Nra Betrayal Of Trust *important*

[Shooter 2.5]

Oh, gee Tempest. The NRA doesn't feel like spending their money on someone who doesn't understand Interstate Commerce.

The fun thing is the NRA gets to keep it's money and the GOA can spend their's.

That's a win-win situation if I ever heard of one.

By the way, a politician stops being a pro-gun politician when they stop voting for pro-gun legislature.

 

[pytron]

Boats, well said!

I too believe that the AWB can be the high-water mark for gun-control (and I sincerely hope it is). The combo of the legislature and the president give us a very good chance for change.

I think we should support the NRA, but at the same time lobby for an overhaul of their rating process. They need to make it more public (like disclosing the candidate's responses) and aim for more accuracy and less "wins". I think members can do this by writing to the "council" and getting involved locally.

You have provided some balance to this debate and I thank you.

-Pytron

PS: BTW, I love the nautical references you've thrown in

 

[Boats]

PS: BTW, I love the nautical references you've thrown in

I was facing a Tempest after all.

 

[Jim March]

Nicki, in response to this piece from your article "Betrayal of Trust":

-----------------------
But my disappointment and disenchantment with the National Rifle Association doesn’t end there. They have repeatedly sold out gun owners by supporting petty tyrants in three-piece suits, who consistently take steps to infringe on our freedoms. In California, the NRA awarded Assemblyman Rod Wright its “Defender of Freedom†Award. This is the same Rod Wright who supported unconstitutional limits on firearms purchases and background checks. This is the same Rod Wright who authored a bill to increase licensing fees from $3 to up to $100. Never mind the absurdity of bilking peaceable citizens of hundreds of dollars for making a constitutionally protected purchase. This champion of “freedom†apparently thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to license and charge Americans for exercising their rights. The NRA’s “Defender of Freedom†in 2001 voted against gun owners 62 percent of the time, according to Gun Owners of California.
------------------------

There are major problems with the NRA all right. But unfortunately your use of sources that just flat-out aren't credible seriously hurts your article.

In the quote above, the sentence "This is the same Rod Wright who authored a bill to increase licensing fees from $3 to up to $100" is such an extreme distortion it's unbelievable.

Here's the facts: AB2022 was written by Wright, and passed in 1998. It was a "CCW cleanup bill" that improved the system in many ways, and set the stage for future legal challenges in wonderfully sneaky ways.

At the time it passed, the state attorney general had written an opinion saying that police chiefs could charge a maximum of $3 for CCW, but sheriffs could charge an *unlimited* amount by asking their Board of Supervisors to pass a "cost recovery ordinance". Some sheriffs were charging hundreds of dollars just for the "investigation into good cause" part of the process - that doesn't include background checks, training, etc.

What Wright did was set a fee CAP of $100 for the local agency fee. He had proposed a smaller one but it got banged around in various committees and ended up at $100. But it's a CAP - the better sheriffs who had already been handling the system on a fair basis didn't have to charge a dime and many still don't.

As sheriffs tend to issue over 98% of all the permits statewide, the number of people affected by raising the cap on police department issuance was extremely small.

That wasn't the only fee that was capped. Another provision flat-out banned any fee that wasn't specified in the CCW penal codes, blocking a hell of a lot of mischief.

Fees were only a small part of the bill. Under AB2022, each agency has to publish a manual describing how they were handling the system, which aids legal challenges when the standards they set are grotesque. The Attorney General's office was required to do recordkeeping that will give us the data on gender bias and Latino discrimination that will let us rip this whole sick system apart in court. We now have proof the state AG's office (and state DOJ) have completely screwed up the requirements in AB2022 and are now going to desperate lengths to cover up the misconduct (see link below).

No, AB2022 didn't fix everything. A bill to put in genuine shall-issue had failed the year before, and people who cared about the CCW issue in this screwed-up state ALL strongly supported AB2022 - myself included. Labelling it a "gun control measure" is just flat-out disgusting. Go ask Gun Owners of California what they actually think of Rod Wright - they'll tell you he's a hero, same as me and any other California activist who's actually *doing* anything rather than whining.

