Currently Browsing: Gun Rights Organizations
Apr 1, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 8 comments
This comes up every year at the NRA meeting, whether or not the facility allows carry. It was fine in Pittsburgh last year, illegal in Charlotte, legal in Phoenix (except for events with alcohol), legal in Louisville, and before that was St. Louis, where it’s just not allowed by the venue. John Richardson has a handy guide to St. Louis, and where you can and can’t carry.
I will note again, that there are only a handful of cities that can host NRA Annual Meeting. It is a huge event that moves around the country so members, at some point, have an opportunity to attend. It is very difficult to find venues in every corner of the country that allow carry, and can also host an event of this size. But every year, there’s a handful of people the complain. The alternative is to limit NRAAM only to certain areas of the country where the venues allow it, denying opportunity for people around the St. Louis area to ever attend. NRA’s formula is a high-density of NRA members within a 500 mile radius, when choosing a host city, in order to maximize the number of members who get to attend. St. Louis set a record last time we were there (which was beaten by Charlotte).
I get that a lot of folks get angry when the venues don’t allow carry, and sure, there are venues in some other city where it could be allowed, but that could translate into a dramatic drop in attendance, during an election year. How do you think the media would spin that?
Join the Conversation (8 comments)
Mar 26, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 16 comments
Over at Calguns Forum, they seem to have discovered that Mike Bloomberg’s Senior Counsel for Firearms Policy, Laurin Grollman, is, according to someone at CalGuns, “the the same attorney who is of counsel on this brief for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. as amicus curiae in support of petitioners in McDonald v Chicago?”
Could certainly be. She wouldn’t be the first attorney that worked for the industry to end up playing both sides.
Join the Conversation (16 comments)
Mar 22, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Current Events, Gun Rights Organizations | 12 comments
I was surprised to read this:
In defense of gun rights, the National Rifle Association has jumped into the argument over Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black child who was killed in Florida.
Today, the NRA published a statement saying it will continue to support the “Stand Your Ground” self-defense laws that it has helped push through the legislatures of several states.
I was surprised that NRA would have an opinion on the Zimmerman case, since they typically stay out of individual cases. After looking around on their web site a bit, and not seeing anything, I contacted NRA’s Public Affairs Director, and asked if they had released a statement. Apparently no. There has been no statement. The article continues:
The NRA ought to be careful about adopting Zimmerman as its poster child for responsible gun ownership and usage. Responsible gun owners know the limits of their right to carry a weapon and are well aware that they cannot use deadly force indiscriminately, without reasonable, justifiable cause. Sane and upstanding gun owners also know they shouldn’t take their guns to go pick a fight then expect to use a self-defense law as protection.
That has certainly not been the case for NRA, and I don’t think it’s been the case for the gun owners NRA represents either. To sum up the general consensus of the gun blogosphere community, as far as I’ve been able to see, it would be the description of Zimmerman as a racist cop-wannabe mall ninja who’s mall ninjary and cop-wannabeism got a 17 year old needlessly killed.
But being that we gun folks tend to come to our activism out of a desire to see our Bill of Rights protected, we tend to like our governments restrained, and look more favorably on due process, and abstract concepts like innocent until proven guilty. We look less favorably on mob justice, trial by media, and suppression of individual rights due to public outcry. In short, don’t mistake a respect for the rule-of-law, of restrained government, and due-process for support of Zimmerman. Those are two separate things. We believe everyone in this country is entitled to presumption of innocence, regardless of color or creed, or how heinous the accusation. These are bedrock principles of American law, and it’s been real disheartening for me to see how readily they are disrespected by an angry public.
I should note that in conclusion, I’d like to think better of the Washington Times than to think they’d publish something that makes up facts like NRA support for Zimmerman, out of whole cloth. I thought they had higher journalistic standards than that.
Join the Conversation (12 comments)
Feb 27, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 10 comments
Apparently Santorum is hitting up gun owners in Michigan by slamming Mitt, which has some NRA members upset. NRA guards their membership list very very carefully. I’m actually surprised by folks who think they sell it, or would lend it to a campaign. While organizations on the left and the right regularly sell or lease member lists, politically it’s a stupid move for any organization that aspires to grassroots power. NRA is not going to want politicians or political groups to have direct access to their membership except through them. That’s part of what makes the endorsements valuable.
