doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com " United We Stand"

Very mature, Jim! Nothing like a little name-calling to lend weight to your argument.

"United we stand, Divided we Fall" Seems as if there are a lot of divisions amongst us. Maybe it is time to just say, it is not important what you support, as long as you do support something! It is a helluva lot better than the apathetic millions that sit on thier collective arses and do nothing at all.

Well Jack, dissing the NRA--how about that one for starters? Where would you say the NRA has become "persona non grata"--other than amongst the gun control crowd? Note that I'm not saying you need to join the NRA, but you certainly have to be their "friend" if you're a gun owner--because they're carrying a lot more water for gun owners than any other organization (certainly including the Ikes). Who would their enemies be, outside of antis? And why would gun owners care if antis are the enemy of an organization that stands up for gun rights? In fact, if the antigun types are NOT the enemies of the NRA, I'd think the NRA was going soft in its old age.

Not dissing, Larry, just stating facts. In case you have forgotten, the NRA national leadership created an image problem for itself by ill-advised name-calling back in 1995. That one blunder overshadowed the organization's good work, embarrassed many of their friends, cost them a significant number of members, and - for a while - made the NRA an 'untouchable' in much of the political world.

Fortunately, the NRA has regained much of its credibility by putting the "jack-booted thugs" rhetoric behind it (although the same leadership is running it). But a few NRA members still seem bent on reminding us by continuing the name-calling tactics.

The congress is not neatly divided into pro- and anti-gun extremes, as you seem to imagine. Nor is the American public, most of whom are somewhere in the middle. Yet they are the ones on whom our gun-owning minority depends to help preserve the Second Amendment.

Even today, some moderate politicians are reluctant to be seen meeting with NRA lobbyists, yet they may be willing to listen to other groups with a pro-gun agenda. And they may be persuaded to help us. That's why it is important to carry the RKBA message with more than a single voice. It's fine to be preaching to the choir, and no one does that better than the NRA. But we need to be heard by the congregation as well.

You wouldn't recognize a fact if it bit you on the nose, Jack. You've repeatedly stated that calling the NRA the only game in town(with any serious clout) is untrue. This has been stated by me and several others and it certainly is a fact.
Another fact is that the BATF has acted like jack-booted thugs at times. The NRA was only wrong to have apologized for calling them what they were.
President George H. W. Bush resigned his NRA membership over that flap. IMO, he was out of line to do that, as well. I'd also bet he is an NRA member again. If not, he should be. Our membership declined from about 3.5 million to about 2.5 million around those years. Primarily because the Democrats and the press(but I repeat myself) did such a successful hatchet job on the organization. We recovered with the help of Charlton Heston, but membership should be 15-20 million, if the freeloaders would get off their apathetic butts and put their money where their interests lie.

Jack, your example that members of Congress listen to "other groups with a pro-gun agenda" is a good one . . . except, in spite of repeated attempts on my part to get you to give a SPECIFIC example of that, in the case of the IWLA--like maybe Ikes lobbyists meeting with an individual member, or group of members, to discuss gun rights--you keep coming up empty. I may be part of the choir, but I'm in the sanctuary with the rest of the congregation--and I'll be darned if I hear the Ikes singing any gun rights hymns.

Larry, your repeated demands for SPECIFICs reveal a profound lack of knowledge about lobbying in Washington. Having worked a bit with lobbyists in Washington, I'll try to fill you in.

As I posted earlier, most effective lobbying happens, not in televised committee meetings or public events, but in one-on-one private conversations between organization lobbyists and members or their legislative aides. They meet in offices, in corridors, in cafeterias, restaurants, private homes, on golf courses, wherever. Even in the lobbies from which the name of their profession is derived.

In these conversations, lobbyists argue for their organizations' policies, working to influence legislation or win votes. And, except perhaps for Jack Abramoff, they operate largely off the public radar screen.

The IWLA has lobbyists in DC. They do their job, meeting with politicians and arguing for IWLA national policies, including the gun rights policies I posted earlier.

To my knowledge, there are no public and SPECIFIC reports from IWLA lobbyists about whom they see and what they say. Are you suggesting that IWLA lobbyists are not talking to legislators and not supporting national policy?

Maybe you guys ought to back away from the computer. No one is going to win this arguement. Save your breath for the anti's.

Was this the same Charlton Heston who, following the Colombine massacure was asked to postpone or move the NRA convention out of Denver the following week and refused, then raised a rifle over his head for the press and proclaimed "ONLY WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS!"?
That certainly helped the organization.
Jake

Jake, I think you have been suckered by an urban myth spawned by the gun-grabbers. Here is the text of Heston's speech at the Denver NRA meeting following Columbine:


Yes, Heston did refuse to buckle under to emotional media and public pressure in the wake of Columbine - and I think he did right. To fold would have been an admission of responsibility for the shootings. But as for Heston's "cold, dead hands" performance, I believe it was taken out of context, as he predicted, from another occasion unrelated to Columbine.