Now, that said, yes the NRA is capable of screwing up:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19889

...and when they do, it's a doozy.

If Shamaya reported the FACTS behind such screwups honestly, instead of letting his bias take him to insane slander, he'd be a lot more effective.

This memo is also being published at:

(this thread's URL)

(SIDENOTE TO THR MODERATORS: if you think I'm being harsh here, I'm not being anywhere NEAR as harsh on Nicki and Angel as they were on Rod Wright. They outright slandered him, with "scholarship" that would make Michael Bell-Liar blush.)

That's me on the left, with Rod Wright - phtoto taken spring of 2002 at the NRA convention in Reno.

 

[Tempest]

My bottom line

Gentlemen, look --

My purpose in writing this article was to motivate NRA members to demand change. I am an NRA member. I treasure the people with whom I have worked over there. When I took the assignment of writing this story, I did a hell of a lot of research, and I was thoroughly disappointed. I'm not an NRA "hater," nor do I wear a tinfoil hat. I believe there are a lot of things wrong with the leadership of this organization. I HATED writing this article! LOATHED it. But I felt I had to do it.

I gave a historical perspective of the NRA's historical support of gun control partially to simply outline their history, and also to point out the transparent hypocrisy of their claiming to oppose gradual erosion of our rights, while supporting gun control laws. That just isn't true. It wasn't to decontextualize them. Their current leadership needs a kick in the ???. They openly state they support background checks. They openly state and promote Project Exile. If those aren't erosions of our constitutional rights, I don't know what is!

Boats - you cannot refute anything I've written, because it's all true. You can make excuses for it. You can give me lots of reasons why they did what they did. I'm sure there are lots of good political reasons. But the bottom line is that claiming you oppose any gradual erosion of RKBA, while supporting a background check for that basic human right makes that proclamation a lie.

 

[Tempest]

Jim - using Gun Owners of California ratings is wrong? According to them, his record ain't that hot when it comes to voting with gun owners. How is that slanderous? I happen to believe licensing a human right is outright wrong - whether it's setting a cap on it or not. Additionally, Angel didn't write the source I cited, so please don't condemn him for something he didn't do.

 

[antsi]

This is all very misguided and counterproductive

It is really a waste for pro-gun groups and their members to spend all this time sniping at each other. It isn't helping.

The NRA is not the most ideologically pure gun rights organization out there, correct. But they ("we" - I am a member) are the largest and most powerful.

If there are other gun rights groups that are a more perfect fit with your ideals, by all means, support them.

But I would suggest that you support the NRA as well - or, at least, don't spend half your time fighting the organization that is only 80% on your side instead of 100%. The more time we spend fighting each other, the more it benefits the anti's.

- hypothetical example -

Let's say the NRA is backing a shall-issue CCW law here in my state. The law contains provisions that the applicant must complete a training course, pass a criminal background check, and pay an annual fee.

I'd be thrilled to see such a law passed in my state, BTW.

If it were proposed here, I'd hope that all the gun owners and gun rights groups would get together and back that law.

What I would hate to see happen, is some "alternative" gun rights group, criticize the law and fight against it on the grounds that the annual fee, the training requirement, etc., are unnecessary and unconstutional and represent an evilly-motivated compromise with Sarah Brady.

Yes, the case could be made: we have a constitutional right to bear arms. We shouldn't have to go through all that rigamarole to exercise our rights. Ideally, no such CCW law would be even necessary because it's covered by the Second Ammendment.

But, still, I think it would be misguided and counterproductive to fight against an "imperfect," "suboptimal," "compromise" CCW law in my state. Any CCW law at all would be a step in the right direction and I would support it.

If, after the law was passed, an "alternative" gun rights group then started agitating to lower the fees, eliminate the training requirement, etc., I'd support them as well.

