I’m going to address this subject one final time. After this, anyone who brings it up is going to get branded as a troll and I will ban your ass from commenting. This has gone on long enough; this is my place on the Intertubz, you’re wasting my time and I’m officially over it. Comments will be closed on this post. You don’t like it, get your own blog.
Before that, some housekeeping. This came in as a comment to a totally unrelated story, with the comment that they couldn’t find a way to contact me on the blog.
On the right side of the page there is a contact form. If you’re running something like Ghostery or Ad-Block, you may not see it. I run Ghostery as well and I’ve found it buggers up a lot of the standard Blogger widgets. If you’re going to read Blogger blogs, you may want to white list the entire *.blogspot.com domain, or if you want to be more granular, each of the Blogger blogs you frequent.
I’ve recently come to discover that these tools, used without discretion, are more of a club than a scalpel. There are a ton of things blocked in Ghostery, and not all of them are “bad”. But that’s a different post. If you want my take on it, leave me a note and I’ll write about it.
On to the subject at hand, which is the NRA, my support for it and the incessant idiocy that some people want to keep trotting out on the subject . I received the following over the weekend:
Of course, you can count on the NRA:
I’m an NRA Benefactor member. I’ve bought Life memberships for both of my kids. This weekend I wrote checks to both the NRA Political Victory Fund and the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. That’s called putting your money where your mouth is. I have to wonder how many of the NRA’s detractors have as much coin invested in the political side of the game, not to mention things like working tables at gun shows and talking to local politicians, as I have in the last few years.
I’m not going to bother to go back and search for the number of times I’ve taken the NRA to task on this blog. Just because I support them doesn’t mean I’m blind. When I think they’re wrong I’ll let them know. After writing checks this weekend, I wrote to them letting them know that any support for these bullshit ERPOs is an idiotic move that hearkens back to the bad old days of the NRA. I put it nicer than that, but that was the gist of the message.
I also have in front of me my 2018 ballot for the NRA Board of Directors. One of the nice things about being a Life Member or above (or an annual member of some years standing) is that you get to vote for the BOD members. This year there are 35 names and I can vote for 25. I plan on vote bombing, which means I’m going to vote for a few candidates whose positions would tend to put more hardcore Second Amendment backbone into the NRA’s positions. At the same time, I don’t want to turn the NRA into a group that is so absolutist that no one in DC or the 50 state capitals will listen to them.
You see, it’s a balancing act. Politics, and yes, Second Amendment advocacy is politics, is the art of the possible. The secret is recognizing what is possible, and I think the NRA, living in as close proximity to DC as it does, often doesn’t see the world the way those of us further away do. They get caught up in all the “inside the Beltway” business and start believing all the propaganda they’re immersed in, including their own. I think they’d be well advised to have another headquarters elsewhere and a staff rotation system so that people got a break from the Beltway.
However, I’m one voice, and a tiny little one, out of 5 or 6 million NRA members. If you want to have a voice, you’re going to need to join and put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, you’re just background noise that’s going to be tuned out. The NRA has been doing it to you for years, and I’m starting as of now.
Edit, 3/27/2018 1142: Fixed the comment instructions to say that the form is on the right side of the page rather than the left. Derp. Thanks to Bert for the catch.
