2012 – Page 119 – Shall Not Be Questioned

More Gun Control Groups Becoming Unhinged

It’s becoming more clear to me that the former major gun control group, the Brady Campaign, are increasingly surrendering on influencing policy, and have adopted a new tactic of embracing radicalism, likely in an attempt to solicit more donors so they can all keep their jobs. Just take a look at Dan Gross’ statement from Brady:

Mitt Romney has already established a clear reputation for flip-flopping and pandering to win votes, and that is just what he is doing by speaking at the NRA convention. Â This time he is going too far. Â He is proudly aligning himself with a lobby that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, a lobby that uses a mentality of fear and paranoia, tinged with just the right amount of racism, to promote its sole agenda of selling more guns, with no concern for who buys those or how they are used.

So we’re racists and murderers now, according to the Brady Campaign. That, folks, isn’t meant to speak to politicians, the media, or other such people who can legitimately influence policy. That’s meant to speak to the mouth foamers and convince them to open their wallets. Not to be outdone, the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership one decides they need to up the ante. In the realm of crazy, they will not be outdone by the pikers at the Brady Campaign.

Naturally I challenged such a ridiculous assertion, but they felt the need to keep digging:

So I follow their link, and it starts out with a bunch of statements from Carol Bambery that are unsupported by live links, and then moves on quickly to the white supremacist statements of… Ken Blackwell.

Now I have my disagreements with Blackwell. He’s a strong social conservative and on social issues I tend to run pretty liberal. But calling Ken Blackwell a White Supremacist is up there with the best tin foil hat rhetoric I’ve run across.

And finally, the coup de grace:

Yes, folks, this George Wallace who famously said “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” This is not a message aimed at a rational audience. This is a message aimed at people who are mentally off kilter, or highly ignorant, and who I’m sure CSGV are hoping are ignorant enough to actually donate them money, or you know, show up a protest. I know from my own activist experience that the off kilter and ignorant are unreliable and often counterproductive to have on your side. This is a losing strategy for them. To be relevant you need people who live in a reality, not mouth foamers. Mouth foamers will just destroy your credibility. We should be happy our opponents seem to have lost touch with reality as we know it. We are winning. MAIG is the only remaining serious threat.

NRA Members Young and Old

Each year, NRA honors the youngest and oldest members in attendance at the Members Meeting. We had the opportunity to meet with the father of one of the youngest member winners, Ken Klukowski, co-author of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America and The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. His 5-month-old son is named Remington. Yes, he’s a paid life member. :)

The oldest life member at the meeting was a gentleman from Oklahoma (woo hoo!) who is 95 years old. He joined NRA in 1938. Needless to say, he has gotten his money’s worth! He has a very simple message to members in the audience: Go vote this year.

I felt particularly old when a member got up and announced that his daughter won youngest Life member in 1995 and is now headed off to college on a rifle scholarship. He just wanted to thank the organization for everything they provided in opportunities so she could pursue the sport and end up competing in college on a scholarship.

I was talking to a reporter who came to report on the meeting, and he even commented that he paid attention to that section of the meeting because it was cool. None of the anti-gun groups have anything like it. They aren’t membership organizations with meetings where members can actually vote on issues that could impact their association. They don’t have contests among thousands of members for oldest and youngest Life members. Only our side has created that kind of culture where we celebrate with one another.

A Good Deed Buys You Political Relevance?

I’m really not sure how this kind of logic works, but try to follow along as CNN’s Piers Morgan explains why it’s particularly relevant we listen to a New Jersey mayor on a shooting in Florida:

On Thursday, the 42-year-old saved a neighbor from a burning building, carrying a young woman to safety through flames, and receiving smoke inhalation and second degree burns on his hands in the process.

The recent rescue has thrust Booker into the national spotlight, allowing him the platform to comment on a variety of issues, including gun control in relation to Martin and the “Stand Your Ground” law:

Because he ran into a burning building and is getting press attention for it, this makes him even more qualified to talk about gun laws – I don’t even know how those issues even begin to connect.

Booker uses the question to push for gun control like going after FFLs and gun shows – neither issue which has anything to do with the Florida situation.

CSGV’s “White Culture War”

The Coalition to Stop Gun ~~Ownership~~ Violence has been coming unhinged lately, but they really took the cake when they Tweeted this bit of racism:

This is coming from an organization that continually denies gun control has racist origins, and that gun control today is not racially motivated. But if you say this is a “white culture war” doesn’t that imply that you think this right is for white people? I think we’re all firm believers that the Second Amendment right is one that belonged to all people, yet we’re often labeled as the racist ones.

I’m sure it will come as a great surprise to NRA’s African American members who are here today that they are part of a white culture war. I’m sure it was a surprise to Governor Bobby Jindal, who is of Indian descent, that his unwavering support of the Second Amendment is part of a “white culture war.”

One has to wonder what other rights our opponents think are “white.”

