Archive for the 'National Rifle Association' Category

David Codrea initially recommended that NRA members recall Grover Norquist.  We had already briefly discussed that, and it should be clear where I stand.  Todd Rathner penned a rebuttal to David’s recommendation.

I strongly disagree with his suggestion that the NRA should focus on issues other than the Second Amendment.”

“The NRA is powerful and can defend our gun rights against all comers because it focuses like a laser on strengthening the Second Amendment,” Rathner explains. “We [NRA] are not the Republican Party. The NRA wants the support of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We are not the pro-life movement. Or the pro-choice movement. We want Americans of all world views to defend the Second Amendment.”

This is a silly statement.  People of all world views won’t defend the second amendment.  The constitution came from a world view that was unique in its understanding of the ultimate source of rights, which the constitution merely recognized.  As for needing people of all kinds to defend anything, I don’t really think there is such a real need, and I certainly have no felt need for such a thing.

But Mr. Rathner doesn’t want us to think two steps ahead.  Or another way to say it would be that Rathner doesn’t want us to consider logical consequences, simple first order effects.  We have gone to great lengths to make everyone understand that open borders, in addition to the other national maladies that would be involved, means loss of recognized rights to own firearms.  It starts with the cultural milieu of Hispanics and Latinos.

“For historical reasons to do with the nationalisation of the land under Lázaro Cárdenas and the predominant form of peasant land tenure, which was “village cooperative” rather than based on individual plots, the demand for “land to the tiller” in Mexico does not imply an individual plot for every peasant or rural worker or family. In Mexico, collectivism among the peasantry is a strong tradition … one consequence of these factors is that the radical political forces among the rural population are on the whole explicitly anti-capitalist and socialist in their ideology. Sometimes this outlook is expressed in support for guerilla organisations; but struggle movements of the rural population are widespread, and they spontaneously ally with the most militant city-based leftist organisations.”

One of the reasons for this reflexive alignment with leftism has to do with the the mid-twentieth century and what the Sovient Union and allied ideologies accomplished.  South and Central America was the recipient or receptacle for socialism draped in religious clothing, or in other words, liberation theology.  Its purveyors were Roman Catholic priests who had been trained in Marxism, and they were very successful in giving the leftists a moral platform upon which to build.  This ideology spread North from South and Central America into Mexico, and thus the common folk in Mexico are quite steeped in collectivist ideology from battles that were fought decades ago.

Thus, Hispanics and Latinos poll at some 75% favoring gun control.  Even if we acquiesce to Mr. Rathner’s claim on single issues, we still win because we’re right.  On this single issue, we cannot allow unfettered immigration.  David writes this about the issue in his latest response to Rathner.

Here’s the thing, Mr. Rathner, and you have to know this, which makes your “response” appear more disingenuous than “respectful”:  “Amnesty” with a “pathway to citizenship” represents nothing less than an existential threat to the Second Amendment. If Grover Norquist and his apologists continue giving NRA a pass to ignore it under a phony “single issue” excuse (which I just demonstrated is one of convenience, not consistency), you’re not going to have anything to “focus like a laser” on. And that’s in a matter of a decade or two.

Lastly, Mr. Norquist has shown a propensity to align himself with people who would do harm to this nation.  This may not be the single issue Mr. Rathner wants to focus on, but it’s good enough for me.  After all, I’m a professional employee, I serve my employer “at will.”  They can fire me any time for any reason.  So can we with Norquist.

David Codrea:

“While many people might disagree with statements made by those involved in the Malheur takeover, Americans have a fundamental right to freedom of speech,” the ACLU of Oregon declared in a position statement on charges against Santilli. “We can all agree that we should not hold members of the media or protesters in jail without bail simply because they have shocking or abhorrent views. These are principles that we must stand by, even when we disagree with the message of the speaker.”

David adds, “Love him or hate him, if the government gets away with its prosecution of Pete Santilli, freedom of expression and freedom of the press will be effectively quashed.

And I’ve noticed that holding people without bail appears to be a favorite tactic these days of prosecutors who find the accused particularly objectionable.  They seldom get away with it unless judge feels the same way.  Oftentimes they do.  So whether you find justice seems to be related to whether they like you and whether they perceive you to be a threat to their social pecking order.

