That’s right.  Many Congressmen claimed to be protecting the Second Amendment, when all they were really doing was thumbing their noses at self defense.

Here is the entire “pro-gun” amendment that was considered in the House.  Judge for yourself if this really protects your Second Amendment rights:

“Nothing in this Title shall be construed as affecting the authority, jurisdiction, or responsibility of the several States to manage, control, or regulate fish and resident wildlife under State law or regulations, including the regulation of hunting, fishing, trapping, and recreational shooting.  Nothing in this Title shall be construed as limiting access for hunting, fishing, trapping, or recreational shooting.”

They may as well have called it the “Elmer Fudd Protection Act.”

A lot of people who voted for this bill campaigned for office as champions of gun rights.  They said “Send me to Washington; I’ll fight for the Second Amendment.”

And this is what we get?  Pathetic.

And with that, you can hear the anti-gunners and HSUS salivate with anticipation as the gun rights community once again turns on itself.  The proposed language was by NRA and GOA A rated Congressman Jason Altmire.  The same Jason Almire who went to bat trying to get the repeal of DC’s gun laws through Congress.  The same Jason Altmire who helped form a Second Amendment Task Force in Congress on the heels of Holder calling for a new Assault Weapons Ban.

Could it be, rather than Congressman Altmire being “pathetic,” he was attempting to help an important constituency, namely hunters and recreational shooters.  Helping them alleviate at least some of the concerns about the federal land bill if it had passed.  Given that it passed by two votes, I’m going to guess a lot of our friends in Congress were concerned that it would, in fact, pass, and pass without any pro-gun language in it whatsoever.

Are we to believe that GOA does not consider hunters and recreational shooters an important constituency, and would rather a bill pass without addressing any concerns?  Is GOA agreeing we should throw the “Elmer Fudds” off the lifeboats?  Their language certainly indicates that.  It’s one thing to be disappointed that you didn’t get everything you wanted, but we would have at least gotten something if the Democrats had made up those two votes and passed the bill.  GOA would seem to prefer we got nothing.

It’s garbage like this that makes me unable to take GOA seriously as a gun rights organization.  GOA has always seemed to me to be more interested in feathering its nest as the expense of other groups and other concerns within the community than it is with actually helping pick up the ball and move it forward.  Until that changes, I’m going to continue speaking out against their divisiveness.

I have compiled a list of questions to send to our endorsed candidates for NRA Board of Directors, and sent them early this morning.  We should be publishing the responses as they come in over the next few weeks.  The people we’ll be featuring are Edie Reynolds, Scott Bach, and Joe DeBergalis.  I just want to thank them ahead of time for being willing to take their time to answer some of our questions.

There is always some confusion about the NRA ballot.  There are so many seats – many more than most people are used to in any organization – and the Nominating Committee supports more candidates than seats.  But what happens when people get it wrong?  Easy, their ballot is considered to be invalid.  The folks who scan the ballots don’t aim to be Florida election officials, so they tend not to try and determine the proverbial hanging chads.

I will confess  that one of my favorite times of the NRA Annual Meeting is when Jim Land gets up to read the election results.  Included in that report is a summary of how many invalid ballots they received, as well as the reasons why various ballots were declared invalid.  I find it quite amusing.

I realize that lines may make this chart a little confusing.  However, they were easier to follow year-to-year than just plain dots.

Yes, as you can see, there are between 10 and 50 people who, for the last three years, have saved a ballot from a previous year and submitted that one.  That’s impressive.  It’s one thing if they just hold on to a copy of the old magazine, but to actually take the time to send in the ballot during the voting period the next year, that’s just crazy.

The most common problem is clearly too many votes.  This year, you may vote for up to 26.  However, if you don’t have 26 people that you’re just dying to vote for, then it is advised you limit your votes.  So-called bullet voting helps your favorite candidates more than spreading out votes across the entire ballot.

I’m doing this guest post because I know Sebastian is busy this morning, and he asked me to post.  Last spring, I did a couple of posts on my old blog about random facts on NRA voting.  It was timed to the Annual Meeting since that’s where such announcements are made.  However, I think these random facts and figures are far more relevant now than in May after all the ballots are cast.  In light of that, I’ve now made pretty charts that, in some cases, make it easier to visualize the trends – or lack thereof.

For a little bit of background on this data, the 2006-2007 sources are the annual meeting reports from the previous year that I managed to hold onto after recent NRA meetings.  The 2008 data was scribbled very quickly during the meeting in Louisville.

