Category Archives: Gun Rights

A shining example

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If you haven’t read the entire thread I captured from the comments of Joan Peterson (a Brady Campaign board member) post in my post here please read at least the last update. It is a shining example of their mindset and inability to grasp simple concepts essential to the understanding of the problem they claim to be desirous of fixing. Anyone capable of counting to 100 should have been able to grasp the example given yet she was oblivious.

I am nearly at a loss for words. I cannot get my mind around what I read.

It simply cannot be real. Can it? Who would believe it if I were to tell a story of the existence of such a person?

I have another question now, “Why have we been in a struggle with people like this for over 35 years?”

Or perhaps, “How is she able to function in the real world? Shouldn’t she be institutionalized?”

Perhaps Heinlein’s observation is the most applicable:

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

20 to 1

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Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson, posting under the name “japete”, recently asked 20 questions of gun rights activists. Sebastian answered with a post of his own as did many others in the comments.

I have been very busy with work and other things the last few days so I haven’t said anything until this morning.

When you let other people do the asking of the questions they get to avoid their weak spots and strike at your weak spots. In general this isn’t the best long term strategy. You can’t really win. At best you won’t lose and most likely you will just lose more slowly than if you did nothing. To make progress (Hey! I’m a progressive!) you must make them defend.

I don’t have 20 questions for the Brady’s. I’m afraid I’m outnumbered 20 to 1.

My response:

japete,

I have Just One Question for you:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

I have to get to work right now but I should have time to answer your questions tonight.

I figure that at 20:1 my odds are better than that 50:50.

Update (September 23, 2010 1200):

japete responded:

Joe-probably all of those domestic homicides, restricting gangs and criminals from guns would save lots of live; I could go on and on. What is your point? So you think that restricting felons, domestic abusers, dangerously mentally ill people, terrorist would not have or won’t save lives? That’s hard to believe.

juan commented (and japete chastised him for making such a comment):

We should require an IQ test for gun ownership, that way none of the current crop of gun owning whackos would qualify to even own a gun. Problem solved!

I responded:

japete,

Please read the question and the post at the link carefully. I am asking which of those tens of thousands of laws, already in existence, restricting handheld weapons have demonstrated their effectiveness in making people safer. The CDC study concluded there is no evidence to support such a conclusion.

I am interested in actualities not potentialities. My point is that we should, and probably can, agree on replicating laws that produce clear, measurable, results that make societies safer with no appreciable risk and low cost.

If the goal of anti-gun activists is to improve public safety then they should agree, and would get agreement from the pro-gun side, that if a law cannot be shown to provide benefits with low risk and reasonable cost it should not be replicated and in fact should be repealed.

Because it has been repeatedly shown that gun laws do not measurably improve public safety, and have non-zero risk and cost yet anti-gun activists do not agree to repeal ineffective laws we question the claimed motive to improve public safety. There must be some other motive for increasing restrictions on weapons.

Juan,

You want to require an I.Q. test for gun ownership? Okay, so anyone that takes the test gets to own a firearm. Then anyone capability of sitting still long enough and answering the questions, rightly or wrongly, would be eligible to exercise their specifically enumerate right to keep and bear arms. If all anti-gun activists would go silent with that concession I would concede, even though I disagreed with it on principle and spend my time on other activities. But that surely isn’t what you meant. Presumably you had some minimum score which the prospective gun owner had to achieve on their I.Q. test before they could exercise their rights. Aside from the legal issue of requiring a test to exercise a fundamental right I have to wonder what you think the minimum threshold for gun ownership would be such that “none of the current gun owning whackos would qualify”. And are you smart enough to properly determine that threshold?

My I.Q. is about 150. What is yours?

I’m outnumbered 20:1. I think I’m holding my own so far.

Update (September 24, 2010 1415):

japete responded:

No bragging, Joe. Gun laws in most other industrialized countries are more strict than ours. Gun deaths per 100,000 in these countries don’t even come close to the number in this country. That is proof that some restrictions lead to lower percentages of gun deaths per population.