The Incredible Disappearing Protest

For as much as our friends at the Coalition to Stop Gun ~~Ownership~~ Violence hyped their protest at the NRA Annual Meeting, I’m here to report that it amounted to nothing. All I could find is this dangerous, angry looking insurrectionist:

Dangerous Insurrectionist

As Days of Our Trailers noted after walking all over the area looking for this mystery protest, “It was like Where’s Waldo but w/ a bald guy w/ anger management issues.” There were several traditional media out there looking as well. I’m always glad when our opponents blow their credibility. Way to show reporters there’s passion on their side of the issue.

Recognizing Foreign Support for NRA & Right to Bear Arms

Internet access has royally sucked in many ways here in St. Louis. I’ve been taking some notes, but I need to clean them up. In the meantime, I did want to get out a little commentary on some action in the member meeting.

One of the four resolutions was to instruct the NRA Secretary to incorporate foreign members of the NRA during the quorum roll call. There was clear support for the resolution. It was proposed by two American brothers who attended the Pittsburgh Annual Meeting last year and met a Life Member from Denmark.

Standing up to support it was a Life member who is a former British police officer. He was a member of British gun groups before he left, but he signed up as an NRA member before he even left the UK. He was tired of watching the guns destroyed, and he said he got really fed up when a kid was stopped and searched in an airport because he wore a Transformers t-shirt that had a ray gun featured on it.

This guy had a shooting vest on with dozens of shooting discipline patches with multiple qualification level patches. He’s a serious shooter who had to flee his home country to participate in the sports he loves.

The resolution was sent to the Bylaws Committee to be cleaned up. However, with David Keene expressing support for passing it, and doing his own recognition for all foreign attendees after the meeting, I would say the chance of passing it is pretty high.

Mitt Romney

He’s the first speaker up today. Very little of his speech so far has been about gun rights. Not too surprising, given that it’s not his strongest issue. His message is more about freedom and smaller government.

UPDATE: Looks like Romney managed to mention Fast and Furious, and make a nod to getting rid of Holder. He also promises he will protect our Second Amendment rights.

UPDATE: One of his better speeches, actually, I have to say.

An Infamous St. Louis Courthouse

This is the courthouse the Dred Scott case was first heard in.

Observations on St. Louis for NRAAM

We’re staying at the same hotel we did in 2007, the last time NRA was in St. Louis for the Annual Meeting. Our first observation was that the hotel is much improved. When it was suddenly sold at the last minute, I was very concerned. However, the upgrades are very nice.

More importantly for purposes of this blog, I couldn’t help but notice far more people showing up to pre-register for the events that start tomorrow. I realize that NRA now schedules more on Thursday than they have in the past, but this was nuts to see people just heading back to the registration booth that’s open today. Tomorrow, and throughout the weekend, far more registration areas open, and it sounds like they will need them.

The hotels surrounding the convention center are bustling. Our hotel is across the street, and there has been a steady stream of cars pulling to drop off and check in, and many exhibitors are spotted in the hallways. The lobby of another hotel where we met with some staff members was a hub of activity as well.

While some St. Louis lawmakers may be protesting our appearance in this city, it’s clear that the staff at eateries and hotels are not with them on that. They have been nothing but welcoming and pleasant.

I still can’t believe that any prostest permit was honestly granted for the sidewalk outside of the convention center with so many expected to be inside. That area was already a bit crowded with a line today just for the Guns & Gold event – an Antique Roadshow-type show for guns. And I did get a kick out of NRA Secretary Jim Land helping out and checking out the guns. To me, that kind of illustrated that even though NRA might have professional staff, the vast majority came to NRA because they really love what’s important about the issue.

So, overall, signs point to a very busy weekend for NRA members in St. Louis. I’ll be tied up much of tomorrow morning with a meeting, presentation, then heading over to the Leadership Forum to cover the political news. At some point this weekend, I hope to cover some stuff from the floor, but mostly the people. Much like last year, I want to talk to real NRA members about the political scene.

Differences

I’ve been to every NRA Annual Meeting since 2004, save Houston in 2005 when I was starting a new job the week prior. At nearly every convention, businesses and staff typically welcome NRA members with open arms. Residents may not love the extra traffic, but they usually tolerate things for purposes of the millions of dollars NRA infuses into the local economy. (The exception may be Pittsburgh last year where, from what I was told, horrible is too kind for describing the traffic.)

There is one group that always seems to fret about the arrival of so many NRA members coming to town – bureaucrats. No Lawyers has a great illustration of that effect in St. Louis that appears to have just happened this morning. I guess that is the government worker’s version of a welcome sign.

UPDATE: According to a staffer here on the ground who saw the signs after they went up today, he says that not only are they new, but they are insanely huge. In other words, it leaves me wondering if, based on his description of how absurdly large some of these signs are, some bureaucrat seems to have been trying to send a message that gun owners aren’t welcome.