LaPierre Made a Career of Second Amendment Compromises
BY Herschel Smith
11 months ago
“I admired Wayne LaPierre 20-30 years ago,” a comment left on The Captain’s Journal, a blog I frequent admitted. “Yes, he screwed up and started living high off the hog on the members’ dime… But there were some great victories… during his tenure, particularly the proliferation of shall-issue CCW and constitutional carry…That was all grassroots NRA lobbying.”
“Yes, they were wrong for supporting NICS and some other things, but I think it is unfair to tag Wayne’s tenure with some of the Fudd [stuff] the NRA supported in the past, like the NFA,” the poster continued. “The NRA once had the loyalty of a LOT of Democratic members and Democratic politicians… The NRA now has ZERO influence in places like New York, California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts… Wayne deserves to be held accountable… by the Board of Directors and the members, not by Letitia James or any… so-called court of ‘law.’”
Such sentiment is not unique among gun owners. Unfortunately, it’s also not correct.
Read the rest at Firearms News.
On January 22, 2024 at 11:27 pm, X said:
Hah.
Well, Codrea makes some valid points. I was unaware of Wayne’s stand on “Gun Free School Zones” and I always had issues with bringing the Feds in to prosecute local criminals accused of violating state laws under “Project Exile.”
I think it is a bit unfair to tag Wayne for some of the supposedly pro-gun Democrats for stabbing the NRA in the back after courting their endorsement. Pataki, Hochul, Gillibrand… all of them feared the NRA and the pro-gun vote enough to seek NRA endorsements and lie about their true views.
The part of my comment that Dave left out is the part that said that this country has changed a lot in the past 20-30 years, and we now have one-party anti-gun states like NY and CA that in the 1990s had (at least theoretically) pro-gun Republican governors. When the parties were competitive in most states it made sense for the NRA to be nonpartisan and seek support among Democrats. Remember that until the 1980s, blue-collar, gun-owning white males in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and Ohio were nearly all unionized Democrats. Remember the “Reagan Democrats”? They didn’t start changing until then. Indeed, the last time a Republican presidential candidate won New York was Reagan… in 1984.
In the intervening years Democrats have become radically anti-gun, feminized, and concentrated in what are now one-party states with supermajorities in the legislatures. That wasn’t true yet in the 1980s and 1990s.
Certainly it is true today that “there are no pro-RKBA Democrats” — except for the departing Joe Manchin, who possibly singlehandedly saved us from Federal antigun legislation several times. But that was simply not the case 40 years ago.
Dave is sort of right about the NRA’s position on Heller, but only sort of. The NRA feared bringing a Supreme Court case because they knew damn well that it was entirely possible for the Court to issue a majority opinion along the lines of John Paul Stevens’s dissent that only the National Guard can have guns. NRA preferred a political strategy, because nothing beats having the legislature codify your gun rights. Criticizing the NRA for its position on pre-certiorari Heller is simply 20/20 hindsight. And even despite Heller, Scalia’s weasel words upholding “reasonable restrictions” on “dangerous weapons” have been seized on by the Left to basically nullify the decision. It is simply a fact that New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts had far more gun freedom pre-Heller than post-Heller. In the 1990s you could buy an AK for $200 and have all the 30-round mags your heart desired in upstate New York, perfectly legal. I know, I was there. Today it’s illegal to get a 10/22 with a 10-rd mag without a permit.
Hey, I’m glad Dave read my post and took it seriously, even if we don’t agree on everything. Ultimately we are on the same side, what we’re debating is what strategy and tactics “coulda, shoulda, woulda” been used 30 years ago, it’s really moot at this point.
The real question is who or what is going to replace the influence of the now-weakened NRA, and how are gun rights going to get restored in the Deep Blue states where we now have what are effectively European gun laws that practically nullify the 2A.
On January 23, 2024 at 7:13 am, Chris said:
It was a good post. Surprised he hasn’t made one correction to you all.
It’s David, not Dave. :)
Chris (CIII)