Category: NRA Convention

I’ve noticed anti-gun folks jumping on the fact that Franklin Graham is leading the NRA Annual Meeting Prayer Breakfast, and they hope that he’ll publicly challenge NRA at their own event to accept the President’s background check agenda since Graham endorsed the White House’s private transfer ban proposals last year.

First, as much experience as I have with NRA Annual Meetings, I couldn’t tell you which office puts on the prayer breakfast because I have no idea which office is responsible for booking those speakers. I’m 99.99999% sure it’s not ILA, the office that actually keeps up with politics and pays attentions to such important policy details. This is an event that has never been a big deal before, really just an opportunity for people who don’t want to miss church or miss out on the giant three day gun show.

The anti-gunners highlight this interview with Time that Franklin Graham did in early March of last year. The key section:

Graham…told TIME [he and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention] have agreed to back universal background check legislation put forward by the administration in the wake of last year’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

By specifically citing the administration-backed proposal at the time of the interview, it’s kind of important to look at the details of the legislation anti-gunners want Graham to bring up at the Prayer Breakfast. The language in the Senate that the White House was backing at the time of Graham’s interview came from Chuck Schumer. That language would have made teaching someone to shoot on your own land a felony, as well as loaning your hunting rifle to a friend for a hunting trip. The record keeping requirements would have created a registration system, and spouses would have faced possible felony prosecution if their spouse who bought the gun left home for more than 7 days without officially designating the “transfer” of said firearms as a gift. As Sebastian said in his summary after reading the language:

This bill has nothing to do with ensuring people who are getting guns are law-abiding, and everything to do with getting backdoor registration, and creating a patchwork of rules and laws that will land anyone who uses guns, and isn’t a lawyer, in federal prison for a long time.

The bill that Graham was backing at the time he talked to Time was not Toomey-Manchin, the somewhat less extreme bill that was later voted down in the Senate.

Now, his views on that terrible bill from Schumer aren’t directly related to his ability to preach a sermon. But, given the venue and host group, I don’t think most attendees who paid for tickets really expect a preacher who publicly backed the White House’s bill that would leave many of them open to felony prosecutions for simply passing on their traditions or going on a long business trip.

At this late date, I wouldn’t really put money on a bet that we’ll see any changes to the speakers, but it will be interesting to see if Graham decides to act on the encouragement of the gun control groups. He certainly didn’t come out and condemn the White House-backed Senate bill once the language and summaries became widely available, so presumably he maintains his support of the policies. That certainly could be a very big problem if he does decide to go along with the gun control groups and use NRA’s event as a venue to promote the bill again.

NRA needs to be prepared to handle this issue since they are the ones who issued the invitation with this policy problem hanging out there. Certainly, whoever issued this invitation really screwed up by providing someone who so publicly endorsed these terrible policies a keynote spot without actually looking into their background on the policies that have dominated headlines for the last year and threatened our rights. This wasn’t some questionable comment about some vague policy from 20 years ago, this was a highly discussed interview with a well known media outlet just a year ago about specific bills that forced NRA to spend quite a bit of manpower and money to preserve our Second Amendment rights. It’s a public policy view that should not have been overlooked, and NRA needs to be ready to answer to their members if Graham does stand by his position from last March at their event.

With so much litigation currently up in the air, and some of it having a shot at having a hugely meaningful impact to improve the growth of the pro-gun community, it seems like a good time to remind any lawyers or seriously legal-minded types about the NRA Foundation’s Law Seminar taking place next month at the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

I have to say, there’s rarely been a year that I’ve been more excited by the topics – the issue of the new carry law in Illinois, the nail-biting cases in the jurisdictions where we did suffer some setbacks, and the regular topic that I often find oddly interesting – laws dealing with shooting ranges. Peruta, even though I mention it in the title, isn’t specifically on the schedule. However, when you get a bunch of pro-gun legal minds together, it’s pretty much assured that a big game-changing case like that won’t come up in some form.

Remember, attorneys, it can count for CLE credit. For non-attorneys, you never know what you might learn that can keep you out of jail. For example, I should probably warn my horse farm owning cousin that last year, I learned that riding one’s horse at “unusual speed” on any street or alley is a crime in my home state.

It seems that the Indianapolis Star has decided to roll out the welcome mat for the NRA convention later this year by effectively calling us delusional and announcing that they are against everything at the convention, but they’ll tolerate since it brings in money. Oh, and they also want to remind readers that we little lady gun owners are clearly only dependent upon our men to make all decisions regarding self-defense purchases.

For example, the columnist argues that Barack Obama’s gun control agenda may never have actually existed, so he’s not sure what NRA members are organizing against. Those executive orders the White House bragged about, clearly not evidence of a gun control agenda. Those press conferences calling for gun controls, clearly not evidence of a gun control agenda. Those questionnaires Obama filled out while running for lower offices that backed banning common guns, clearly not evidence of a gun control agenda. The current campaign arm of the Obama administration – OFA – sending out emails to organize a movement for more gun control laws, absolutely not evidence of any gun control agenda. According to the Indianapolis Star, all of these things are just figments of the imagination of NRA members.