What he can do in the political swamp is sink into the muck and disappear. Stop defending an embarrassment and negative asset to the RKBA. His time has come and gone. The strength of the NRA was not the silver tongue of Wayne convincing people to support rights. It was in the promise of votes for legislators and executives. Gun positive voters no longer need absurdists screeds in the magazines to understand the issue. Those were designed to pull some funds out of demographic that research demonstrated would write a check. As far as expanding the appeal of the 2nd Amendment, they were counterproductive. The NRA has no credibility to reach out the the expanding gun ownership base of minorities, those not politically conservative, etc. They doubled down on the shrinking demographic base as short term market research indicated there was money there. However, that is long term bad strategy.
The industry organizations realize this and are designing appeals and publishing how to articles in the trades to get to a diverse, political and demographic expansion of buyers. One article said that you have to realize that you can sell to more than "pale, male, whale". That's cruel, esp. the latter part but has some truth to it.
How the expanding demographic desire for gun rights can be seen in:
https://reason.com/2021/10/17/public-defenders-vs-gun-control/
Can an NRA led by WLP do this? No. Now that is ok with some as they want the gun world to be a politically closed club of an ideological defined slice. See it here all the time but that's not a good future strategy.
As a side bar, the focus on SD is interesting as it the down playing of the defense against tyranny. Heller focused on SD and contained ambiguous language about banning some weapons type. We claim that it allowed the ownership of the EBR/MSR guns (MSR being a stupid attempt at deflection of the issue and bowing to the sporting use whine for not banning the gun, please let us have our toys).
The ambiguity of Heller leads to analyses like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/opinions/supreme-court-gun-rights-case-lethality-tucker/index.html
Some guns are too deadly and not really needed for SD and should be banned. The defense against tyranny is not mentioned. In the forum, we see folks proclaiming 5 is enough, not just for convenience but that you are nut if you think you need more. That plays directly in gun banner hands. The NRA didn't play up defense against tyranny for two reasons:
1. Market research indicated that folks didn't care about that.
2. Some of the folks who wanted to defend against tyranny thought the tyranny would come from the preferred NRA political demographic and explicitly said so. Quite embarassing.
Can the NRA as constituted deal with a neutral defense against tyranny position. Hard to say.
Well, virtue signaling in any form, even the type that gets “minorities, etc, blah blah” into the 2A is ridiculous, shallow, and is easily seen through for what it is: patronizing pandering, and is very insulting. If someone can’t see the value of armed resistance against tyrants with just the most rudimentary of basic explanation, then they are lost.
One of the things I do like about certain organizations, including the NRA, is that they don’t pander simply because someone is a minority. That being said, I can understand why that is seen as having value, because it can rally more people to the “cause”. My personal “perfect world” take on it is that they shouldn’t need to be patronized and pandered to, in order to see the value of the 2A. Not just getting groceries (hunting) or home defense (really?!), but as a stand against tyranny. However, my “perfect world” view and “the real world” aren’t the same. I get it.
Unfortunately, for the same reasons that some
feel that the NRA, or other pro 2A organizations need to pander and patronize minorities, we also need to “pander” to swamp creature politicians who couldn’t care less about the 2A, only their political greed. I thought this is where the NRA and WLP might have an advantage. It shouldn’t have to be that way, because the Constitution isn’t hard to read, and some truths are “Self Evident”, yet here we are, debating over “hunting”, and “sporting use” and 30 round magazines. What a joke.
Along that line, anyone who actually tries to downplay the 2A against tyrannical resistance simply isn’t living in, or is anywhere remotely aware of, the real world. Not the gilded world of social media and online shopping, but the actual world of violence, conflict, and oppression resolution. For all of our tech: nukes, jets, gunships, etc, wars are prosecuted, at the real bottom level, by individuals with rifles. I’m sure many on this forum have first hand experience of what I mean. That fancy gunship is really nice, but when 20 people with rifles open up on you from 500 feet, the reality of technological vulnerability sets it. Pistols let people shoot each other in the streets. That’s not a threat to .gov power. Rifles let people fight against tyranny.
All that being said: WLP. I haven’t really seen any of his speeches. Other NRA spokespersons, like C. Noir, have it right. If WLP is indeed selling out the real reason for the 2A, and not defending it as a defense against tyranny, then he can go; however, if his “heart is in the right place” as to the true intent of the 2A, and he’s effective at defending it, then I don’t care about the other stuff. I consider it “Pay to Play” for our rights. As sad as that is, that is the world we are in. But if he’s not, then he can go, which, is apparently the case?