2010 – Page 119 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Glad Our New Attendees Had a Good Time

Sister Toldjah (one of the best blog names out there if you ask me. I wish I had picked a better name) was a new attendee this year, and I’m really glad she had a good time. Other newbie attendees this year were Countertop, American Manifesto, Newbie Shooter, Fat White Man, Moose Droppings, Campaign Spot, Detroit CPL, Personal Armament Blog, and Virginia Gal.

I did not get to meet them all because I spent all day in the Firearms Law Seminar Friday, and a lot of them came Friday. But we were glad to have so many Annual Meeting newbies.

How Annual Meeting Has Changed

Dave Kopel has attended NRA Annual Meetings for a lot longer than I have, and has some interesting thoughts on how they’ve changed over the years.

From the Floor: Bushmaster ACR

SayUncle has some video of the Bushmaster ACR from the exhibit hall. I did not get a chance to stop by the Bushmaster booth myself, which is sad. I have a few other reports from the floor to do, but coverage for the NRA Convention 2010 should wrap up shortly, and we will resume our usual blogging.

Primary Day

WithÂ recuperationÂ from Annual Meeting now fully underway, I nearly forgot that I came back to primary day in Pennsylvania. Who am I going to vote for? I’m undecided, believe it or not. Might not decide until I’m in there. Let me explain my conflicts.

Governor: Without a doubt, Sam Rohrer represents my values of limited Government much more closely than Tom Corbett does. But Corbett is proven in a statewide race. I have my doubts as to whether Rohrer will be able to raise enough money, win enough independents in the general election, and beat whoever the Democratic nominee is. I also don’t think Tom Corbett is a bad candidate. Given the choice, I’ll probably go with the guy I think can win in November.

Congress: Mike Fitzpatrick is the presumptive winner in the race, and is carrying an NRA endorsement. I like Gloria Carlineo philosophically, but much like the situation with Rohrer, I’m very concerned about her ability to raise money. That’s not a small concern, because Patrick Murphy is a fundraising machine. If Carlineo loses, I really hope she doesn’t disappear from politics. She should really consider a stab at State Representative, or maybe a County Row Office. I am by no means happy the GOP reanimated Fitzpatrick to go after Murphy, but it is what it is.

In both cases, I will back whoever the eventual nominee is. We have to get Murphy out, and we definitely need to prevent any of those Dems from getting in the Governor’s Mansion. Ed Rendell has convinced Democrats in this state the NRA can’t beat them. Its only so much time before the General Assembly starts believing that too, and when that happens, we’re screwed.

It’s a difficult choice. Do you vote for someone who is with you 90% of the time who can’t win over someone who is with you 70% of the time who can? These are the compromises you make along the way. All politics is compromise. It’s the only way we all live together without killing each other.

Open Carry Activist Charged

Looks like he was involved in a shooting. I think that’s about all you can say until the facts come out. The coverage, obviously, is not a good thing for us.

UPDATE: More here and here.

UPDATE: Reading the situation over, it does not look good. He was shot while inside the car. Under some circumstances a car can be a deadly weapon, but it’s very difficult for me to see how this could be the case in a parking lot. On the surface, this does not look like a clean shoot.

UPDATE: Found the Criminal Complaint. Also it seems the alleged victim here had a history himself. The other victim did too. From the complaint, I wouldn’t say the victims were choir boys, but this isn’t a clear cut case of self-defense. Facts are in dispute, and when that is the case, it’s a jury of your peers who will sort out the facts and stand in judgement of the evidence.

We Appreciate the Help of All the Daves

This year for the Blog Bash, we tried to organize an event called “Drinkin’ with the Daves,” where we got together for drinks with fellow bloggers Dave Hardy and Dave Kopel, who in addition to being bloggers, also happen to be some of the great minds of the movement, and excellent conversationalists:

Dave, Dave and Bitter — Dave Kopel, Dave Adams and Bitter

Dave Hardy couldn’t make it the same day as Dave Kopel, so we had to do a separate brunch event I dubbed “Ham and Eggs with Hardy,” but it turns out Dave Adams, Legislative Chairman and Blogger for the Virginia Association, was able to make it, so we appreciate his help in saving the title of our event, in addition to Dave Kopel and Dave Hardy for making time for us in the first place.

From the Floor: Circular Safe

This annual meeting I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the exhibit floor. I did the rounds once, and just kind of looked around for things that popped out at me. After doing this four years in a row, after a while you’ve seen most of the exhibits, and know what the big new products are. I’m also getting to the point where I feel like one black rifle isn’t materially better than some other black rifle. So I get more excited by interesting and unusual products. Such a productÂ I found in the form of a safe:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vwxkXRP0y0[/youtube]

As one of the other attendees pointed out, I can’t remember who, if you put some pipes coming out of it, you could disguise the whole thing as a hot water heater. Burglars can’t break into what they don’t notice. I’d probably never fill something like this, but it would sure be fun to try!

Facts from the NRA Convention

Normally this has been a Bitter thing, but since she’s currently driving, I’m going to be the one doing it this year. As soon as I got a look at the floor on Saturday, I knew it was going to be a good convention. But how good? Record breaking good:

72,128 NRA Members went through the Exhibit Hall. That’s a record breaker, the previous being in Louisville at 66,229. Normally we only break the attendance record by a thousand or two, this year NRA broke its attendance record by just under 6000 people! So much for the narrative that NRA is out of touch with its members.
Revenue for the NRA Store was $415,000 which is a record amount.
NRA signed up $683,000 in new or upgraded memberships.
The ILA dinner brought in $244,000, also a record.
9,466 people attended the Leadership Forum
11,754 people attended the Freedom Experience, which is normally the NRA Banquet.

This is a huge difference over last year in Phoenix. I think everyone is in agreement that this was a wildly successful Annual Meeting, despite all the setbacks and problems. Overall, I would like NRA to return to Charlotte, I’m sure the Site Selection Committee would like to return to Charlotte. The question is what is Charlotte, and the State of North Carolina willing to do to get us all back there?

NRO Covers NRA Annual Meeting

I’ve never gotten the impression that National Review was all that enthusiastic about the Second Amendment. Not that they were against it, by any means, just that it wasn’t their thing. But gun owners generally fall right of center on the spectrum, and are an important part of the conservative coalition. I really, truly believe the right-of-center movement would be far better off today if they followed NRA’s model for change, took it seriously, and studied how NRA does things.

If there was anything about the Blog Bash this year that was I particularly proud of, it was to have Jim Geraghty as an attendee, representing his blog Campaign Spot . I was hoping he’d cover the convention on his blog, which he did, but we were delighted to see an article posted to National Review Online covering the speakers at the Annual Meeting.

As much as I’d love to take credit for getting Jim down there, that credit really has to go to Cam Edwards from NRA News, who frequently features Jim on his show as a guest. His sessions with Jim are among my favorite NRA News shows. It’s great to see a well-respected mainstream conservative publication, such as National Review, taking a look at what goes on an NRA’s Annual Meeting.

At the NRA Board Meeting

We’re in the board meeting to find out what the numbers are for the convention. We’ll be reporting on that later, and I have some post-convention posts to share with you on the ten hour drive back.

It’s been a good meeting, but I’m tired as hell, but not nearly as tired as most of the staff, who get absolutely run ragged during this meeting. For us this is becoming more catching up with folks we only get to see once or twice a year. Last night we shared some drinks with Chris Cox’s assistant. If you want to talk about unsung heros of NRA it’s NRA’s executive assistants. They do so much critical behind the scenes work to keep NRA running smoothly that no one ever sees.