------- end of hypothetical example ------------

The point I am trying to make is, don't let's help the anti's by fighting against ourselves and splitting into a million tiny, ineffective, infighting splinter groups.

Should we support the gun rights group which most perfectly embodies our ideals? YES

Should we support the most powerful gun rights group on the planet, even if they are not perfect? YES

 

[Boats]

Nicki--

I wasn't trying to "refute" anything you wrote. I do question why you feel the need to spin the fact that the NRA has written gun control legislation in the past, is made all the more sinister because the modern leadership claims they have opposed gun control legislation. In a sense, it is a semantics debate. Watering down bad legislation that will probably pass if nobody does anything can be described as effective opposition when the undiluted result would have been far worse.

The Second Amendment at crucial points over the last 70 years was going to be violated whether the NRA wanted it to be or not. I attribute to them a sincere desire to head off the worst the antis had to offer rather than to ascribe to them some cabalistic plot to keep themselves in business all this time by "assisting" in the drafting of legislation that they'd later oppose. Have they or have they not been accused of being the strange bedfellows of the antis?

I can understand the distaste for compromise that many people here harbor. What I don't understand is the lack of introspection into why non-compromise features a different set of dangers than compromise and one is not inherently preferable over the other. Non-compromise creates implacable enemies who will not give respite until they show ultimate success. As I tried to point out, when the politically less sophisticated NRA back in the day only had about 100 or so reliable conservatives from either side of the aisle to work with during gun ownership crises, rigiditiy was never going to work. No one has taken up my challenge to assert what the NRA should've done when they "screwed us big time" in the past. I wonder why that is?

Has compromise become a part of the NRA's institutional memory and tool box? Afraid so. Does it necessarily follow that they always compromise then? I don't think so. Everyone seemingly forgets how the NRA used the appearance of compromise on the "gunshow loophole" battle post Columbine to poison the bill so badly that the antis didn't want to pass it. The NRA gave the sheeple out there the perception that it was the antis who wanted too much because they wouldn't compromise. That is never a good place to be for groups that require the appearance of success once in awhile. Part of the ongoing weakness of anti groups recently is increasingly the perception that they can't win.

Why is that? Because even if all of us "in the know" understand that the NRA is far from relentless, they have that image of uncompromising "extremism" and gargantuan financial power among our ignorant opponents. I'll take that for what it's worth over screaming in the wilderness because it worth alot.

Unflinching fanaticism is great for a shock troop, but a bad trait in a general.

 

[Jim March]

Tempest: you're right - it was Codrea that slammed Rod Wright.

Damn. My apologies, somewhat. Angel *published* it .

The article:

http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3550

It's gonna take me a while, but I'm going to sort out just what those bills were that Wright voted for.

The first time I saw Wright was in '97, when as a member of the Assembly Safety Committee he was a STRONG proponent of a full-tilt shall-issue bill.

But of course, by some standards that makes him a "traitor" .

 

[Wild Bill]

No one has taken up my challenge to assert what the NRA should've done when they "screwed us big time" in the past. I wonder why that is?

Perhaps because it's off point. The past only serves as an indictor of a likely future outcome should the trend continue.

It is that possibility that has me worried. Despite all the labels thrown about on this thread, nobody seems to be backing a "no compromise ever" stand. All I'm saying is that compromise should only be the last tactic chosen - and then only if absolutely necessary.

Things are rarely as simplisic as they appear - especially in politics. A seawall is indeed better than standing naked against the oncoming surge. But given that this is an organization (like any other with it's own flaws) that has a history of compromise (politically justified or not), don't you agree that they deserve close scrutiny rather than blind faith?

As for ineffective, infighting splinter groups - where did that come from? GOA has a record that's at least as unblemished and as successful as the NRA. GRSC here is the most effective state level group I've ever had the pleasure of being associated with. Neither are ineffective, infighting, or splinters of anything.