David Codrea:

Vote yes on the recall of Grover Norquist from the NRA board.

I didn’t know there was one, and I certainly will.  I’ve weighed in before on this worm.

Former ISIS sex slaves take up arms against ISIS.  My question: where are the men?

Muslim migrant abuse of Christians.  As I’ve said, this problem isn’t really that difficult to solve.  Remember Herschel’s Dictum.

I have discussed what I assess to be deep, troubling and dangerous character flaws in Alan Gottlieb before.  In what is yet another manifestation of these character flaws, Gottlieb has endorsed Grover Norquist for the NRA board of directors.  As reported by David Codrea:

The Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb sent out a March 3 email notice to members and supporters in which he endorsed the candidacy of Grover Norquist for director in this year’s National Rifle Association board election.

“My good friend Grover Norquist who is also on the NRA Board and up for reelection this year had an excellent interview with Newsmax that I want to call your attention to,” Gottlieb announced, directing readers to an interview on concealed carry decreasing crime. “He got my vote for the NRA Board and if you haven’t cast your vote yet I highly recommend that you also vote for him. A strong NRA helps us all.”

The problem with Gottlieb’s endorsement is that Norquist is what even “progressive” MSNBC acknowledges to be an “amnesty-loving immigration activist.”

As a stand-alone issue, this is enough to dismiss his candidacy outright, and it proves that Grover Norquist is a progressive collectivist who is merely looking for another board membership (presumably because his calendar is empty during the board meeting days and he wants something to do, or we can only guess – if Mr. Norquist would grace us with his presence here and tell us why he wants to be reelected as a member of the board we would know more than we do now).

Let’s again deal with where we are concerning Hispanic and Latino voters.  “As to whether the GOP will ever be able to rely on votes from the Hispanics, that is a non-starter.  “Hispanics are not historically and ideologically aligned with what the GOP is supposed to be.  To point to Roman Catholicism and claim that Hispanics will vote GOP because of socially conservative viewpoints misses the bigger picture of the state of Catholicism in South and Central America.  It is a synthesis, or a hybrid mixture, of Catholicism, superstition, Marxism, and in some cases evil “patron saints” for the cartel criminals.”  They will not vote conservative or liberatarian, no matter what you’re being told by the elitists and chamber of commerce.

In order to understand why the state of Roman Catholicism in Mexico and Central America is what it is, one has to understand its roots.

“For historical reasons to do with the nationalisation of the land under Lázaro Cárdenas and the predominant form of peasant land tenure, which was “village cooperative” rather than based on individual plots, the demand for “land to the tiller” in Mexico does not imply an individual plot for every peasant or rural worker or family. In Mexico, collectivism among the peasantry is a strong tradition … one consequence of these factors is that the radical political forces among the rural population are on the whole explicitly anti-capitalist and socialist in their ideology. Sometimes this outlook is expressed in support for guerilla organisations; but struggle movements of the rural population are widespread, and they spontaneously ally with the most militant city-based leftist organisations.”

One of the reasons for this reflexive alignment with leftism has to do with the the mid-twentieth century and what the Sovient Union and allied ideologies accomplished.  South and Central America was the recipient or receptacle for socialism draped in religious clothing, or in other words, liberation theology.  Its purveyors were Roman Catholic priests who had been trained in Marxism, and they were very successful in giving the leftists a moral platform upon which to build.  This ideology spread North from South and Central America into Mexico, and thus the common folk in Mexico are quite steeped in collectivist ideology from battles that were fought decades ago.

Hispanics and Latinos will be among the most progressive and socialistic voters in the history of the country, which is why the progressives want amnesty for them.  And there will indeed be a very large burden to shoulder for the presence of immigrants in America.  “It helps the corporate bottom line by forcing the middle class to pick up the tab for medical care, which burden happens largely on the backs of nurses in emergency rooms (my daughter is a nurse in an ER), with medical insurance premiums escalating in order to pay for the service.  Food stamps (so called SNAP) also factor into the calculus, as well as driver’s insurance (for uninsured motorists coverage).

It isn’t that there is no cost for low paid workers.  It’s that the cost is borne by the middle class as welfare to corporations and the wealthy.  The GOP is connected at the hip to such interests in terms of money, while the Democrats are connected in terms of future voters.

