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Is it time to rejoin the NRA
- Thread starter kuduboss
- Start date
That's a good sound bite, but what it means in practice is that legislatures ignore them.
They (GOA) have been stepping up in court cases, but that's not where we need traction. The NRA is the ONLY national gun rights group that effectively deals with legislatures.
Do they win every battle? Of course not. That's not how life works. They can usually kill a bad bill though, or at least water it down like they did with the AWB if it's going to pass regardless.
Or at least the used to be able to do that. If the reforms kick in and they can get their membership back, they may be able to twist arms again in the future.
Let me give you something that isn't a sound byte:
In the 1980s I was a lobbyist for the NRA. My U.S. Congressman was Ed Jenkins, a pro-gun Democrat. The NRA had us out there twisting the arm of legislators over a proposed "armor piercing bullet ban." The NRA literature said it was a trojan horse in disguise. I sent letters to Jenkins; called him on the phone. Finally he called me and asked me to come to his office in north Georgia. When I arrived, Jenkins pulled a letter from his file. It was a dated letter from Harlon Carter. Carter was the president of the NRA. Carter told Jenkins that he could go ahead and vote for the ban and the NRA would still endorse him.
Next up was Ronald Reagan. Endorsed by the NRA, Reagan turned on them and signed a bill to stop the manufacture of select fire weapons for civilian use. Reagan went on to go on the radio and say that "nobody has a legitimate for an AK 47 rifle." To make sure we got the point, he repeated it three times. More? Reagan endorsed the Brady Bill.
Then there was King George the Bush I. The NRA endorsed him and he took their money. When he got into office, he turned on them and banned the importation of AK and other semi automatics. Then he railed against what he called semi R Tow matic weapons and destroyed his NRA membership card on the White House lawn. We aren't done yet.
The NRA backed King George the Bush II. He was an NRA endorsed hack. Once in office he told Congress he would make the so - called Assault Weapon Ban permanent if they could get it on his desk.
If I told people all I know from personal experience about the NRA we'd be here a long time. But, like it or not, GOA has spent more effort into winning cases and changing minds than the NRA ever did. I've been on the inside of both organizations; done a lot of legal research for both. The NRA always ended up compromising; GOA has yet to compromise.
And the GOA has yet to alter or stop a single bill in Congress, or even state legislatures.
Don't get me wrong, I admire the 'no compromise' stand, but that's not real politics and if you are a lobbyist you know that better than anyone else.
Yes, the NRA compromised many times. Sometimes because they knew they didn't have the votes to stop some legislation. Other times because they didn't feel that particular hill was worth dying on.
You mention the Hughes amendment that banned civilians from registering post-86 machine guns. I've always been convinced that was a NRA quid-pro-quo trade for passage of FOPA.
They threw the very small number of future machine gun owners 'under the bus' to get a law passed that protected every gun owner from state prosecution for having 'illegal' guns on them when passing through anti--gun states.
In fact you could even argue that the post-86 ban helped existing machine gun owners by making their guns skyrocket in value.
Personally, I agree with the GOA on 'no compromise', but politically, in that same situation it would have been a disaster. You wouldn't be able to travel across the US without your license plate giving local cops reasons to pull you over to look for 'illegal' guns.
And not just in CA, MA, IL and the rest... if you had a FRT or binary trigger and drove into FL you could end up in jail if some local cop saw your GA license plate.
Overall FOPA was a big win for millions of gun owners, a jackpot for tens of thousands of current machine gun owners, and a loss for an unknown number of future machine gun owners.
Was that a 'compromise'? Absolutely. Was it sneaky, underhanded and violated the sprit of the 2A? Just as absolutely.
But is it also the way politics works? You know that first hand. Saying 'No Compromise' in politics means you die on every hill and never get anything accomplished.
And just a quick follow up.
I used to detest the GOA. From everything I saw they were a bunch of pompous blow-hards beating their chest about how they never compromise.
When you looked at their records they would at most sponsor a few rallies and send amicus briefs (but no checks) to support other groups fighting court battles. Seemed like a group that was simply trying to recruit new members (and their $) and not contributing anything but rhetoric.
But over the last few years they have changed a lot. They have been way more active in legal battles, and have also stepped up their state-level advocacy. They seem to be actually fighting the fight now rather than just trying to maximize member dollars.
That's why I became a Life Member a few years back.
So good on you for working for them. Maybe some day they will have the same influence in the various legislatures as the NRA used to have. The fact that they have lobbyists at all is a great start.
I used to detest the GOA. From everything I saw they were a bunch of pompous blow-hards beating their chest about how they never compromise.
When you looked at their records they would at most sponsor a few rallies and send amicus briefs (but no checks) to support other groups fighting court battles. Seemed like a group that was simply trying to recruit new members (and their $) and not contributing anything but rhetoric.
But over the last few years they have changed a lot. They have been way more active in legal battles, and have also stepped up their state-level advocacy. They seem to be actually fighting the fight now rather than just trying to maximize member dollars.
That's why I became a Life Member a few years back.
So good on you for working for them. Maybe some day they will have the same influence in the various legislatures as the NRA used to have. The fact that they have lobbyists at all is a great start.
I, for one, respect
palmettomoon
decision to refrain from commenting. It’s clearly driving most of us nuts. He’s good at this forum ****…🤣
palmettomoon
decision to refrain from commenting. It’s clearly driving most of us nuts. He’s good at this forum ****…🤣
I, for one, respect
He's just compiling a set of notes for use later ...
_
It's so difficult to convince people they been scammed. Especially if they were scammed for decades.