You know I find it funny. We chide the other side for blindly following whatever their leaders spew, and yet so many have such an equally blind devotion to the NRA. Flame away gang, but if you can't examine ourselves in an effort to overcome the mistakes we've made and become more effective then we're toast anyway.

 

[Wild Bill]

Do excuse the atrocious spelling and grammatical errors in the above. Didn't use the checker. Oops. My apologies.

 

[spartacus2002]

We can all dance around the issues, but the key is this:

if you are an NRA member, and you don't like what the NRA is doing, don't quit: Instead, make yourself heard! It is YOUR NRA!

If everyone who was upset quit, all you would have left would be a small group who all feel the same way on the issues, and they will believe they are correct because hey, they all agree!

Remember this: The NRA has a lot of internal interest groups. The benchrest shooters despise the service rifle shooters, the service rifle shooters ignore the duck-hunters, and the duck-hunters absolutely hate the assault-rifle lovers, etc., etc. Each internal interest group, or constituency if you prefer, has to make itself heard in order to have its seat at the table.

Let's talk about Gary Gorski. I wrote NRA-ILA's chief counsel, asking exactly what they were doing to help Gorski. I got a two page hem-haw letter back, which basically sniffed and said it wasn't the right case ,wasn't the right forum, wasn't the right plaintiff. I appreciated the answer, but you could see the disdain towards assault-rifle owners.

Guess what the duck and deer hunters will be telling their kids one day: First they came for the assault rifle owners, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a crazed militia nut. Then they came for the handgun owners, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a thug or hoodlum. Then they came for the ....you can fill in the rest. But when they came for my shotgun, there was no one left to speak up for me.

 

[Smurfslayer]

For those of you that have stated that they agreed with Nicki, who among you have contacted the NRA-ILA to tell them ?

For those among you who think the NRA-ILA is doing a fine job, have you contacted them to tell them?

One of the items mentioned in Nicki's article was the hotly contested 52nd district republican contest here in VA between "moderate" republican Jack Rollison ; NRA a- I think... got the NRA ILA endorsement over NRA member Jeff Frederick the challenger. Rollison openly opposes allowing law abiding citizens carrying a concealed firearm to be permitted anywhere that alcohol is served. He also supports local restrictions on firearms carrying by law abiding citizens. Frederick strongly supports removing restrictions on law abiding citizens here in the Commonwealth, Rollison favors them, but the NRA ILA wants their incumbent reelected

FWIW, I think taking a total, 100% no compromise stance is self defeating, because the only way to get legislation passed is to allow for some compromise. But I don't think we should ever compromise with the likes of traitors like Schumer, Fineswine, Klinton, etc...

Someone previously mentioned the good news was that the NRA was the 800# gorilla. The bad news is, he wants to make nicey nice with your wife...

No one group represents all of my interests, including the NRA. I carry a AAA card - great for when you need a tow, not great when they come out in support of banning radar detectors

The NRA-ILA has compromised and endorsed questionable candidates. Very seldom do they publicly justify their questionable choices leaving us to debate in forums like this one. I think if they came out & said "look, candidate b doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell...candidate a has some positive traits as an upright walking mammal, so we're backing him this time around"... maybe that would help a bit. Nevertheless, Nicki's right in that we've allowed the public servants to intrude too far, and it's time to slap them in to time out.

 

[Boats]

After re-reading this entire thread, I don't think the "two sides" are all that far apart.

I like my shield even though when it takes hard hits it sometimes pops me in the head and leaves a pain in my arm--but hey, I'll live to fight. Other people curse the shield because it failed and they were harmed even as it stopped the attack from being lethal.

Whatever. I think both of our sides are wondering where in the hell our offensive weapons went to in the melee while we were bracing the shield and gritting our teeth. Some have been quicker to bring their daggers to bear and stab back where they can. I am waiting to find and wield the warhammer with some brutal finality.

Meet you at the last anti.

 

[Wild Bill]

We have a winner folks!