This all has to do with the middle class shouldering the cost for immigrants in general, but it does indeed go to show that pro-immigration candidates and politicians are progressive in their world view.  But more specifically as it relates to gun rights, Hispanics and Latinos favor gun control rather than gun rights, and not just by a trivial fraction.  Grover Norquist is a liar playing a game with NRA members.  He favors immigration, including amnesty, but says he favors concealed firearm rights.  Both cannot be true.

But just as disturbing about Grover Norquist is that he keeps company with terrorists and jihadists as we discussed before.

On September 11, 2001, Grover Norquist met in his office with a group of terrorists – “jihadis” if you prefer – to determine how to mend relations between Muslim leaders and American government officials, while the smoke was still rising after the attacks in which 3,000 of our citizens where murdered.

That alone should have put Mr. Norquist outside of the circle of trust among discerning and patriotic American leaders in the conservative movement, but it did not.

Mr. Norquist creating the Islamic Free Market Institute with money from Al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi should be a red flag to rational thinking people in “conservative” circles, and should ostracize Mr. Norquist from any participation among patriots in matters of import – nope.

Grover Norquist – the founder of Americans for Tax Reform – continues to move within conservative circles with ease. and has support from some prominent Republicans.  Not only are many leaders in the American conservative movement failing to raise serious questions about Norquist’s defense of easily identifiable terrorists, they defend him and call those who lay facts on the table “bigots” or other similarly absurd names.

Now, he is again up for election as one of the members of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Will the NRA allow a man who promotes and defends terrorists to be re-elected to their Board?

In February 2014, a group of prominent Americans prepared a report entitled “The Islamists and their Enablers Assault on the Right – The Case Against Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan.”  The report contains facts surrounding Mr. Norquist’s history with and support for terrorists.  Among those who signed the report were:  the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, 81st Attorney General of the United States; and the Honorable R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence.

The facts detailed in this report include:  Grover Norquist provided access to the White House for a number of terrorists during the Bush administration; Norquist is the registered agent for the Islamic Free Market Institute in Washington, D.C. which received money directly from terrorist/jihadi organizations including convicted Al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi and the SAFA Trust;  Alamoudi’s deputy at the American Muslim Council (AMC), Khalid Saffuri, was made the Director of the Islamic Institute with Norquist’s approval; Norquist promotes, works closely with, and defends a Muslim Brother/Jihadi named Suhail Khan, whose father, Mahboob Khan, was one of the most prominent Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the world prior to his death; and Suhail Khan served under two successive Secretaries of Transportation with a security clearance, and continues to be promoted and given access to positions of trust inside conservative circles by Grover Norquist.

Grover Norquist is a quisling and traitor, but as we return to Alan Gottlieb, he is a collaborator with quislings and traitors.  What does this make Alan?  NRA members should vote ‘no’ to Grover Norquist for NRA board, and smart men should stay as far away from Alan Gottlieb as they can get.

I was once a member of a Presbyterian church (and ostensibly, a conservative one at that).  I came to believe that next to the communist party in Russia, the session of elders in Presbyterian churches was the most corrupt, self serving, loathesome group of men on the planet, and the Presbyterian process the worst ever invented by sinful man.  Perhaps I was wrong.

First, Mike Vanderboegh penned an article explaining how NRA Board of Directors candidate John K. Brown is an ATF snitch.

As I noted here back in September, ATF snitch John Brown is running for the national board of the NRA. That he IS a snitch is indisputable (see here and here for starters).

Colonel Robert K. Brown of Soldier of Fortune magazine pointedly does not endorse this wholly-owned ATF minion, saying in large letters and italics, “SOF is NOT endorsing John Brown, who is no relation of mine.”

Brown does endorse the following folks:

“SOF endorses the following current BOD members for reelection: Scott Bach, Ronnie Barrett, David Coy, Joseph DeBergalis, Antonio Hernandez, David Keene, Wayne Anthony Ross, Don Saba, William Satterfield, Ronald Schmeits, Robert Unkovic and Robert Viden.SOF is also endorsing Sean Mahoney and Timothy Knight, who are running by petition. “

There are many questions raised by the John Brown candidacy, not the least of which is WHO on the current board backed him enough to get his name on the ballot? What is Wayne LaPierre’s role in this? Chris Cox’s? The more important question is why is a militarized federal police agency — entrusted with enforcing our firearm laws — trying to penetrate the highest levels of a group as powerful as the NRA?