As you can see, during the last few years, voting member populations have remained quite stable.  Even though we know through anecdotal evidence that NRA membership was rising as the threat of a Democratic presidency rose, the number of voting members didn’t change substantially.  Based on this very limited data, we can reasonably assume that the biggest changes NRA sees in its membership are the folks who join for a year or two and then likely forget to renew or refuse to renew because their free hat didn’t arrive fast enough.  If you stay long enough to become a voting member, you’ll likely stay active for a long time.

When working with such large numbers, it’s hard to see in the charts what the trends are  in terms of voting.  But by doing the math and plugging the percentage of ballots cast into a chart, we can get a better idea.  I have no idea if the overall percentage of voting members is really on the rise.  By only looking at three years of data, it’s impossible to see a trend.  In 2006, there were few “celebrity” candidates, which may have lead to a depressed turnout.  But, 2007’s biggest “celebrity” name was Ollie North, and 2008 was Tom Selleck.  I would expect that Tom Selleck would generally be able to inspire more folks to return their ballots than Ollie.

While we wait for Sebastian to finish up his Board Member interviews, tomorrow I’ll do a post on how many people screw up their ballots – and the many bizarre ways they find to get it so very wrong.

I’m glad to see NRA backing away from a proposal to open up a firearms season in bow hunting counties in West Virginia.  The crossbow issue seems to antagonize bow hunters in Pennsylvania enough as it is.  Let’s not get people pissed at NRA next door too.  Also, can we not insult the bow hunters as we’re trying to calm their fears?

When the NRA sent out its postcard poll, Austin said, the West Virginia Bowhunters Association “flipped and thought we were going to try to run a bill.”

“That just shows they have no knowledge of the process and how it works,” he said.

“We were just in it to see if there was an interest. And there is no interest. We have no desire (to seek changes). We’re a membership-driven organization.

Emphasis mine.  Even if it’s true, you don’t say it to the media.  I sincerely hope that was a misquote on the part of the paper.  It’s important to tread carefully on issues like this.  They have the potential to divide our community at a very critical time for us politically.

I’m hoping to get the questions wrapped up by Friday, so if you want to ask Scott, Edie or Joe some questions, submit them here.  I’ve already gotten several good ones.  I’m particularly looking for questions that are competition related for Edie.

Soldier of Fortune is offering their own board endorsements here.  We are pleased to see there is significant overlap with our NRA board endorsements, with Scott Bach, Joe DeBergalis, and Edie Fleeman (Fleeman is her married name, she’s typically gone by Reynolds for the board elections, but I notice it was “Fleeman ‘Reynolds'” on the ballot) .  Also, Bob Brown is one of our other endorsements, and is publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

We’re going to be conducting interviews with three of our endorsed NRA board candidates.  I have created a form by which readers can submit questions.  I decided to use a form, rather than the comments so that I can direct questions into folders I have created for the specific candidates in my mailbox.  Plus, I don’t want the candidates to see the questions ahead of time.

I will narrow down the interviews to probably no more than six questions, with maybe a follow up or two.  Keep in mind the different backgrounds of the candidates.  I’d like to get some good shooting sports questions for Edie Reynolds, for instance, since that’s what she brings to the table.  Scott Bach is President of ANJRPC, so some New Jersey questions would be good for him.  Joe DeBergalis has a law enforcement background, so that’s an angle to explore there.

At the beginning of the week, I mentioned we’d be issuing our board endorsements soon, in addition to talking about the NRA board composition, and how candidates are nominated.  We wanted to do this yesterday, but mother nature had other ideas.

Bitter and I are happy to endorse the following candidates for election or re-election to the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association.  There are plenty of other candidates who are worthy out there, and you get 25 votes, but we felt we needed to narrow the field for our endorsements.  We’d ask the blogging and blog reading community to vote for our six candidates.

• Scott Bach
  When most gun owners have given up on New Jersey, Scott has stayed to fight. He defends gun owners regardless of their interest – .50 caliber bans, bear hunters, collectors who want the freedom to buy more than one gun a month, and many more.

  Scott is the President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, the state organization leading the fight for gun rights in the Garden State. He’s an attorney who has used his skills and network to defend both the First & Second Amendment. When a public school was caught sending home anti-gun literature, he sued to mandate that pro-gun literature be honored in the same way.  When NY/NJ Port Authority police locked up a Utah man for lawfully traveling with firearms, Bach put the resources of ANJRPC to work to sue the officials who unlawfully arrested him in violation of federal protections.  Through ANJRPC, Scott also works with competitive shooters and manages a large shooting range. Their member clubs have trained Olympic shooters. He is also a member of state groups in seven other states, actively supporting their efforts with what he has learned from the political and cultural fights to preserve gun rights in New Jersey.

