I'll give you suggestions for improvement.
Here's an excerpt from our local VA 2nd Amendment group, the VCDL:
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The VCDL Philosophy
from
www.vcdl.org
VCDL believes that to win the fight to restore our Rights, we have to 1) go on the offensive and 2) make use of the best lobbyist – the voter.
VCDL rejects the approach of focusing on a defensive battle until “the time is right”. Even if you win 95% of the defensive battles, you lose 5%. Over time, this defensive war of attrition slowly whittles away our Rights until we have none.
The time isn’t going to magically become right to introduce pro-gun legislation. Instead, WE have to make the time right. And we do that by constantly pushing a pro-gun agenda – getting pro-gun legislation before the General Assembly, getting voters to contact their legislators, and hounding any locality that violates the law.
Even if we win only 5% of our pro-gun agenda each year, we are advancing our Rights each and every year, instead of losing them bit-by-bit.
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Note what's being said here. VCDL is actually pretty good at fighting the defensive battles too, but they're also constantly pushing new legislation forward.
Now expanding on what I was saying earlier, NRAILA is even hitting me, someone who hasn't been a member for almost three years, for money, with scare tactics. They're treating me like a debtor, and faking out other people with "CHECK ENCLOSED" garbage.
Ok, if I swallow my pride and send money, what are they going to do with it?
What's going on with carry in national parks now? I can't find that at nraila.org.
There's a "write your legislator" link, but what shall I write about?
Where's their punchlist of gun rights goals, and where are their success stories?
When I look through the grassroots stuff, I don't see anything to act on - all I see is more scaremongering about how "they almost passed X!" or "now they're asking for Y!" and an occasional "Voters of Z state rejected something!"
And why aren't those ILA dollars being put to use to see to it that pseudomayor Nagin and all his cronies are eating out of a dumpster for the rest of their lives?
People talk about an organization that's 4 million strong. I don't see that. I see 4 million people sending their hard-earned loot to a couple lobbyists who are doing all the work.
So I'd suggest three things to get me back on board:
1) Already mentioned: divide the NRA from the ILA. Besides appeasing kooks like me, the NRA would stop being a lobbying behemoth and start being a safety and training organization again.
Nobody outside the gun community knows that they're for RESPONSIBLE firearms ownership. Playing the safety card more often than the "THE SKY IS FALLING SO SEND YOUR DOLLARS SO WE CAN IMPROVE A NONFUNCTIONAL GUN CONTROL SYSTEM" card is going to please
both sides of this argument.
2) Stop relying on lobbyists for everything. Direct the membership in what to do. Get them to start writing legislators on a regular basis - you know, do all the stuff we encourage each other to do on this board, which, by the way, doesn't have a yearly fee.
3) Start a proactive, not a reactive, campaign. Stop supporting stuff like HR2640 simply because it's the moderate position. Start using facts like how NICS isn't stopping criminals from getting guns to at least get members exposed to the reasons why the hard@$$es think the way they do.
