Re: NRA Lawsuit
Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2024 7:50 am
My wife and I first joined the NRA in 1990 as basic members. In the early 2000s, I upgraded both of our memberships to Life Member. Circa 2009-2010, I upgraded both of our life memberships to Endowment Life Memberships. Sometime in the 20-teens, I stopped responding to fundraisers. Until just a few months ago, I’ve been disgusted by everything I’ve seen from Wayne LaPierre, but I also held onto hope that Charles Cotton (who at least used to be a baptist Sunday school teacher) would rein in the corruption and get the organization turned around. A couple of years ago, I became a GOA member, and I’ve almost entirely stopped paying attention to anything that comes out of any NRA mouthpieces. I continue to receive my American Rifleman magazine, but I don’t read it. I just keep the subscription alive so that I can feel like I’m still getting something for the money I put into NRA.
Here’s the bottom line for me… I hope NRA does all the right things, conducts a THOROUGH housecleaning and fires all or most of the current board AND executive staff, and rebuilds the organization and rewrites the bylaws with TRANSPARENCY as a core value. If they do not, I’ll write them off completely and cancel our memberships. One of MY core values is that you are known by the company you keep. I will not be a part of a corrupt organization that got caught with its pants down, and then refused to take advantage of the opportunity to fix itself.
In the past four or five years, "upstarts" like GOA, FPC and other gun-rights advocacy groups have done FAR more to advance the 2A both nationwide and in individual states than the NRA did in the previous ten. These organizations have shown themselves willing to engage in Lawfare in a way that the NRA tended to avoid, and that strategy has been extraordinarily effective in a way that the NRA has not been for almost 2 decades. Now maybe, part of the reason for that is that the NRA's attention is entirely focused on this legal battle. But sometimes well intentioned people do stupid shit, and it bites them on the butt. It happens. But the true mark of character is how that person responds to being bit. Does he take steps so that it can never happen again; or does he double down and dig his hole of stupid even deeper? The NRA snake is so busy swallowing its own tail that it can’t look up long enough to acknowledge its true condition. I won’t be part of that as it currently stands.
I sincerely hope that the NRA gets things turned around, so that we can enthusiastically support it. But if they half-ass it even a little bit, I’m bailing out.
Here’s the bottom line for me… I hope NRA does all the right things, conducts a THOROUGH housecleaning and fires all or most of the current board AND executive staff, and rebuilds the organization and rewrites the bylaws with TRANSPARENCY as a core value. If they do not, I’ll write them off completely and cancel our memberships. One of MY core values is that you are known by the company you keep. I will not be a part of a corrupt organization that got caught with its pants down, and then refused to take advantage of the opportunity to fix itself.
In the past four or five years, "upstarts" like GOA, FPC and other gun-rights advocacy groups have done FAR more to advance the 2A both nationwide and in individual states than the NRA did in the previous ten. These organizations have shown themselves willing to engage in Lawfare in a way that the NRA tended to avoid, and that strategy has been extraordinarily effective in a way that the NRA has not been for almost 2 decades. Now maybe, part of the reason for that is that the NRA's attention is entirely focused on this legal battle. But sometimes well intentioned people do stupid shit, and it bites them on the butt. It happens. But the true mark of character is how that person responds to being bit. Does he take steps so that it can never happen again; or does he double down and dig his hole of stupid even deeper? The NRA snake is so busy swallowing its own tail that it can’t look up long enough to acknowledge its true condition. I won’t be part of that as it currently stands.
I sincerely hope that the NRA gets things turned around, so that we can enthusiastically support it. But if they half-ass it even a little bit, I’m bailing out.