Boats, we may be aproaching the battle in different squads. We may attack from different directions. We may use differing tactics and weaponry. But it's damn good that all of us are fighting the same battle.

Race ya to the last one standing!

 

[Kingcreek]

Nicki-Tempest,
I'll vote for you when you run for NRA board of directors.

 

[Esky]

A little bit pregnant...?

Thanks Tempest (Nicki) for your hard work on this article. It was a real eye-opener for me.

And my apologies- I started another thread here ( http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25356 ) after I read your article in Armed Females of America. Then FPrice kindly pointed out THIS thread, so I redirected people back here. Sorry for the confusion, I must have forgot to hit the "refresh" or something.

Anyway, your well-written article (not too long for me, and thanks for all the links!) greatly distubed me, since I'd like to think that NRA is fighting the same fight as I am: in favor of 2nd Amendment rights. Now, thanks to your diligence, I have facts at my disposal; now I can write to the NRA and point out what seems to me the "error of their ways" and see what they have to say about it. If they get enough pressure from rank & file members, as Nicki points out in her article, then things WILL change, so here I fully agree with Spartacus2002.

Anyone living in California will know that it's real easy to lose everything by gradual erosion- like right now we're fighting to stop: a $0.10/round tax, banning of .50 Cal rifles/pistols, banning even MORE handguns, banning of 'certain types' of ammo, etc, etc. We've already been deprived of 'assault weapons' far beyond the Federal limitations, and all we can hope for now is that eventually the Supreme Court will restore our rights to KABA by rendering the Kali laws null & void.

Compromise is fine, if you're talking about minor lets-all-be-friends things, sure I'll split the last piece of cake with ya, but when it comes to fundamental rights...?

NO. Can't do it. Patrick Henry didn't say "Give me liberty or let's make a deal we can both live with."

But I live in the real world too, and Boats has some very good points. What really bothers me, though, is that far too much legislation seems to have been suggested by the NRA, and these suggestions are a long, long way from "...shall not be infringed."

Esky
who's lived long enough in Australia to make Kali seem good

 

[Jim March]

I did a little digging into GOC's voting record tallies for Rod Wright, trying to understand why the "percentage" was so low.

In the legislative year that started in '99 and ended in Y2k, Wright voted "yes" on the following bills in bold, which can be looked up at:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html - set the "year" to 1999/2000. I'd give you a link to each bill's records, but it's a CGI database (sigh).

AB106 - Passed: "must sell trigger lock with gun". Wright voted "for it" both at Assembly Safety and the assembly floor. One complex bit: the bill was subject to a ton of various amendments where it varied from "minor annoyance" to "really seriously painful". The version that finally passed was basically an annoyance; it seems likely Wright helped steer it in that direction.

AB106c Committee vote for above. See comments there.

AB200 - Failed. But it is NOT a gun bill. In it's original form, the title is "An act to amend Section 1359 of the Health and Safety Code, and to add Sections 1622.1, 1626.1, 1631.1, and 1749.03 to the Insurance Code, relating to life agents." Wright wrote it. Then it later got gutted and turned into something about school budget reform - again, not a damned thing gun related? How in hell did THIS get counted as a "gun rights strike against Wright"!?

AB491/491c - Passed. This was Jack Scott's attempt to declare all concealed carry by non-permitholders felons. It got jacked around at various committees, and at one point in committee Wright voted for it - but that was when an amendment was added seriously limiting it's scope. (In final form, it only applies if you're packing a gun not registered to you - not good, but at least you CAN avoid a felony rap if you're packing.) Wright did NOT vote for it on the first floor vote, only voting "yes" after it had been further gutted in senate committees.

Let me comment on what seems to have happened here: Wright has been critical to NRA defensive efforts because he had Gray Davis' ear as he was one of the first legicritters to back Davis. (That may sound bad, but Davis is NOT actually ideologically anti-gun, he's just a pure political animal...GOPer Dan Lungren was far worse than Davis!) Essentially, when the NRA needed to pass a message to Davis, it went through Wright. So once this bill was sufficiently "gelded", it was tossed to the grabbers as a bone and to keep his credibility among Dems, yes, Wright voted for this silly turd - AFTER it was mostly neutered.