I have just now gotten around to reading my February edition of American Rifleman.  In it is an insert from the nominating committee and a ballot, the nominating committe headed by none other than Tom King.  I’ve had my run-ins with Tom King, saying that he was “as emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the NRA as I’ve ever seen.  It’s the perfect example of how not to think about our rights.”

It’s not okay with me that Tom King is head of the NRA nominating committe.  It’s even more not okay with me that the nominating committe would have the audacity to nominate someone like Grover Norquist (number 19 on Tom’s list).  John Guandolo, with Understanding the Threat (whom I have heard speak with with whom I have exchanged mail and spoken), sends this along.

On September 11, 2001, Grover Norquist met in his office with a group of terrorists – “jihadis” if you prefer – to determine how to mend relations between Muslim leaders and American government officials, while the smoke was still rising after the attacks in which 3,000 of our citizens where murdered.

That alone should have put Mr. Norquist outside of the circle of trust among discerning and patriotic American leaders in the conservative movement, but it did not.

Mr. Norquist creating the Islamic Free Market Institute with money from Al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi should be a red flag to rational thinking people in “conservative” circles, and should ostracize Mr. Norquist from any participation among patriots in matters of import – nope.

Grover Norquist – the founder of Americans for Tax Reform – continues to move within conservative circles with ease. and has support from some prominent Republicans.  Not only are many leaders in the American conservative movement failing to raise serious questions about Norquist’s defense of easily identifiable terrorists, they defend him and call those who lay facts on the table “bigots” or other similarly absurd names.

Now, he is again up for election as one of the members of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Will the NRA allow a man who promotes and defends terrorists to be re-elected to their Board?

In February 2014, a group of prominent Americans prepared a report entitled “The Islamists and their Enablers Assault on the Right – The Case Against Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan.”  The report contains facts surrounding Mr. Norquist’s history with and support for terrorists.  Among those who signed the report were:  the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, 81st Attorney General of the United States; and the Honorable R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence.

The facts detailed in this report include:  Grover Norquist provided access to the White House for a number of terrorists during the Bush administration; Norquist is the registered agent for the Islamic Free Market Institute in Washington, D.C. which received money directly from terrorist/jihadi organizations including convicted Al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi and the SAFA Trust;  Alamoudi’s deputy at the American Muslim Council (AMC), Khalid Saffuri, was made the Director of the Islamic Institute with Norquist’s approval; Norquist promotes, works closely with, and defends a Muslim Brother/Jihadi named Suhail Khan, whose father, Mahboob Khan, was one of the most prominent Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the world prior to his death; and Suhail Khan served under two successive Secretaries of Transportation with a security clearance, and continues to be promoted and given access to positions of trust inside conservative circles by Grover Norquist.

I’m sorry to lift so much out of John’s article, but I know he won’t mind.  Go read his entire piece.  It’s just that important.  The NRA has on its ballot for board of directors a terrorist enabler.

So let’s say that you are Mr. Steve Hornady or Mr. Ronnie Barrett on the same ballot and you are offended by being placed in the same category as these two men (or Tom King).  Let’s say you don’t like sweeping judgments or a broad brush. Let’s say you’re offended by all of this.

Very well.  It was written to offend, so I have been successful.  I’m delighted you are offended, and that I was the one to do it.  If you don’t like the company you keep, if you want the NRA to straighten up, then get yourself some clorox, some rags, and a wire bristle brush.  Go to work and clean out your damn nasty-ass house.  Then we won’t have to have words like this.  We can be friends.

NY Daily News:

In my “Albany Insider” column today, I wrote how Tom King, the head of the state Rifle & Pistol Association, was critical of the increasingly angry and inflammatory rhetoric at pro-gun rallies. King said he fears that the ugliness that has popped up at the rallies is actually hurting the pro-gun cause. He also said it’s time to stop the rallies, arguing that they won’t result in a repeal of the SAFE Act. He wants to instead focus on trying to get the law struck down in the court …

I won’t post his silly letter, but I thought it would be appropriate to highlight this paragraph.