I responded:

japete,

You are avoiding the question again. The question is whether such laws made them safer. Not whether such laws reduced the “gun deaths”. This has been pointed out before here, if in response to firearms restrictions the criminal homicide using a firearm goes to zero but the total homicide and violent crime rate doubles then society has not been made safer.

If more innocent life is taken or permanently injured I take no consolation in the fact that no firearms was involved.

So again, where is the data that shows any restriction on person weapon ownership has made the average person safer?

Update (September 24, 2010 1600):

japete responded:

Joe- this is a new one. So, reduced gun deaths isn’t safer from the public? Please explain.

I responded:

japete,

I’m beginning to feel some frustration because I don’t know how to explain it much more clearly. Correct, just because there are fewer criminal uses of firearms does not mean the public is safer. Violent crime may increase even though firearms are not involved. The hypothesis to explain this unexpected (by some) results is that restrictions on the access of firearms may in fact enable crime because the victims are less able to defend themselves.

To the best of my knowledge there are zero peer reviewed studies that clearly show increasing restrictions on firearms has resulted in decreased violent crime. There are indications that criminal use of firearms has decreased but violent crime without a weapon or the substituting of different weapons increased to at least equal the benefits of the decrease in the crimes enabled by the firearms.

Hence, a decrease in the criminal use of firearms does not result in an increase in public safety.

I have read many books, countless peer reviewed studies without finding a satisfactory answer to my Just One Question. There are a few studies that show some hints that there were improvements but critics quickly found holes in them. If you follow the link to the CDC review of the dozens of papers on the topic you will find they conclude just what I am telling you. There is no clear evidence that any firearm restriction improves public safety. It may be that some law has improved public safety but the effect was so small that it was lost in the noise of all the other factors affecting violent crime such as poverty, changing demographic (large numbers of unemployed young men are bad for violent crime statistics), etc. But if the effect is that small then what is the justification for the costs of enforcement, the creation of a black market, and infringing upon a specific enumerated right?

Update (September 24, 2010 2015):

japete responded:

I, too, am frustrated with this thread. We do know that the Brady Law has prevented about 1.7 prohibited purchasers from buying guns. I have heard every argument possible about why that doesn’t prove anything. To me it proves that if we require background checks on all gun sales, we can prohibit people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them. Yes, they could go to the black market but they have been stopped in the first place. Some gun deaths are spur of the moment or when someone is quite angry. This is not at all scientific, but it seems logical to me that if you can stop people from buying guns, you may stop some gun injuries and deaths. We don’t know this since we have not tried it yet on a federal level. That’s the only way to make it work since then people couldn’t go to another state to get their gun from a private seller. So if there isn’t a gun around, one could say you have prevented a death in some cases. And since guns account for the highest number of homicides, it seems logical to me. For instance, I believe that my sister would be alive today if her estranged husband hadn’t had a lot of guns around his house when she stopped by to deliver some papers. He knew she was coming-she called him. He got ready with his gun and surprised her. Maybe a knife? She was more athletic than he and would have likely outrun him. A candlestick? Maybe but not likely. A hammer? Unlikely as well. Guns are more deadly- it’s that simple. Facts show that.

Sean D Sorrentino responded…

“Joe- this is a new one. So, reduced gun deaths isn’t safer from the public? Please explain.”
he already did. Let’s do a thought experiment. there is a room with 100 people. in one room there is a gun, and one person will be killed with it. 1 death per hundred, 1 “gun death” per hundred. in another room there are no guns, just a knife. 2 people will be killed. 2 deaths per hundred, but 0 “gun deaths.” which is “safer?”
Using the metric “gun death” doesn’t tell you the total rate.

japete responded:

Huh? totally missed this logic. I don’t think there is any there.

My response:

Since you cannot understand Seand D Sorrentino’s explanation of my case it is clear there is no further point in me saying anything. You are unwilling or incapable of understanding anything I (or any criminologist, or statistician) have to say on the topic. We simply do not have enough shared concepts to make communication possible.

