Category: NRA Convention

I’ve been to almost every single NRA meeting since Pittsburgh in 2004, so I feel like I’m a bit of a veteran. Though, I do know that there are folks who have attended every year since at least the early 90s, so I know that I’ve still seen nothing compared to them.

Last year, there was a rather sizable crowd of protesters who rallied about a mile away from the convention center and then marched down the streets to finish with a shorter rally outside the convention hall. I didn’t find that surprising because there was a protest in 2004, albet, much, much smaller in size. Regardless of size, it showed that there are enough legitimate true believers in gun control in Pittsburgh that they would venture into the downtown traffic nightmare just to oppose NRA and its members.

This year, despite a national controversy that the media wants to draw us into before facts are even known and drumming up a protest for weeks by anti-gun groups, nothing happened. That doesn’t surprise me one bit. In 2007, the only “opposition” was from a handful of guys who were paid by Bloomberg to stand outside the convention hall before the event started for a few minutes.

Some have mentioned the possibility of more interest in protesting NRA because of Occupy groups and the like. I never really thought that was an issue. Both before and after the Martin case drew attention to the gun issue, I was checking out typically left-wing groups here in St. Louis online. Not a single one ever mentioned opposition or concern about the NRA convention coming to town. Sure, there were a couple of lawmakers willing to condemn our members, but there has never been any true grassroots support for it in this city.

Next year is Houston, which is the city I had to skip in 2005. I honestly have no idea what the expect there. It once housed a MAIG mayor, but one who promptly quit when he realized that being allied with Michael Bloomberg on pretty much anything would be a quick path to losing all future campaigns outside of the city.

The following year is a new (to me) city, so we’ll see what Indianapolis holds in 2014. Nashville is 2015, another new (to me) city. I also noticed that we return to Louisville in 2016, and that city didn’t manage to turn up any protests. So as much as people want to write off all urban areas as being completely anti-gun, the vast majority of cities we visit don’t have enough concern about the gun issue to turn out for anything.

Somehow, St. Louis manages to attract the amusing resolutions at the Members Meeting. I believe it was St. Louis in 2007 that had a resolution from the floor to ban NRA from publishing any materials in languages other than English. The argument from the resolution’s author was that English should be the official language of the United States, so therefore, NRA should never, ever consider any other language for their materials. It was argued that as an NGO at the UN, we needed to print materials in many languages, not to mention outreach into communities here in the United States. The guy then argued that since other countries don’t have a Second Amendment, they don’t matter. Wow, I hope he wasn’t around this year for Newt’s speech…

As I recall, it did unfortunately get a second, but the members overwhelmingly voted it down. Unlike the sponsor, other members were not willing to put our heads in the sand and ignore the issues abroad and with outreach into non-English speaking communities here at home.

This year, there was another wacky resolution from the floor. I guess Ted Nugent did an interview on CNN with Piers Morgan. This resulted in a resolution that didn’t seem to actually call for anything, but talked about the New World Order run by CNN and the British disarming culture attacked Uncle Ted who is the best Second Amendment advocate in the history of the country – NO ONE has done as much for the Second Amendment as Ted Nugent. Yeah…

I’m proud to say that the resolution couldn’t even get a second. Which was particularly funny since Sheriff Printz kept trying to just get it off the floor by sending it to committee. Turns out he didn’t need to do so since the motion couldn’t even get a second. You could have heard crickets in that room.

I wonder if the guy didn’t try to speak in favor of his resolution because he finally picked up the financial information in the back of the room that told him just how much NRA has to pay Uncle Ted to get him to do the event at Annual Meeting. While he might remain a fan, the gentleman might rethink his position on no else ever having done nearly as much as Ted Nugent for the cause.

Each year, NRA honors the youngest and oldest members in attendance at the Members Meeting. We had the opportunity to meet with the father of one of the youngest member winners, Ken Klukowski, co-author of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America and The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. His 5-month-old son is named Remington. Yes, he’s a paid life member. :)

The oldest life member at the meeting was a gentleman from Oklahoma (woo hoo!) who is 95 years old. He joined NRA in 1938. Needless to say, he has gotten his money’s worth! He has a very simple message to members in the audience: Go vote this year.

I felt particularly old when a member got up and announced that his daughter won youngest Life member in 1995 and is now headed off to college on a rifle scholarship. He just wanted to thank the organization for everything they provided in opportunities so she could pursue the sport and end up competing in college on a scholarship.

I was talking to a reporter who came to report on the meeting, and he even commented that he paid attention to that section of the meeting because it was cool. None of the anti-gun groups have anything like it. They aren’t membership organizations with meetings where members can actually vote on issues that could impact their association. They don’t have contests among thousands of members for oldest and youngest Life members. Only our side has created that kind of culture where we celebrate with one another.

For as much as our friends at the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership Violence hyped their protest at the NRA Annual Meeting, I’m here to report that it amounted to nothing. All I could find is this dangerous, angry looking insurrectionist:

As Days of Our Trailers noted after walking all over the area looking for this mystery protest, “It was like Where’s Waldo but w/ a bald guy w/ anger management issues.” There were several traditional media out there looking as well. I’m always glad when our opponents blow their credibility. Way to show reporters there’s passion on their side of the issue.

