I just received an e-mail from the White House mailing list, that President Obama is looking for nominations for the Citizen’s metal. I think it would be pretty amusing to nominate Ted Nugent.
Year: 2012
Keeping Up Her End of the Crazy
Even Sarah Brady, who gets the inside-the-beltway culture as much as the next person, is becoming unhinged lately. Check out this retweet from her:
Not content just to beat up on NRA, she has some interesting observations on Governor McDonnell of Virginia:
I said the same thing about a girl named Cindy in the first grade. But apparently Governor McDonnell isn’t the only one:
And what did she have to say about Rick Santorum’s announcement that he bought his sick little girl an NRA life membership?
I just want to thank Mrs. Brady for helping contribute to firing our people up this November. There’s always a risk that people forget guns are an issue when they are more worried about economic and fiscal issues. But lately the media and our opponents have been doing a bang up job of reminding NRA members that they are still hated and reviled, and nothing motivates our folks out to the polls more than that. If Sarah Brady has a hard time believing that:
You didn’t get to vote for him because NRA became deeply involved in the coalition to deliver Mike Castle’s political head on a shiny silver platter that primary*, and we succeeded. Next target is Dick Lugar of Indiana this May 8th. Will we succeed? That’s going to depend largely on members turning out. But I do appreciate the help from our opponents.
* Those on the left should take note that I said political head. I spelled it out for you so that you do not mindlessly think we beheaded the former Congressman. I can assure you that the Congressman is alive and doing well, just in case you were worried.
Many Thanks for a Successful Annual Meeting
There are many people whose efforts go into making a successful Annual Meeting. This year was especially tough, I know, for the NRA Public Affairs office, who are very short staffed right now. It seemed everyone was just much busier this Annual Meeting than in previous ones. I also want to thank the bloggers who came out this year, and especially Old NFO, who was unbelievably kind enough to treat everyone to a dinner at Carmine’s Steakhouse in St. Louis.
The City of St. Louis deserves a lot of credit too, given that the convention area was much improved over the last time we were there. Businesses were open, and bustling, with a lot more eateries in the area than I remember. Taxis were easy to come by, unlike 2007 when we had to call one. I’d still rather see more police presence in the convention area, given that aggressive panhandlers were one problem that needs to be addressed, but overall our experience this time with St. Louis was quite good compared to last.
Next year Annual Meeting will be in Houston, a city I’ve been to many times, but never for a convention. In 2014, we’ll be in Indianapolis, then Nashville, and finally back to Louisville. They had a number of cities on the member survey this year. I picked Las Vegas. I’m hoping by then the reciprocity issues with Nevada are fixed.
A Lesson in Membership Organizations via Ted Nugent
Much hay is being made of Ted Nugent’s rhetoric at the annual meeting, where he apparently urged members to figuratively “Chop their heads off in November.” Apologizes are being demanded of Mitt Romney for ever haven been within a 1/4 mile of the Nuge, and naturally the Obama Administration is helping play this up, given that the Secret Service has apparently taken some time off from procuring underaged Colombian prostitutes to take a look at the situation.
That said, I’ve never been a fan of Nugent’s over-the-top rhetoric, but that’s too bad, because there’s nothing I can do about it. Uncle Ted is one of the highest vote getters every time he’s up for the Board. Any time he’s around at Annual Meeting people are lining up around the corner to meet him, get autographs, or what have you. Our opponents are constantly telling us nonsense like the NRA leadership are out of touch with their membership. I hate to tell you guys, but the reason Nuge can dominate a board election is because a lot of members like his over-the-top, take-no-prisoners confrontational style. They get to see Ted Nugent say and do things that validates many of their core beliefs, and say it in a way they could never get away with in polite society. It is a difficult thing for our opponents to accept, but if NRA is out of touch with its members, that often runs in the other direction, and not in their direction.
To understand that, is to understand the Nuge appeal. So help me God, I don’t understand it, but a coalition made up of people just like me would be a very small one. Without the kind of people Nuge can fire up and bring to the table, we don’t really have a movement, and that’s an important thing to remember for those of us who are often embarrassed by his rhetoric.