I have recorded this thread on my blog here. It will be a shining example of the mindset of a board member of the Brady Campaign for years if not decades.

Game over.

Thanks for playing.

Update (September 25, 2010 0830):

My most recent response was not posted. She did reply with “Reasoned Discourse”:

There were so many comments to this thread that it’s not possible to answer them in the time I have available. From what I can tell, what you are all saying is that guns are not the problem. I see it differently. I have provided facts to show that gun deaths take more lives than any other means in the U.S. I am concentrating on the U.S. and what is going on here. It is still true that gun deaths per 100,000 are higher in the U.S. than other industrialized countries. You have shown me your own graphs and your own facts. We will have to agree to disagree about this. It is futile to keep going with this thread.

Quote of the day—Frank I. Cobb

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The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority…it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people.

Frank I. Cobb
January 1920
La Follette’s Magazine.
[Some people should get over it and just accept that the Declaration of Independence claims sedition is required under some circumstances and the Bill of Rights deliberately enables it.

The only people that could possibly object to this are those that aspire to be slaves or tyrants. Such people and their opinions should be given all the respect they deserve.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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By naming Greg Nickels as an alternate representative at the UN President Obama has essentially told America’s 85 million gun owners that their firearm civil rights are in jeopardy. Nickels cannot be counted on to defend the Second Amendment because he would like to see it erased from the Constitution.

Alan Gottlieb
Chairman for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
September 16, 2010
OBAMA REVEALS ANTI-GUN U.N. INTENT; SENDS EX-SEATTLE MAYOR AS REP
[Sometimes politics can be discouraging.

We got rid of him after he messed up in Seattle so badly that he lost in the primary. Now he is given the opportunity to mess up on a global scale. He should have been sent to Federal prison where he couldn’t do so much harm to everyone.—Joe]

To each according to his governments whim

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Via Alan we have this chilling scenario proposal:



The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.


What’s next?


I think I can guess.


First, total control of the money. You will no longer need cash because all the financial transaction will go through the government via your ID card.


After that you will no longer need money because the government will just take care of everything in their database. The government can assign you your living space and will have food other things delivered (or not) as the government thinks you need it.


They should have shot a bunch of politicians while they still had the tools to do it.

No comment

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From Texas:

Armed criminals should take notice.

Next time they try to mug someone, rob a convenience store or take a person’s car at gunpoint, the would-be victim or victims also could be carrying a weapon.

A growing number of Texans have applied and are authorized to carry concealed guns, show Texas Department of Public Safety records.

Figures for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31, have yet to be compiled, but at the end of calendar year 2009 the number of concealed handgun licenses increased 61.4 percent compared to the previous year, DPS reported.

I’m not surprised:

Marsha McCartney, president of the Dallas-based North Texas Chapter of the Brady Campaign, a nationwide organization that favors gun ownership restrictions, didn’t return several calls for comment.

In previous interviews, McCartney and other gun control advocates have said they worry about the growing number of Texans getting concealed handgun licenses because they say it has the potential for more violent crime.

So far that hasn’t been the case, according to some law enforcement agencies.

Remember, a potentiality is not an actuality. Make them argue actualities and not get away with potentialities. To do otherwise is like letting some racist argue, “If those uppity blacks are not put in their place they will taking your jobs and the whole country will fall apart.”

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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Henigan may be confused about American history, since no one of his political orientation traces his lineage back to anyone associated with the founding of this country. But when it comes to losers, Henigan ought to know better than most. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court put his two theories about the Second Amendment–that it protected a right of a state to have a militia, or that it protected a right of a person to be armed in a state militia–in the “recycling bin” and clicked on “empty.”

NRA-ILA
September 17, 2010
Don’t File Those Fingernails, Boys
[That isn’t the only thing Half-Truth Henigan is “confused” about.—Joe]

Obama popularity still high

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Via Roberta I discovered Obama’s popularity is still quite high—in China.