Just to give you an idea of how closely they guard things like member lists, on our Friends of the NRA committee, we sometimes do mailings to members to promote our dinner. NRA does allow committees to do this, but you have to tell them what zip codes you want, and HQ prints out the labels. On the day you’re going to stuff envelopes, someone from NRA brings the labels already pre-printed for us to affix to our materials, and helps us put together the mailing. NRA won’t even give out member info, even very small subsets of it, to volunteers.
As an NRA Election Volunteer Coordinator, I have my own list that I build. I don’t have access to NRA members directly. It would probably be easier for EVCs to have access to NRA member information in their district, but they just won’t do that. So any concern about whether your member info is safe, it absolutely is. Even gross statistics, like how many NRA members are in Pennsylvania, or my district, is something they don’t discuss publicly. It’s better to keep politicians guessing.
Join the Conversation (10 comments)
Feb 24, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Anti-Gun Folks, Gun Rights Organizations | 1 comment
A commenter today noted that NRA doesn’t do very compelling writing in its publications, but I’ll note that this take down of the Brady State Rankings for 2012 is most definitely worthy of some of the better snark you’ll see on the Internet.
On a side note, we noticed that the Tides Foundation gave $125,424 to the Brady Campaign and its affiliate, the Brady Center, between 2004 and 2009. But with no contributions in 2010, we wonder whether someone at the Foundation’s grant office had a look at Brady’s previous scorecards and realized that even when you’re wasting someone else’s money, there has to be a limit.
I could paraphrase an old Beck’s Beer commercial here, ”NRA doesn’t do comedy, they do fear,” in that most of their rhetoric is aimed at presenting gun owners with frightening worst case scenarios in an attempt to fire up their single-issue voter instincts. So really, when even the NRA has resorted to just pointing at you and giggling? How the mighty have indeed fallen.
Join the Conversation (1 comment)
Feb 23, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 54 comments
I have to imagine the folks at NRA HQ are pulling for anybody but Romney. They could sell Newt, Rick or Ron to their membership as pro-gun. Trying to sell Mitt isn’t going to pass the smell test, even if Mitt’s actual record on guns isn’t as bad as many people assume. But being that court picks are our biggest issue this election, Obama has to go, even if it’s Mitt. So what do you do? Mitt follows his political interests, and sitting out the election could mean Mitt could care less what NRA thinks when it comes to court nominees, but I don’t see Mitt as someone they could credibly endorse. If it were my choice, and it’s Mitt, I’d probably decline the endorsement, but make it clear to the campaign we’ll be beating up on Obama on guns in key markets. Withholding an endorsement has consequences though, and part of me thinks this election is too important to just sit back. There is no good choice here, only bad ones. If Mitt gets the nomination, I’m going to be really glad I’m not Chris Cox.
Join the Conversation (54 comments)
Feb 22, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 15 comments
This article in the Daily Caller is reflective of the rhetoric you often encounter from NRA and others when it comes to Obama’s record on guns:
As a state senator in Illinois, he supported a one-gun-a-month limit on gun purchases, supported laws making it illegal to use a gun for self-defense, and opposed laws that allow law-abiding citizens to get permits to carry guns on their persons. As a U.S. senator, he supported bans on high-capacity magazines and he supported the assault weapons ban. And at the same time, with a straight face, he claimed to support the Second Amendment.
This is, of course, all true. But there are nine very important issues with Obama left out there, and those issues are named Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Five are in favor of the Second Amendment, and four would likely erase it from the Constitution given the chance. That chance comes down to one of those five, two of which are in their 70s, not retiring or dying in the next four years. To me this is the most important issue we face. Everything else literally pales by comparison.
Let’s turn to some of Wayne LaPierre’s rhetoric at CPAC 2012, laced with words like conspiracy, but I think, unfortunately, without making a solid case as to exactly why Obama is such a threat to the Second Amendment if he gets a second term. I’m glad that Wayne did go on to mention the Court, if only to smear Kagan and Sotomayor, but I don’t think Wayne really got to the true magnitude of the threat. The entire speech is unfortunately unsophisticated and simplistic.
