Via WoG, “[a]nd if NRA  has been funneling millions into this guy, who this post claims is a major Democrat/gun-grabber donor, then what are supporters really ultimately donating to?”

Some folks have dignity, a spine and a sense of morality and decency left.  Witness Allen West.

It has become very apparent that I need to speak out about what is happening at the National Rifle Association.

I am in my second term as a Board member, and I am deeply concerned about the actions and statements being made. The recent statements by Charles Cotton and Carolyn Meadows that are appearing in the Wall Street Journal, and now other news outlets, are outright lies. I have never been told, advised, informed or consulted about any of these details mentioned in the WSJ, and who knows how much more despicable spending of members’ money.

These statements have maliciously, recklessly and purposefully put me, and uninformed Board members, in legal jeopardy.

Prior to the NRAAM in Indianapolis I sent an email to Wayne LaPierre’s managing director, Millie Hallow, expressing my sentiment that Wayne LaPierre resign immediately.

I also drafted a memo entitled “Resolution of Concerns,” both of these statements are known to the NRA Board. It is imperative that the NRA cleans its own house. If we had done so in Indianapolis, much of this could have been rectified.

I do not support Wayne LaPierre continuing as the EVP/CEO of the NRA. The vote in Indianapolis was by acclamation, not roll call vote. There is a cabal of cronyism operating within the NRA and that exists within the Board of Directors. It must cease, and I do not care if I draw their angst. My duty and responsibility is to the Members of the National Rifle Association, and my oath, since July 31, 1982, has been to the Constitution of the United States, not to any political party, person, or cabal.

The NRA Board of 76 is too large and needs to be reduced to 30 or less. We need term limits of four (4) terms on the Board. We need to focus the NRA, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization on its original charter, mission, training and education in marksmanship, shooting sports, and the defense of the Second Amendment.

I will dedicate all my efforts to the reformation of the National Rifle Association and its members, of whom I am proud to serve.

It sickens me to publicly make this statement, but I will not allow anyone to damage my honor, integrity, character, and reputation. Needless to say, there are those who have willingly done so to their own.

Steadfast and Loyal,
Lieutenant Colonel Allen B. West (US Army, Retired)
Member, 112th US Congress
Patriot Life Benefactor, Board Member, National Rifle Association

If I could medically have ever been in the military (I’ve had RA and Psoriasis all of my life, although I seem to get along okay with it, and my right index finger works fine in spite of it’s gnarled knuckles), he could have led me into battle before any other man, and I wouldn’t have hesitated to send my son to fight under his leadership.  I’ve said before, I preferred a black man for President above everyone else running, this specific black man, and if he had been successful he would have been the first black man who had been President.  And I do mean black, and man.  Obama was neither.

And my bet is that he would have been a true defender of the second amendment.  I hope and pray he has success and that other, more timid and less moral directors, follow in his footsteps.

UPDATE: I see that Sebastian has linked Carolyn Medow’s response to West.

We should end this petty bickering immediately. Now is the time for the NRA to return to its core mission: representing our members and defending the conditional freedoms of America.

There’s more at the link.  So to Meadows, when someone finally stands up and does the right thing, it’s “petty bickering.”  That’s ridiculous and laughable, a discourteous indictment that could be said about any disagreement, anywhere, anytime over anything.  Sebastian has titled his post “I will not help Ack-Mac Destroy The NRA.”  This is a formal logical fallacy.  It’s a false dilemma (it’s close to a Hobson’s choice).  We don’t have to settle for keeping anyone.  All of them can be run out of town on a rail.  I’m no fan of Oliver North who supports the Hughes amendment, Ack-Mac (who shouldn’t have been so deep in the pockets of the member’s dues), or Wayne.

As for Ms. Meadows, I find it amusing that she should think it matters to me what she thinks.  She has never had to face the hard choices like Col. West, nor has she ever had to deal with life and death situations.  She isn’t fit to shine Mr. West’s shoes in my book.

Reuters:

When Missouri Senate Bill 656 was introduced in 2016, it was relatively modest legislation that proposed capping the amount county sheriffs could charge for a concealed handgun permit.

By the time it passed, with both houses of the state legislature overturning the governor’s veto, it had become one of the most expansive gun-rights laws in the country.

The gun lobby fought hard to pass the bill. The group some lawmakers credited with providing crucial momentum was not so much the National Rifle Association, the powerful national lobbying organization, but rather the Missouri Firearms Coalition, an aggressive grassroots operation founded in 2015.

With major gun-rights legislation stalled in Washington, much of the action has shifted to the states, where self-described “no compromise” groups such as the Missouri Firearms Coalition have mobilized activists in favor of pro-gun laws, according to Reuters interviews with gun-rights groups in more than a dozen states, lawmakers and NRA supporters.

These groups have become increasingly active in promoting a pro-gun agenda in many states, unafraid of alienating lawmakers who waver on gun rights. In many cases, they say they would rather lose a legislative fight on principle than compromise and support a watered-down bill.