Obama-Diplomacy-Beijing-ChinaObama-Mao-Clothing-ChinaObama-US-Mao-Obamao-Beijing

Click on the first picture to see the text “The revolution isn’t success comrades, we must continue to be studious.”

In that last picture I had to look up “RMB”. It refers to the Chinese currency.

I find it “interesting” that under the Obama administration many Chinese believe U.S.A. stands for “United Socialists All”.

Obama and his friends should be aware there are such things as counter-revolutionaries. And the body counts (via Alan) might end up a little different if the gulags, famine, and torture start being implemented in this country.

I know that the members of the Gun Club at Microsoft picked up over 100,000 rounds of ammunition just yesterday. And how many of those rounds do you think went to capitalistic freedom loving people? And I wonder how many the Socialists at Microsoft picked up.

I would like for the Socialists to do the math before they engage in a purge. Math lessons can be “difficult”.

Quote of the day—Say Uncle

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Blacks should have been disarmed for their own good.

Say Uncle
September 17, 2010
Still racist after all these years
[[sarcasm]And women—women should be disarmed for their own good too. We can’t let those uppity blacks OR women have guns. We need to keep them in their place so we can keep them safe.[/sarcasm]—Joe]

Open house NRA-ILA event

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Via email from the Apex of the Triangle of Death:

Alright guys, just got confirmation from Wholesale Sports Outdoor Outfitters in Federal Way that we are cleared to run another open house up there this weekend.  Our hours are going to be Saturday from 9-8 and Sunday from 10-6; if you’re free to help out recruit volunteers and get the word out, please let me know by replying to this email!  Also, feel free to tell friends and anyone you know to stop by on Sat-Sun; feel free to post this to forums, blogs, wherever you like.

Let me know if you’re free to help, even if it’s just for an hour!

Regards,
Caleb N Giddings
NRA ILA Campaign Field Rep
317-445-9332

Federal Way is a few miles south of Seattle and north of Tacoma. The address of Wholesale Sports 1405 S 348th St, Federal Way.

Update: As noted in the comments, Federal Way is a city, not a street. Outsiders might be confused by that name. Other common confusions of outsiders exist over the pronunciation of several of the local cities rivers and mountains. All this is provides a great deal of amusement for the locals. Locations of particular note include Issaquah, Nisqually, Puyallup, and Snohomish (not to be confused with Sammamish or Stillaguamish).

Quote of the day—Paxton Quigley

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I once went to Paulden, Arizona, where you can “open carry.” You could go to the market, or gas up, wearing your holster. It felt like the good old Wild West. It was kind of a neat feeling.

Paxton Quigley
September 2010
Do Girls Need Guns?
[Link via Say Uncle.

I remember the first time I openly carried in a restaurant. It was a neat feeling. Kind of like the first time I went skinny dipping. A very free and natural feeling.—Joe]

Brady Campaign intern duties

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I have more information on the duties of the intern the Brady Campaign would like to have work for them for free:

Description of Internship
Interns with the Research Department choose a specific research project to complete during the course of the internship in addition to pitching in on administrative tasks related to research, public affairs, or fundraising.
The following are examples of research projects currently on our docket, and new research projects come up all the time:
Short reports (2-3 pages) that are part of our “Gun Laws Work” series, e. g. explaining the success of gun control laws in California, New York City, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Fact sheet summarizing the research on the lethality of guns relative to other weapons and suicide methods
Fact sheet summarizing the research on the offensive vs. defensive use of guns
Updating and expanding the data for our God Bless America poster comparing gun homicide counts and rates for the U. S. and other countries.

Since I know people from the Brady Campaign frequently read my blog I would like to suggest they also have the intern explain why gun and ammunition sales are way, WAY up, gun bans are being struck down, more people are carrying guns in public and yet the crime rate keeps dropping.

If that task is too tough perhaps they could do a little warm up exercise by defining the universe and give three examples and defend the claim that double entry bookkeeping is a bad idea.