Fellow gun owners I submit this to you for your consideration. We will never convert the 22% rabid anti-gunners, we don’t have to convert the 32% avid pro gunners but we must convert a sizable portion of the 46% of those somewhere in between if we want to retain our 2nd Amendment Rights long term. These are the soccer moms, the guys who say I’ve never shot a gun but would like to try it and the people worried about their safety. How do we do that? Not by standing on stage screaming obscenities at Cuomo and certainly at large rallies where people stand on stage, pound their chest and tell the attendees to prepare for war. That frightens the very people we want to attract to our side, the people who will insure (sic) 2nd Amendment Rights for our grandchildren.

As a sidebar comment, the people he wants to attract will not insure (sic) 2nd amendment rights for our grandchildren.  But second, this letter is as  emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the NRA as I’ve ever seen.  It’s the perfect example of how not to think about our rights.

The strategy he advocates is why we’re where we are, among other reasons like loss of our national moral conscience.  He wants first to turn to the black robes, and failing that (as it certainly will fail and has already failed), he wants to turn to popular opinion.

Like so many other NRA board members, he wants to be oh-so-respectable and loved by the people.  Don’t appear extreme and scary, says he.  Never mind the warnings that should be issued to the collectivists should they continue with their pursuit of confiscation and onerous laws and harassment.  Never mind that they could be declaring war as an unintended consequence of their lust for power.  Don’t be scary to the people we want to persuade.

I rarely cite polls or popular opinion because while they may matter to the exigencies of my life, they don’t matter to my rights.  I have weapons because God gives me the right to own weapons, not the second amendment.  The opinions of the people are as subject to the vicissitudes of ideology as the times in which they live, and the mind of man cannot be entrusted with the rights of mankind.  If Mr. King is placing his trust in the people, he is building his house on sand.

My rights are what they are by divine pronouncement.  It is righteous to own guns because it reflects the character of the Almighty.  Without this I’m no different than the statist thugs and collectivists who want to disarm me, except we happen to be on different sides of an issue.  It means everything … everything … to be right and righteous.

Until the NRA board of directors is as convinced of the foundations of their rights as I am, they will be a weak and neutered organization, fit for nothing much except a good magazine once a month.

UPDATE. David Codrea links some history on this.  Jacob is a real piece of work.  Come on into my house, Jacob, and let’s throw down.  I’ll call you out for being the sorry, pathetic, collectivist piss ant you are.  Or did I already just do that?

Matt Valentine writing at The Atlantic has a breathless story about how the up and coming power broker on the gun scene is the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Every year from 1998 through 2010, the NRA spent at least ten times more than the NSSF on direct lobbying. Today those numbers are converging—the NRA has spent $1.7 million so far in 2013, compared to $1.1 million spent by the NSSF, mostly in efforts to loosen state requirements for concealed carry permits. The NRA still boasts the political muscle to sway the outcome of major legislation, but the big gun lobby’s intervention is conspicuous and subject to ridicule, and an NRA campaign contribution can sometimes become a political liability—in a 2013 PPP poll, 39% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate backed by the NRA, whereas only 26% said they’d be more likely to. This April, when Senator Mitch McConnell (the NRA’s single biggest recipient of campaign contributions) used procedural tactics to block an expanded background check bill, NRA Board member Adolphous Busch publicly resigned from the organization, saying the group “clearly places priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers while disregarding the opinions of [its] 4 million individual members.”

[ … ]

This year, with gun deaths expected to exceed 31,000, and with the public more acutely aware of every tragic shooting, the NSSF managed to grab some positive headlines for a gesture of political compromise. During the senate hearings in the confirmation of B. Todd Jones to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the NSSF issued an open letter, endorsing President Obama’s nominee. A close reading reveals that the statement of support is hardly a ringing endorsement: “Undoubtedly, we will disagree with the ATF from time-to-time and are fully prepared to take the steps necessary to represent the interest of our industry members, but we are confident that under Mr. Jones we can agree to disagree with ATF in a mutually respectful manner.” However lukewarm, the letter was a surprising development—together with the NRA, the NSSF had pressured legislators to block every previous nominee for the ATF directorship since 2006. But under the threat of the “nuclear option” to change filibuster rules, Senate leaders had already agreed to confirm all of Obama’s appointments this summer. With Jones’s appointment a foregone conclusion, the main effect of the NSSF endorsement was to soften the headlines that would have otherwise prevailed (i.e. “ATF director finally confirmed after seven years of gun lobby resistance”).