A Lesson: When the Going Gets Tough
The GOP and their political apparatus can always be counted on to run for cover and hide when the going gets tough. They are, at best, fair-weather friends to the Second Amendment. The great source of NRA’s power is derived from its membership, to harken back to an old post on the sources of NRA’s power. In addition to its membership, there’s a much larger pool of people who are influenced by NRA’s opinions but may not be currently paying dues (and thus not counted as members). I’ve seen polls suggesting this is as many as 33 million people.
So how much does ALEC turning chicken shit hurt? That depends entirely on NRA’s membership. If members stay active an engaged, this is at worst a minor setback. If NRA membership buy the notion, peddled in the media, that there are no threats to gun rights, that we’ve won, already, then this is a harbinger of the pendulum swinging back, NRA losing influence, and the insanity of groups like CSGV and the Brady Campaign carrying the day.
Those Phantom Gun Sales
The anti-gun leaders keep trying to deny that more people are buying guns. Even when they finally concede that maybe there’s a smidgen of evidence from the NICS numbers, they claim that it’s just current gun owners buying more guns because we are all crazy and paranoid.
However, an interesting report came out of the NRA Board Meeting yesterday morning. And, no, it wasn’t just the news we broke on Twitter about the record-setting 73,740 NRA members attending the Annual Meeting & Exhibits. Kayne Robinson, Director of General Operations, told the crowd that they have seen a surge of training demands and had to really focus attention on being able to easily sell materials to the thousands of instructors across the country since the early days of the Obama guns sales surge. If you thought things were tapering off with Obama’s first term coming to a close, don’t be fooled.
So far in 2012, Kayne reported that the NRA sales are running about $265,000 above what they expected at this point in the year.
Yes, people are buying guns. New shooters are getting involved. People are taking the training classes to become safe and proficient shooters. Current shooters are coming out to support all of these new folks. Though the media likes to argue that NRA leaders don’t really have any solid foundation or following, about 1,500 grassroots supports came out to the National Friends of NRA Banquet to raise $450,000 for the NRA Foundation programs which put a particular focus on youth- and women-focused shooting programs. Across the country, local banquets are running 14% ahead of their expected fundraising goals. If most committees are like the one I have served on, there’s statistically only one way to raise more money – have more attendees.
While we were visiting with John Frazer, the Director of Research for ILA, in the NRA booth on the show floor, a gentleman who is active with his local VFW came up to ask about who he could talk to about funding a new shooting league. I gave him the information about how to find his local Friends group to put in a grant request since that’s the type of stuff I know our regional Friends committees love to support.
But remember, our opponents say we’re just making it up. There aren’t any new gun buyers seeking training. No shooters are really looking to become active. Current gun owners aren’t really any more involved with gun groups than they have been before. It’s funny how hard the anti-rights crowd has to work to ignore all of the mounting evidence that we are not only winning, but we plan to continue that winning streak far into the future as long as possible.
My Apologizes For the Lack Of Posting
Been on the road all day coming back from St. Louis. Just didn’t have the energy to wait through iPad blogging on the non-3G portions through mostly rural areas. Made it all the way back to Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Long day. Only a few hours from home, but we just can’t drive any more.
The NRA Meeting was an all time record, with 73,740 attendees. But remember, gun ownership is in decline, fewer people own guns than ever, and the NRA are just a shill for the industry with no real support among its members.
More to come tomorrow when we arrive back home sometime in the AM.
Shiny! Bling & Guns
The jewelry at NRA Annual Meetings just gets better every year. In the past, I’ve highlight Etsy sellers who make jewelry out of shell casings. Today, I found some for sale on the show floor from Brianna Chamberlain for Cobra Firearms.
I picked up a pair of .38 Specials with clear and gold crystals and a pair of .22s with clear crystals. I had to wait to check out because every single woman who walked up to the table was buying.
Remember this when the anti-gun groups try to claim that there isn’t really growing interest in shooting and the gun-related culture. Remember this when those same anti-rights groups try to argue that women really aren’t interested in the male-dominated gun culture. Yes, clearly, that’s why women were lining up to buy jewelry that blatantly identifies them as pro-gun.
On Protests at NRA Events
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.
A Little Weekend Humor from the NRA Members Meeting
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.