At times, this can put local groups at odds with the NRA, which some see as too willing to give ground on the most aggressive pro-gun laws in state legislatures, said Greg Pruett, president of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, which formed in 2012.

“It’s always kind of interesting when you see a lot of people in the gun control community talk about how radical the NRA is,” said Pruett, whose group organized an email and telephone campaign to pass a 2016 Idaho law allowing people to carry concealed handguns without a permit, also known as “constitutional carry.”

“There’s an entire movement on the other side of the NRA … We’re done compromising,” he said.

Missouri Firearms Coalition political advisor Aaron Dorr says the NRA fought against constitutional carry for years, considering it too much of a longshot, and only came on board once passage was certain. The Missouri law not only authorized constitutional carry, it made Missouri a “stand your ground” state, extending the right to lethal self-defense outside the home, even when retreating is an option.

“It was the Missouri Firearms Coalition that was on the ground first with this,” said Jered Taylor, a Missouri state representative. “Eventually the NRA came on board, but the Missouri Firearms Coalition was the one that pushed it.”The NRA contended that it supported Senate Bill 656 from start to finish. The NRA assesses legislation across the states and sometimes opts for incremental victories, spokesman Lars Dalseide said.

“While the all or nothing approach may sound noble, the fact is you usually end up with nothing,” Dalseide said. “The other groups may have called for the passage of these bills in the past but they are largely fundraising organizations … None of these legislative initiatives moved an inch until the NRA got involved.”

[ … ]

The most uncompromising among them say the NRA has become too timid and too willing to back measures such as removing firearms from people deemed dangerous.

“I call it pre-emptive concession,” said Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, which has helped expand concealed carry rights and a “stand your ground” law.

That the NRA would trot out a spokesman who would say something like that, making them sound like crying little girls, says more than anything the spokesman could ever do or say to harm the NRA.

The NRA has harmed not only gun rights in America (with its support for the GCA, the NFA, the connection of mental health to crime, and the bump stock ban), but they have marginalized themselves in the process, becoming nothing more than a money grabbing organization.  It’s a shame, really, as it could have been different.

But it’s nice to see people waking to this reality and working at the state and local level.  As they do that, it can always be expected that the NRA will claim the credit for it.  As I’ve said before, I consider the NRA to be the largest, most well funded and well connected gun control organization on earth.

David Codrea links this Ammoland piece by Jeff Knox.  Boy is this some disturbing reading.  I cannot possibly rehearse all of the dirty laundry there, but there is this titillating little fact that may catch your interest.

Heston won that election by four votes, and immediately left the meeting to jet back to LA and appear on a radio talk show, during which he repeatedly stated that it was inappropriate or civilians to own AK47 type rifles. He eventually learned his script better, and the following year stepped up to become President of the NRA.

Embarrassingly, I didn’t know that.  Well then, Charlton Heston was a traitor, clear and simple.  I need no other evidence.  Jeff also discusses Adam Kraut, whom he supports for the board, and after reading his response to Marrion Hammer, I do too.

As for me, you could easily guess my own position.  Marrion Hammer can go traffic in her lies and misdirection somewhere else.  I’m not impressed in the least.

There is a deep, dark problem within the NRA.  Their history is a divided one, and their traitorous actions (e.g., the Hughes amendment) have harmed the firearms community, and I might also point out something I have before.  By outlawing the manufacture of machineguns after 1968, which the NRA didn’t fight, and also by the existence of the National Firearms Act, the engineering and design of open bolt firearms essentially ceased within the United States.  This has weakened the U.S. military and possibly lead to deaths of service members on the field of battle.

I cannot cipher the NRA willingness to hop in bed with traitors unless they are in fact traitorous themselves.  Let’s assume for a moment that the NRA actually chose to wield their power on Capital Hill.  Let’s assume for a moment that the this forthcoming bump stock ban wasn’t the NRA’s idea.  Let’s assume for a moment that they informed every Congressman and Senator that they expected a vote on this, and that the vote would be tallied and scored, with NRA money behind their efforts to primary enemies of the second amendment.

In other words, let’s assume that the NRA was doing its job.  Wayne Lapierre could be literally one of the most powerful men in Washington.  The red carpet would be rolled out for him everywhere he goes.  Who wouldn’t want that?  But instead of this, we see that the board is so discombobulated that it cannot accomplish anything of value or worth, and Wayne and Chris continue their deconstruction of the second amendment unabated.  Note this comment on Adam’s piece by Rob Pincus.

The Board of Directors is far too large and almost completely powerless, but voting out the Status Quo Old and voting in the new is what it needs.

Creating a large board and hamstringing their efforts with rules is the surest way to render them powerless.  What happens if the NRA sells us out over bump stock bans and other future gun control laws (I also suspect Marrion Hammer is the reason we don’t have open carry in Florida)?  Well, the gist of various comments from TTAG sums it up nicely for me.  If the NRA doesn’t do an about-face, and that, very soon and very quickly, and without any more of our money, they need to be destroyed.