Internet access has royally sucked in many ways here in St. Louis. I’ve been taking some notes, but I need to clean them up. In the meantime, I did want to get out a little commentary on some action in the member meeting.

One of the four resolutions was to instruct the NRA Secretary to incorporate foreign members of the NRA during the quorum roll call. There was clear support for the resolution. It was proposed by two American brothers who attended the Pittsburgh Annual Meeting last year and met a Life Member from Denmark.

Standing up to support it was a Life member who is a former British police officer. He was a member of British gun groups before he left, but he signed up as an NRA member before he even left the UK. He was tired of watching the guns destroyed, and he said he got really fed up when a kid was stopped and searched in an airport because he wore a Transformers t-shirt that had a ray gun featured on it.

This guy had a shooting vest on with dozens of shooting discipline patches with multiple qualification level patches. He’s a serious shooter who had to flee his home country to participate in the sports he loves.

The resolution was sent to the Bylaws Committee to be cleaned up. However, with David Keene expressing support for passing it, and doing his own recognition for all foreign attendees after the meeting, I would say the chance of passing it is pretty high.

He’s the first speaker up today. Very little of his speech so far has been about gun rights. Not too surprising, given that it’s not his strongest issue. His message is more about freedom and smaller government.

UPDATE: Looks like Romney managed to mention Fast and Furious, and make a nod to getting rid of Holder. He also promises he will protect our Second Amendment rights.

UPDATE: One of his better speeches, actually, I have to say.

We’re staying at the same hotel we did in 2007, the last time NRA was in St. Louis for the Annual Meeting. Our first observation was that the hotel is much improved. When it was suddenly sold at the last minute, I was very concerned. However, the upgrades are very nice.

More importantly for purposes of this blog, I couldn’t help but notice far more people showing up to pre-register for the events that start tomorrow. I realize that NRA now schedules more on Thursday than they have in the past, but this was nuts to see people just heading back to the registration booth that’s open today. Tomorrow, and throughout the weekend, far more registration areas open, and it sounds like they will need them.

The hotels surrounding the convention center are bustling. Our hotel is across the street, and there has been a steady stream of cars pulling to drop off and check in, and many exhibitors are spotted in the hallways. The lobby of another hotel where we met with some staff members was a hub of activity as well.

While some St. Louis lawmakers may be protesting our appearance in this city, it’s clear that the staff at eateries and hotels are not with them on that. They have been nothing but welcoming and pleasant.

I still can’t believe that any prostest permit was honestly granted for the sidewalk outside of the convention center with so many expected to be inside. That area was already a bit crowded with a line today just for the Guns & Gold event – an Antique Roadshow-type show for guns. And I did get a kick out of NRA Secretary Jim Land helping out and checking out the guns. To me, that kind of illustrated that even though NRA might have professional staff, the vast majority came to NRA because they really love what’s important about the issue.

So, overall, signs point to a very busy weekend for NRA members in St. Louis. I’ll be tied up much of tomorrow morning with a meeting, presentation, then heading over to the Leadership Forum to cover the political news. At some point this weekend, I hope to cover some stuff from the floor, but mostly the people. Much like last year, I want to talk to real NRA members about the political scene.

Local businesses are apparently quite excited to have the NRA in town this coming weekend in St. Louis.

That event, which drew 64,562 in 2007, stands as the convention center’s second-biggest ever. The expectation is for more gun enthusiasts this time, in big part because of presidential politics.

Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich all plan to pump their Second Amendment pedigrees during a forum Friday. Other speakers include NRA favorites Oliver North and Glenn Beck.

I’m guessing Santorum won’t be there now, but perhaps we will break some more records this year. My concern about topping the record would be gas prices being so high. But our people often surprise me.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing at Annual Meeting this year. I haven’t really thought that far ahead, and head is only a few days. Too much has been going on here to think much about it.

“With so many of our members within a four-hour drive, St. Louis is a target-rich environment for us,” Arulanandam said. “We had a very positive experience in St. Louis five years ago.”

St. Louis won that chance by default. The NRA had planned to meet that year in Columbus, Ohio, but the Columbus City Council voted to ban assault-type weapons. That’s also why it won’t patronize the home of the Cubs, the team the Cardinals are hosting this weekend at Busch Stadium.

I had forgotten about this. St. Louis was a last minute change of plans. It would be impossible to have the convention somewhere that banned “assault weapons” since the exhibit hall will be full of them. I’d like to make it a goal, in that case, to host the NRA Annual Meeting in Chicago. I want to hear Mayor Rahm say nice things about us because he wants our money, and there’s not anything he can do about our guns. It would be glorious. I’ll also make it a goal, before I shuffle off the old mortal coil, to attend an NRA Annual Meeting in New York City, because we’ve fixed enough laws to make it viable.