One of my great criticisms of Wayne’s rhetoric is that he’s poor at tailoring it to specific audiences. This speech for CPAC, which is full of highly engaged young conservatives, is something you’d deliver to a room full of blue collar senior citizens at a gun club. The CPAC audience can receive, and is probably eager for, a more sophisticated political message – something I know Wayne is capable of delivering because his roots go back to being a policy wonk.
I’m reminded of a humorous story Bitter tells, when Wayne came to visit her college — the first time that NRA had ever spoken at a women’s college. Her particular school had a very high percentage of international students which, along with many of the domestic students, made International Relations the top major at the school. In addition, more than a quarter of the student body studied abroad for at least a semester during their time in college. Wayne’s speech focused pretty heavily on “faceless, nameless, unelected UN bureaucrats.” That’s a good message for gun owners, but many of the members of the audience called those same bureaucrats Dad or worked for them during their last internship.
The problem with NRA’s messaging lately has been that they are continuing to speak to the membership they had a decade or two decades ago with the same platitudes that have always worked for them, while probably simultaneously wondering why the average age of their membership is so high. NRA needs to reach different audiences, and that means tailoring NRA’s messaging to the specific audience the message is being delivered to. I believe that for NRA to enjoy continued success, it needs to be able to speak to the suburbanite in a business suit as readily as it speaks to the retired farmer. The NRA of the 21st century is going to necessarily look and operate very differently than the NRA of the 20th century. Maybe if I have some time later, I’ll lay out what I think the 21st century NRA should probably look like.
Join the Conversation (15 comments)
Feb 10, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 2 comments
From the newswire:
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., Feb. 9, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MEDL Mobile, Inc. (OTCBB:MEDL.OB - News), an incubator and aggregator of mobile technology, announced today that it has been Licensed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to develop mobile entertainment technology strategy for the organization, starting with its first entertainment shooting app which through various methods promotes gun safety via a series of educational information within a gaming environment.
“We wanted to provide current and future shooters with an entertaining way to learn about gun safety, so we partnered with MEDL Mobile to create an experience in which users engage in target practice at the NRA Headquarters shooting range, enter tournaments, compete online and invite friends to participate, all while learning important firearms safety information along the way,” said Mike Marcellin of the National Rifle Association. “The app will even allow users to look up state-by-state gun regulations and other helpful information, all within a fun, interactive game environment.”
“The NRA needed a way to interact beyond its 4 million active members, an enormous following that may not otherwise engage with the organization — until now,” said Andrew Maltin, CEO of MEDL Mobile. “Reaching a very large membership and communication to supporters are a few of the many challenges a mobile strategy can help a business or membership organization overcome.”
The NRA’s first interactive mobile game app is expected to debut in the spring of 2012.
I’ll be interested to see how this works out. Most online video games that involve shooting are either combat games or hunting games. It’s going to take a good bit of creativity to create a game that’ll attract people to play. Shooting is a lot of fun to do yourself, but watching other people shoot is like watching grass grow, and I’ve not found a huge number of shooting games that aren’t combat-based that are really addictive. Like I said, I think it’ll take creativity, and hopefully this company NRA has hired has the chops. I’m skeptical that “look up state-by-state gun regulations” and “ all within a fun, interactive game environment” are two things that are going to successfully go together.
Join the Conversation (2 comments)
Feb 6, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights Organizations | 4 comments
I am currently running an ad for the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, which you will notice right under my normal ads on the right side bar. We heard they were a bit short on funds during the NRA Board Meeting, so I offered to run an ad for them for free until Annual Meeting. Unlike my other ads, I can encourage you to click on that one to make a donation to CRDF. The work CRDF does is unbelievably important right now. Not all of it is legal trial work. Much of their work is academic in nature, and CRDF has been instrumental in building the scholarship on the Second Amendment, and turning academics around into recognizing the nature of the right as individual. I encourage everyone to give as much as you can. Any donation is targeted, and does not go into NRA’s general fund. It will go directly to support building good case law, and funding the research necessary to lay the groundwork for the next big case.
Join the Conversation (4 comments)