  On the new media front, Scott has been very active in reaching out to bloggers and launched his own blog on the Star-Ledger’s website to counter the anti-gun Bryan Miller.  He did an interview for the Blog Bash site last year to discuss his thoughts on how new media can be leveraged to advance Second Amendment rights and develop the shooting sports.  He notes that the ANJRPC range may have been the first in the country to offer its members free wifi in the clubhouse.

  See Scott’s interview with Sebastian here.

• Robert Brown
  Brown is the well-known publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine. He has a distinguished military career, and is currently a very active member of the NRA Board. More importantly for purposes of this endorsement, he’s also a vocal advocate in the leadership for new media publishers.

  During the Second Amendment Blog Bash in Louisville, Brown joined The Outdoor Channel for a reception and brought along complimentary copies of the magazine for bloggers and readers alike. At the following board meeting in September, he used his position on the Legislative Policy Committee to question ILA’s Chris Cox about their work with bloggers, encouraging them to work more closely with the group and applauding their efforts thus far. He was clear that this medium of reaching out to the most outspoken of the grassroots could be an important tool for the organization, a view we clearly support.

  In other interesting SOF/new media news, it appears that the magazine’s website is run using WordPress.

• Edie Reynolds
  Our political debate on gun rights will no longer be relevant if there is no shooting culture. Competitive shooting and outreach programs will make sure that Americans maintain at least a basic understanding of firearms, and give them a glimpse of how fun responsible gun ownership can be.

  Reynolds is an outspoken advocate of competitive shooting and walks the walk as an active coach and recruiter to the sports. She has been a certified rifle instructor for more than 30 years and served as assistant rifle coach at North Carolina State University from 1974 to 2000, as well as a rifle counselor at a girls’ summer camp in Vermont. She also serves as the Youth Development Director of the Amateur Trap Association, and her focus on the board has been on programs designed to get women and young people involved in hunting and competitive shooting. Edie started shooting competitively in 1966 and is a five-time Women’s National Champion in Smallbore Prone and holds numerous other shooting titles.

  The work of folks like Edie cannot be taken for granted. Edie Reynolds deserves your vote for the Board of Directors.

  See Edie’s interview with Sebastian here.

• Steve Hornady
  This is a rather unique endorsement in that we don’t have specific new media citations or close personal experience. What we do have is the opinion of other trusted leaders who have repeatedly noted that Steve Hornady has been known to ask very good questions, and not be a rubber stamp board member when issues need to be discussed. It shouldn’t be shocking since Hornady has been involved with the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Wildlife Management Institute, Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Foundation, and Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation leadership over the years. In the past, Hornady has served on the Publications Policies, Public Affairs and Membership Committees.

  Board members who ask intelligent and thoughtful questions, who aren’t afraid to challenge others for the good of the organization, are a valuable resource. And based on what we have heard about Steve’s experience, we believe he should remain on the board.

• Joe DeBergalis
  Joe DeBergalis is a career law enforcement professional fighting for gun rights in New York as Vice-President of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. He’s also a competitive shooter in pistol, rifle, and shotgun sports, as well as a certified instructor.

  DeBergalis has put his background to good use by serving on the Education & Training Committee and Law Enforcement Assistance Committee of the Board. He’s no slacker politically, either. He’s the Election Volunteer Coordinator for 8 New York Congressional Districts and the District of Columbia. In addition to his political work for the NRA, he’s bridging gaps in the community by serving as a member of the Government Affairs Committee of Safari Club International while also being an active AR15.com participant.

  While his website lists dozens of memberships, it’s worth noting his work in New York, and not just because it’s a challenging state. Other pro-gun leaders in the state have heaped praise on Joe for his efforts there, and I suspect that gun owners in his home state will see him around for years to come.

• Ronnie Barrett
  Barrett’s activism and rifles are known far and wide, so he is not likely in need of an endorsement to turn out votes. However, he’s worth highlighting on the ballot for several reasons. First, his strong positions against further gun control should be rewarded. Even when he could continue to make money serving law enforcement officials who buy enjoy his products, but try to ban them from civilian ownership, he very publicly refuses them. He has called on the industry to follow his lead, and it would be nice if others would.

  Second, his outspoken nature may prove useful for the NRA Board of Directors. He’s a bit of a renegade in the industry, and hopefully he could bring that to a board in need of a little infusion of energy every once in a while. It would appear that he would not necessarily accept the status quo at face value, which, when tempered with more senior members of the board with more institutional experience, can be a healthy mix.

  Oh yeah, and he’s a time traveler.