Matt apparently believes the propaganda that gun owners really do support universal background checks.  This, along with some wishful thinking, has led him to conclude that the NRA is out of touch with its membership, while the more moderate NSSF is the up and coming powerhouse, more reasonable and less prone to extremes.

But Mike Vanderboegh calls the NSSF quislings and appeasers, and David Codrea and others lampoon not the NRA, but the NSSF.  In my extensive writing on the universal background checks, I somehow missed the fact that the NSSF had weighed in.  Had I caught this, I probably would have said something like they are a willing tool of Satan.

And it’s beyond me why anyone would think that gun owners care what Adolphous Busch had to say about anything.  The real rift that Matt misses because he is writing about something totally foreign to him, is that whether the subject is the NSSF or the NRA, they will all be held accountable for their sins if they ever sell out gun owners and side with the wicked totalitarians.

For the progressives among us, I know what you’re thinking, or at least what you want your fellow progressives to think.  It took on all the hallmarks of a major defeat, the gun bill fiasco did.  Your President, your progressives in the Senate, and the turncoat Republicans all conspired to push your agenda, and it crashed and burned.  You’re heartbroken and outraged at the same time.

You’ve tried to convince yourself that it wasn’t really the defeat it seemed.  The tactics are to blame.  “While an A rating from the NRA has long been a point of pride for politicians, MAIG is hoping its grades soon will carry the same weight to ensure votes and donations. The Mayors Against Illegal Guns Scorecard will incorporate the voting records, bill co-sponsorships, and public statements of members of Congress to determine a letter grade, NRA-style. MAIG will look at politicians’ stances on high-capacity magazines, background checks, and state authority to establish standards for concealed carry.”

So the evil NRA just outdid you at your own game.  Copy their tactics, you will.  It must be the tactics, for it couldn’t be that America doesn’t want your gun control.  Yet another tactic you’re investigating is to convince yourselves that the NRA isn’t really as powerful as they seem.  You will talk enough to make people comfortable with your plans.  But you can’t decide if you’ve got the clout.  Joe Manchin even admitted “ff the NRA didn’t score this, we would’ve had 15 more votes.”

And oh, there are the excuses.  Poor Michael Hirsh has perhaps the best one.  ” … it is practically a iron law of politics that the larger the interest group—in this case, the 90 percent of all Americans who want background checks—the less likely it will be able to mobilize against a smaller, more organized and passionate interest group, such as the National Rifle Association.”  Nine out of ten people can’t win anything against the one holdout.

But Michael concludes that with enough money, threats, and primaried Senators, you should be able to construct a Senate that is more conducive to your interests.  So we’re back to the NRA tactics again – because, you know, it couldn’t be that people aren’t interested in your proposed gun control measures.  Surely 90%+ of the people think like you do, sensible people, who just didn’t play a role against that evil behemoth, the NRA.  Everyone was bullied by those monsters from the NRA, Wayne and Chris.

I know, you don’t want to believe that the polls are badly misleading when they ask about those ethereal platitudes, as opposed to when the specifics are presented, complicating things for you.  You don’t want to believe it even when your own press tells you this.  So the 90%+ number must be right, and the evil NRA is to blame, or your own tactics, or lack of money, or something like that.  It cannot be that the people aren’t interested in your gun control measures.

So you hate the evil NRA, and harbor even worse thoughts for the gun manufacturers who makes these ever improving products of death, convince Americans that they need them, and hand over the propaganda points to the NRA.  They all must be stopped, you think.

True enough, Wayne and Chris get beaten up a bit in the media, but that’s okay.  We gun owners expect them to take it, and pay them well for it.  We don’t feel too sorry for them.  But there is something that you really don’t understand about all of this, and I feel a bit apprehensive in telling you this, rather like I am divulging our secrets.  But I just have to say these things.

The way it really works is different than you think.

The NRA is hearing from its constituency (that would be us), and the firearms manufacturers do our bidding.  We’re the boss.  A firearm hasn’t been fully vetted until it hits the American civilian market (the military forces its folks to use the bidder of choice), and the manufacturers respond to us.  They make what we want.  They earn our money, and if you think that we sit back and wait for the manufacturers to tell us what to think, just ask Smith and Wesson what happened as a result of their agreement with the Clinton administration.

