Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Bob Kukla, in an extremely courageous act, confirmed that the independence of ILA, and its effectiveness in fighting repressive gun legislation had been threatened by the Management Committee, composed of the three top officers. As proof, Kukla played an openly recorded tape of the February 26 Management Committee meeting in which he was criticized for ILA’s opposition to Smith & Wesson’s proposal for national handgun licensing, and ILA’s opposition to the National Education Association’s anti-handgun position. Kukla’s evidence convinced the neutral members of the seriousness of the problems within NRA; although relatively few members in the meeting had known of the Federation’s reform program, they supported it overwhelmingly.
Neal Knox
July 1977
From The Gun Rights War, page 311.
[I have often heard of “The Cincinnati Revolution” within the NRA but had never gotten any details. The Gun Rights War has several articles by Neal Knox about the revolt. Wow! No wonder there was a revolt.
Smith & Wesson proposed national handgun licensing? Was there a boycott then? Or was the first boycott in early 2000 when they tried to force all dealers and distributors to abide by a “code of conduct”? The “code of conduct” would have required all sales at gun shows to go through a background check, prohibited dealers and distributors from selling “assault weapons” or standard capacity magazines, and numerous other backdoor Second Amendment infringements. Gun owners decided then and there that Smith & Wesson must die and we almost did it too. Why wasn’t it well publicized that the Smith & Wesson betrayal was nothing new and had sided with the anti-gun people 23 years earlier?
If there was a boycott in 1977 Smith & Wesson apparently had forgotten about it. Let’s hope all gun manufactures learned their lesson in 2000 and we don’t have to repeat it. We need to be fighting the enemies of freedom rather than our own.—Joe]
“…although relatively few members in the meeting had known of the Federation’s reform program…”
Huh? I thought I understood until this “Federation” popped up. What’s this ominous “Federation” thingy?
Anyway; there’s always been a program of infiltration. It’s an Alinski style tactic. It happens right here in comments. I’m beginning to suspect ubu, and no doubt mikeb is a shill for the anti-rights bigots. There has been a rash of “I’m all for gun rights, but wouldn’t it be great to have this one more reasonable infringement” types of posts on thehighroad lately, too. I’m a bit taken aback by the number of members who fail to see through them. That’s the Republican Party sucks so bad – most of them are shills. I’m starting to think that an actual conservative in the Party deserves the title “RINO” because mainstream Republicans are Progressives.
Maybe we need to be looking seriously at some infiltration and chaos-creating-from-the-inside of our own. More important though is to keep track of our own basic principles. If we do that, there’s no chance an infiltrator can do anything but look like the stupid and ridiculous losers they are.
Lyle, the “Federation for NRA” was the very loosely organized group that ran the reform effort at Cincinnati. It was essentially a political party within the NRA. Dad was the one the Federation leaders appointed to introduce the motions that reorganized the NRA. That night they put Harlon Carter in as Executive VP.
And S&W was a british owned company at the time. Bangor Punta I think.
Also most of the Cincinnati reforms have been killed off over the intervening years by ol’Lapew and his cronies.
Bangor Punta was a US corporation originally based in Bangor, Maine. They acquired controlling interest around 1965. In 1982 Bangor Punta was itself acquired by Lear Siegler. Five years later Tomkins PLC, a British-owned firm, acquired the gun business. In 2001 Saft-T-Hammer, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based manufacturer bought the company (and repudiated the much-maligned agreement with the Justice Department) and has owned it since.
Only vestiges of the Cincinnati Reforms are left. The path to the ballot now includes a petition process, where prior to 1977 the ballot contained only Nominating Committee slate of candidates, and usually contained 25 names for 25 vacancies. The ballot often an admonition from the board recommending a vote for all 25.
The Meeting of Members, which once exercised great power, including direct election of the Executive Vice President and the ability to propose and vote on bylaw changes, is now a pep rally with no real power. It’s a fact that the members’ meetings were a tiresome and often rancorous, but they provided clear guidance from the members to the Board and staff that the members wanted an activist NRA. Since the late 1990s the most contentious issues have not been whether the NRA should be part of the Gun Lobby, but how the money collected form members should be spent. Unfortunately the people who benefit most from a free-spending NRA are not barred from participating in the NRA’s spending decisions, and so the incessant fund-raising mail and phone calls.
There’s a fair amount of this history in the book, and my thanks to Joe for plugging it here.