Category: Gun Rights Organizations

Long and rainy trip down to Virginia tonight.  After I arrived here, Bitter and I drove over to Alexandria and paid a visit to the set of Cam & Company tonight while the show was airing, and got to sit in the control room while Lars worked his magic.  Talked with Cam and the guys at NRA News a bit about the Second Amendment Blog Bash, hosted along side the NRA Annual Meeting in Louisville, which is now up to more than twenty confirmed bloggers in attendance.  Cam said he mentioned the blog on the air today.  I’ve heard him mention me a few times, but it always seems I get mentioned when I’m not listening.  Either way, I definitely appreciate the promotion.

NRA will be hosting a Grassroots Workshop this year at the annual meeting in Louisville.  I would like to direct you toward the bottom:

Please also plan to attend the “In Their Own Words” Special Session. This session will consist of a panel of your fellow NRA Members discussing their personal grassroots experiences. There is no registration for the “In Their Own Words” Special Session, and as with the Workshop, it is FREE to attend! The “In Their Own Words” Special Session will be held Saturday, May 17, at 2:00 p.m., in Room B104, of the Kentucky Expo Center, located at 937 Phillips Lane, Louisville, 40209.

I will be a speaker at this special session.  I will be presenting an introduction to gun blogging.  If anyone at the Annual Meeting wants to attend, you should sign up.  I will be giving the talk under my own name rather than my assumed name here.

Bitter has more on a board candidate, Curtis Jenkins, who is reaching out to the blogosphere to help gain our support in the board elections.  I think he deserves our consideration.

I see some folks seem to be confused about how NRA elections work.  I’ve noticed questions in comments on other blogs too.  NRA has some internal protections in place to prevent exactly this type of scenario:

“I had this grand plan — if they had four million members, I’d get five million Americans to join [NRA], vote for me, and then I’d dismantle the organization,” – Michael Moore

Fancy plan, but it won’t easily work.  NRA has voter eligibility requirements, and seventy six board seats, none of which are ever up for election at the same time. The board does not direct day to day activities of NRA, but they do hire Chris Cox and Wayne LaPierre.  They also oversee various activities of the Association through various committees. Seventy five of the board members are elected to three year terms.  The seventy sixth board member is only elected to a one year term every year at the annual meeting.  Who ends up on the ballot is determined by the Nominating Committee, which is largely composed of existing board members.   NRA membership can run petition candidates on the ballot to bypass the Nominating Committee process.  Driving change within NRA is a slow process, and would require a prolonged desire by membership to move in a certain direction.

But back to voter eligibility.  All life members are eligible to vote in NRA yearly elections. People with continuing memberships are eligible to vote after five unbroken years.  If you have let your membership lapse at any period of time in the past five years, you’re not eligible to vote in NRA elections.  When you are eligible to vote, you will get a ballot included in your issue of National Rifleman, America’s First Freedom, or whichever NRA publication your subscribe to.  Your existing publication for this month probably contains bios, but may not contain a ballot if you’re a new member.  If you’re pretty sure you’ve had five unbroken years of membership, and your issue doesn’t have a ballot in it, call NRA’s membership number and see about getting one if you want to vote.  I have heard of people failing to get ballots when they were eligible to vote.

Bitter has her endorsements up over at her site.  They are also my endorsements as well, so go read.   I would note we have two Pennsylvania guys on the ballot, but I can’t say I know either one well enough to offer an endorsement.  I do feel that Pennsylvania is underrepresented on NRA’s Board of Directors, but I’m looking for the right kind of board representation.  Being from Pennsylvania will not automatically get my endorsement.

I’ve heard that Tim Powol is a good guy, I talked to him very briefly at the September board meeting, and I think Pennsylvania NRA members can feel good about casting a ballot for him.  Let’s keep him on the board.

Leo Holt, from Newtown, PA is the other Pennsylvanian on the ballot.  I know nothing about him.  Given that he’s a member of my club, which recently had an attempted revolt by anti-NRA factions within it, that seems rather surprising to me.  That’s not to say that I know everyone involved in gun rights in this area, far from that.  Bitter is really the one who is the social networker, but she’s never heard of him either.

Dave Hardy also has a list of endorsements.  Dave is no stranger to NRA board meetings, so I’d give some weight to his choices as well.

SayUncle notes that George K. Kollitides, a managing director for Cerberus Capital (who own Remington, Bushmaster, and DPMS), is running for the NRA board of directors.

Bitter really stirred the pot with some snark about VCDL on the National Park Carry issue.  Sailorcurt took very strong exception to what he perceives is an unfair attack on VCDL.  Bitter responded on her own blog, and some folks brought the conflagration over here too.

Sailorcurt’s problem with me seems to be that I defended her actions.  I might be more willing to suggest her snark is in poor taste if I hadn’t seen her to do it just about every other pro-gun group out there, and had she not ripped NRA for web site crapitude two days before.  It’s her blogging style, and I’m certianly not going to tell her “Well hon, you can take snarky cheap shots at every other gun group, but you always have to be nice to VCDL.”  Bitter’s blog persona is snarky and bitchy, which you might expect from the title of her blog, and based on her moniker.

Besides, no one is questioning VCDL’s worth as an organization.  All three of us have stated that they are a top notch state level grass roots organization.  I would argue a standard by which other state level organizations should be measured.  I think people are overreacting to this whole thing, to be honest.  If Curt wants to think Bitter, Countertop and I are elitist, well, that’s his perogative.  I do hope that all this will blow over, and we can all be friends again.

War on Guns doesn’t seem too happy about PVF donating to the campaign of Tim Johnson.  Quite possibly, in consideration of the fact that he signed onto the Congressional amicus brief on the side of Heller, this donation could be seen as an encouragement for Johnson to be more pro-gun.  Given that it’s exceedingly difficult to oust an incumbent, I can’t say I have any problem with doing stuff like this.  Influence can be bought, as we saw yesterday.  Politics is not a clean or honorable game, and if $2500 bucks is enough to convince Johnson to go from a C+ record to a B record, I consider that money well spent.  Don’t be surprised if PVF also donates to his opponents campaign.  That’s common practice among PACs as well.

Dave Hardy has a few of them.   I’ll be talking more about this when I get my ballot.

Bloomberg joined the NRA?  They say that Jesus must be in prison, since so many people find him there.  It would seem that analogy would apply to gun rights, and Mayors of New York City who decide to run for president.  We’re not going to be fooled, though.