We send Wayne out with his talking points.  We set Chris up to succeed in the printed media.  They’re our front men.  But we know things you don’t.  You see, we have the guns.  We know gun owners … we know them at work and church and in our neighborhood.  We talk to them.  We see them at the range, we discuss things, we learn from each other.  We know that this 90% number you’ve thrown around isn’t right.  It’s an outright lie.  These 9 out of 10 gun owners you’re talking about just don’t materialize in reality.  We know.  We’re around gun owners every day.

The hard realities of life are sometimes difficult to digest.  But the reality is that we own the NRA.  You’re directing your hatred at the wrong folks.  The firearms manufacturers make what we want.  We keep them financially strong.  The Senators aren’t really afraid of the NRA or Smith and Wesson or Ruger.  They are afraid that smart analysts will figure out what they’re really doing and the gun owning public will be well educated in the finer legal points of the proposed laws.

They may be spewing their hatred for the NRA, but it’s us they really hate.  We are the overlords.  We are gun owners, and you don’t control the gun base you thought you did.  All your base are belong to us.  Make your time.

MSNBC:

H. Joaquin Jackson is the kind of iconic rifleman that gun advocates welcomed to their board. He spent 27 years as a Texas Ranger and is remembered for following his commander into a jailhouse shootout and capturing an elusive horse thief.

The actor Nick Nolte spent several weeks studying Jackson in preparation for his role as a Ranger in the 1987 film Extreme Prejudice. And Tommy Lee Jones cast Jackson to play a sheriff in the 1995 TV movie The Good Old Boys alongside Jones, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and a young, unknown Matt Damon.

With Hollywood friends and a storied law-and-order past, Jackson was an ideal fit for the National Rifle Association’s 76-member governing board, which he joined in 2001. Today, however, he is under fire from a younger generation of NRA activists. Organizing online, they want Jackson voted off the gun lobby’s board for his past comments criticizing high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons. His comments are making waves again due to the assault weapons ban recently proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

[ … ]

“I wouldn’t be with the NRA if I didn’t believe in the Second Amendment,” Jackson told MSNBC in a telephone interview. But critics are not convinced. “Joaquin Jackson has a background in law enforcement and he’s a ‘staunch supporter’ of the Second Amendment…or is he?” recently asked one gun rights activist, Joe Levi, on his blog sittingduckpolicy.com.

“I personally believe a weapon should never have over, as far as a civilian, a five-round capacity. If you’re a hunter, if you’re going to go hunting with a weapon, you shouldn’t need over but one round. So five rounds would be plenty,” said Jackson in the video now labeled by one of his critics as “The Enemy Within” on YouTube.

On assault weapons, Jackson said: “Personally, I think assault weapons basically…need to be in the hands of the military, and in the hands of the police.”

Two years later the NRA’s lobbying wing posted a statement by Jackson to clarify “misunderstandings” about the interview. Jackson said his comments on assault weapons referred only to fully-automatic weapons used mainly by military forces and some police. High-capacity magazines, he clarified, were not appropriate for hunting.

I don’t care that Mr. Jackson is a former Texas Ranger, any more that I would care if he were an engineer or dug ditches for a living.  That movies that were made about his exploits are irrelevant to me.  His history means something to him, but nothing to me.

The same rule applies to boards of directors that applies to politicians.  You are voting for policy decisions.  Nothing more.  If my dog could consistently make decisions that followed my policy, I would vote for her for President.  She would certainly make a better one that the totalitarian clown we currently have.

And that bit about a clarification of his position is clearly a lie.  No one needs to “clarify” that he believes that hunters need to limit their available rounds for  sporting purposes because every state already does that without his assistance.  And as for a high capacity magazine, if all you’re talking about is the difference between LEOs having fully automatic weapons and civilians not being allowed to (a policy with which I firmly disagree anyway), then there is no need to bring it up in the first place.  It’s not germane to the conversation.

Jackson is therefore lying about his clarification.  Jackson’s days should be limited on the NRA board of directors.  There is no place – none – for someone who says he believes in the second amendment but undercuts it with his words.  The second amendment says nothing about hunting, and Mr. Jackson believes in a different second amendment than do I.  Mine is written in the Bill of Rights, and he fabricated his version in his head.