AB988 - Originally an attempted ban on home FFLs but failed and was gutted - got turned into something about beach maintenance for the city of Malibu! Apparantly, Wright DID vote for it while it was a "gun bill", but God only knows what role he had in killing it as a gun thing. It's impossible to judge him on this one.

AB1142/1142c - Well this is interesting - got vetoed! It started as a bill to set a criminal penalty for a parent whose kid takes the pet family gun to school. Sigh. Got hacked around six ways from Sunday, and then Davis killed it. And yes, Wright voted for it at times. But remember what I said about gunnies having a channel to Davis? Yup. Odds are good that you can thank Wright for the veto! Wright voted for it at one committee, but voted against the final form.

SB29 - some crapola regarding gun sales paperwork, more or less the same story as AB1142 above - vetoed after getting kicked all over the capitol building like a hackie sack. Again: a veto probably had a LOT to do with Wright.

SB130 - Passed - it's another "must sell trigger lock with gun" bill. It was passed after getting limited from it's initial slightly nastier state. Looks to me like another case of "it was gonna pass anyways, might as well let Rod cache some Demo points".

The bills Wright voted AGAINST were the worst of the worst:

SB15 and SB23 were the "junk gun" and "assault weapons" bills.

AB202 was the one gun a month thing

Upshot:

This is one case where you can't judge the guy purely by his voting record. With the two vetos, we can see weird sneaky behind-the-scenes stuff going on that Wright almost certainly had a hand in completely separate from his paper voting record. In other cases, the "fix was in" and the bills were going to pass regardless.

In other words, this is what a desperate last-ditch defensive stand looks like. Criticizing this is about like court-marshalling a rifle platoon for giving way under fire against a whole tank division.

What's not reflected:

I've personally seen Wright fight like a demon on crack for our rights.

 

[alan]

Boats:

You wrote in part, the following in one post: "So just how many times is this lamentation going to be republished here? I swear I read half of this long-winded essay in a previous thread a couple months ago. "

Re your question, a couple of points, if I may. Not being aware that the material had already been posted, under the heading of thought provoking reading at the link, I put it up yesterday, a few lines and a link to the longer text.

As to the rest of it, given what was said, I do not think that this material can be to widely distributed. I've been a life member of the NRA since 1973, I was an anual and five year member prior to that, and on more than one occasion, I have wondered and asked, without response, what it was that wound NRA up at the beginning of each day?

 

[Boats]

I have wondered and asked, without response, what it was that wound NRA up at the beginning of each day?

So lacking a formal response, one should simply run around with whatever ahistorical deductive guess tickles one's fancy as the most "true" motive behind the NRA?

Despite lame protestations to the contrary, some folks in this thread have indeed ripped the NRA from out of history, and the actual political situations it faced, in order to play the Monday morning quarterback blessed with the perfect vision of the implacable zealot.

I am not arguing the NRA is perfect because it is far from it. I share the belief that the NRA's candidate endorsement policies need retooling and better exposition as to the rationale behind them. It should quit wasting so much money on direct mailing for solicitiations everytime an anti twitches in front of a liberal news camera. For God's sake, we all know the players and the game being played with our rights in Congress.

It is a fanciful leap of imagination from those legitimate criticisms to the position that the NRA exists, in part, to betray gun owners by happily passing gun control legislation and then raising funds by railing against the laws they passed.

Like I have said before to the RKBA ankle biters, (non-NRA, GOA, JPFO, and SAF groups), show me something positive and then you'll get my ear and maybe my wallet. Hot air, recriminations, and "me-too-ism" is hardly the way to make many friends and influence lots of people when one is shilling for donors in a competitive environment.