They need to be finished as an organization.  They can turn their board over to the Fudds for gun control, or some other such nonsense group, and go broke for all I care.  But if they don’t do a U-turn, they will have no more of my money or attention.  This war needs to get ugly, and fast.  I realize that many of my readers have already come to the same conclusion long ago.

NYT:

The National Rifle Association on Thursday endorsed tighter restrictions on devices that allow a rifle to fire bullets as fast as a machine gun — a rare, if small, step for a group that for years has vehemently opposed any new gun controls.

Twelve of the rifles the Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, had in a high-rise hotel suite when he opened fire on a crowd on Sunday were outfitted with “bump stocks,” devices that allow a semiautomatic rifle to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, which may explain how he was able to shoot so quickly, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds of others. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has ruled that bump stocks do not violate laws that tightly limit ownership of machine guns, and some lawmakers have called for them to be banned.

The bureau should revisit the issue and “immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law,” the N.R.A. said in a statement released Thursday. “The N.R.A. believes that devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”

Ignoring the small issues of “shall not be infringed,” the NRA caves on bump fire stocks, as surely as most of the senators and congresscritters will cave, many of whom will have high marks from the NRA.

The NRA is still conflicted as to whether it wants to be a hunter and sportsman organization of a second amendment and gun rights organization.  As I mentioned, I don’t have one, and consider them to be mostly a novelty and range toy.  I would never put one on a personal defense weapon, accuracy and control being too important for such things for me to consider a high rate of fire as more important, especially near or around other people.

That said, I cannot be convinced that the shooter who landed all of this crap in our lap would have been less effective if he had aimed and fired in a controlled manner than with the bump fire stock, if in fact such a device was used.

The point to be taken here is not that of the bump fire stocks (the senate and congress is always looking for ways to further regulate your rights, even if not constitutionally allowed).  Bump fire stocks are merely the latest incarnation of the boogeyman.  Tomorrow it will be something else.  The point is that there is a world of difference between knowing that you’ll lose a fight, and actually going on record stating that you agree with your enemy.

The NRA.  Always squishy, never completely fulfilling their stated purpose, and always disappointing.

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?

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.

From Fox News:

The White House and the nation’s leading gun lobby will meet face to face Thursday amid an intensifying effort in Washington to craft new gun control measures, in what could be a testy session.

The National Rifle Association confirmed to Fox News that the group has accepted an invitation to meet with the Vice President Biden-led task force examining ways to curb gun violence. The task force was formed in the wake of the Connecticut school massacre and is running up against an end-of-the-month deadline to produce a set of proposals.

The administration says mental health and the entertainment industry will likely be examined as part of that process. But much of the discussion, and proposals from Democratic members of Congress, continue to center around gun control.

Well, it’s that time of year again, time to renew my membership.  So let’s make my own expectations for Wayne, Chris and the balance of the NRA executives clear.  Meet with these guys all you want, or feel you need.  But there must be limits.

I know that you’ve pointed to mental health issues, and I’ve made my own history with getting a concealed handgun permit known before.  I had to have a felony background check, get fingerprinted, and sign over authority for my own medical records to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff.  Any admissions to local hospitals for mental health or substance abuse problems would have been reason to have denied my application for a concealed handgun permit.

Of course, I have no personal issues to hide, and I got my permit, but I foresee a time in America where this might be controlled by the federal government, and there might be some rather disagreeable standard (such as Freudian Psychology) applied by external reviewers who are themselves rather disagreeable (e.g., Psychiatrists who have been specifically approved by the state).  For that matter, the mere act of desiring to own a firearm may be seen as aberrant behavior and made a reason to deny the request.

As for closing this so-called “gun show loophole,” that’s not the real point.  The phrase is a smoke screen to hide the fact that the concern isn’t real.  It’s a phantom issue.  As you know, gun shows are no different than person-to-person transactions in locations other than gun shows.  What they are really after is grandpa gifting his rifle or pistol to his grandson for Christmas without state approval.

We find the notion that grandpa cannot gift and bequeath his guns to be reprehensible, stomach-turning, repulsive, and highly immoral.  This is non-negotiable.  We don’t want the federal government involved any further in our business.

In summary, I don’t want you to press this mental health issue too far.  I am unconcerned about video games.  Getting a federal firearms license involved in my personal and family business isn’t an option.

Basically, not one more inch.  Not … a … single … inch.  I don’t want any more laws, regulations or stipulations.  I don’t want a single new requirement, code, interpretation, or federal worker.

If this is uncomfortable for you, I understand.  Turn the job over to me.  I absolutely do not mind in the least being called names and having your moral character questioned.  I note that even Ann Coulter has railed against your performance, asking if you’ve read John Lott’s book?

I haven’t read John’s book, and having exchanged e-mail once with him I find him to be a jerk.  You don’t need him, and neither do I.  And I can deal with Ann quite handily.

Or, perhaps you like your gig and want to keep it instead of turning it over to me.  Very well.  To you and Chris: Show  your backbone.  No compromise.  No prisoners.  No retreat.  Not … one … more … inch.