THIS makes it sound like he does.

Kurt Hofmann has a must-read article on the connection between gun confiscations and gun registration (or so-called universal background check).  It’s an issue I have been discussing for some time.  Kurt begins his article this way.

St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner is a frequent and vocal critic of the NRA (see here and here for recent examples), often wondering if the organization’s leadership is merely naively optimistic, à la Neville Chamberlain, in its dealings with the forcible citizen disarmament extremists, or actively collaborationist, à la Vidkun Quisling. Honesty requires, however, acknowledgement of effective steps the NRA does take in defense of gun rights.

Read the rest at Examiner.  Taking off on this honesty though, I have also been a critic of the NRA before, begging, as it were, the NRA to put its full force behind educating the public to the dangers of universal background checks as a pretext for and necessary precondition to a national gun registry, which is itself a precondition for gun confiscations.

Today I received a flyer in the mail from the NRA where they said exactly that.  The NRA might be frustrating at times, but they are still the largest and most powerful gun rights organization in America, and it matters what they say.  I don’t partake in pitting one organization against another.  That’s a loser’s proposition, and it’s what the enemy wants us to do.  I sincerely appreciate each organization that protects gun rights and stands against the totalitarian state.  I will correct them when they wander, and praise them when they do well.

Moving on to Wayne, he is under criticism these days, most notably for his belief in a coming apocalypse and the prudence of guns to address it at a personal level.

National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre is again under fire after penning an op-ed that claimed Americans need guns to fight off rampant gangs, terrorists and psychotics.

LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, claimed the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy showed what the future would hold, and why every law-abiding citizen needs to arm themselves.

“We saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” he wrote in the Daily Caller. “Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”

Immediately LaPierre was attacked. Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough said, “He has lost his mind,” on his MSNBC show Morning Joe, while President Barack Obama’s strategist David Plouffe called the NRA head “delusional.”

In his argument against new gun control laws, LaPierre described a world where Americans would be defenseless without guns and fall prey to everything from terrorists and Latin American drug gangs to civil unrest and looters in the wake of natural disasters. He said Americans would, in effect, be crazy not to arm themselves against the coming calamity and to rise up in protection of their Second Amendment rights.

Well, Joe Scarborough is a moron and so the balance of what he said is unimportant, but let’s consider the state of the union for a moment.

Pakistan is now our enemy.  We are withdrawing forces from Afghanistan after having lost the campaign because we wanted to wage nation-building instead of war.  Libya is now a disaster, and we left our men to perish in Benghazi with forces available to respond to their need.  Iran is headed towards a nuclear weapon and Israel is alone in her quest for self preservation.  War is coming to the Middle East, and we won’t be energy independent when it happens mostly because of the EPA.

Russia is reasserting itself unopposed in its “near abroad,” and China owns 1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasury Securities.  Our Southern border may as well not exist, and MS-13 is in every major city in the U.S., and most smaller cities, while some in the border patrol and law enforcement across America are bought off with drug money.  The cartels South of the border have morphed into transnational warlords who kidnap, extort, murder, traffic, and torture, and they’re moving North.

We’re in horrible national debt, and our unfunded liabilities reach a staggering $87 trillion.  Within ten years, the interest on the national debt will reach $10 trillion per year, the unemployment rate is still hovering around 8% or higher, the under-employment rate is still around 18% or higher, a recovery is nowhere in sight and won’t be until we get spending and entitlements under control, half of the American people don’t pay federal taxes, 47 million people rely on food stamps and that roll is growing at the rate of 11,000 per day, and the U.S. Marines are set to lose 20,000 men.

We are too broke to refuel our aircraft carriers, the administration has – for now – gotten away with walking guns across the Southern border in an effort to bolster support for gun control in America, food prices may soon soar, and amidst it all, the administration is working hard on that currently critical need to take guns away from the American people, which would of course be the catalyst for fourth generation warfare in America.

I think Wayne is on solid ground here.  In short, good flyer in the mail, good call on a former ally turned enemy, and keep it up.  As for the apocalypse, I don’t have to be told by anyone.  I’m doing my best to prepare for it.  Are you?

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike Vanderboegh for the link.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to David Codrea for the link.

UPDATE #3: Thanks to David Hardy for the link.