Quote of the day—wheresjack

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There are only two reasons to own a hand gun, one is to shoot at a target and the other is to shoot at a person. The Liberal Party is committed to banning hand guns in Canada and I will make sure they stick to that commitment. For the target shooters that are serious about owning a hand gun, I will ask for legislation that permits ownership under strict guidelines and keeps the guns under lock and key at the accredited range of their choice. Transporting the gun would require a security service to take it from one approved location to another.

wheresjack
September 14, 2010
Where’s Jack on Gun Control?
[Wrong! Those aren’t the only reasons. And even if it were true what’s the problem? Sometimes some people need to be shot. That is the reason the police carry their guns. I carry a gun with me because I can’t carry a policeman.

The right to keep and bear arms is a basic human right. Any person, any political party, or any government opposed to such a basic human right cannot be trusted in a position of power and should be forever banned from positions of public trust if not jailed. We need to put pressure on these admitted violators of human rights in other countries.—Joe]

Another bigotry example

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Suppose the law said companies were not allowed discriminate in their hiring or firing based on the prospective employee being in an interracial marriage. But then fires someone because, while on company business, gives their spouse of a different race a quick hug. The company claims they are not violating the law because the law doesn’t cover public displays of interracial affection while on company business. The public outcry would be, and justifiably so, huge.

There should be a similar public outcry in this case as well:

A metro Atlanta woman is asking a judge to strike down a Gwinnett County company’s gun policy.

Jamie Lunsford said the company violated her rights by firing her after they discovered she had a gun in her car while on business. Lunsford said the company violated her right to carry a permitted, concealed weapon in her car.

Her employer was a subsidiary of Iron Mountain, Inc. They are based in Boston Massachusetts. That might explain their anti-gun bigotry. Just as if the rules 70 years ago of a company based in Jackson Mississippi would reflect on their attitudes toward interracial marriage.

I understand the property rights argument and the right of the employer to set the terms of employment. You will notice I didn’t say the courts should force her former employer to rehire her. But I do think the public should let them know they don’t care for their bigotry and address this injustice via complaints and boycotts. Bigotry should not go unnoticed or tolerated even if it is, and should be, legal.

Those Extremist Militias

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Over at Oleg’s blog there’s this comment, in Russian, to this post about Survival4Chicks;



Извините, что не по теме, но из России трудно оценивать различные американские явления.


Например, не ясно, что представляет из себя движение Militias.


Его часто описывают как экстремистское, но относится ли это ко всем , кто входит в различные негосударственные ополчения?


И второй вопрос:


Не способствует ли появлению Militias тот факт, что Национальная Гвардия фактически перестала быть “домашней армией”, объединяющей живущих по соседству людей, которые готовы к мгновенной мобилизации для защиты именно своих дворов и улиц?


Не слишком ли бюрократизировалась и оторвалась от улиц Национальная Гвардия?


Не потому ли удается так легко “обрабатывать” людей самозванным Militias?



Извините за беспокойство


Apparently he got his view of America from ABC/NBC/CBS, AKA the Old Media, AKA the Lamestream Media.  I stepped in with the following comment, trying to set the record straight.  I wanted to keep it short and to the point, hopefully without over-simplification.  If I’m mistaken in any of this, let me know;



Traditionally, and by the intent of the American founders, the militia in this country consists of regular citizens with their own arms and equipment.  They receive no pay, as the intent was to keep government influence upon the society to a minimum, thereby keeping government power from growing out of control and becoming destructive to liberty.


Some militias gather in groups of various sizes to train, while most either train on their own or not at all.  Some militia groups are organized, with a headquarters and a command structure, and others are very informal, but have a common interest in fostering marksmanship among the population generally.  Many years ago, our Congress formed a Civilian Marksmanship Program for that purpose.  The CMP sells military surplus arms at very low prices to any regular citizen who can demonstrate that he or she has attended some number of organized marksmanship events.


Many militia members have no arms or equipment, but since they are citizens they are militia according to our nation’s founding principles.  Some of them actively lobby for the restriction of the right to keep and bear arms.  Hence they are citizens actively working against the citizenry.

We win because they screw up

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Sebastian pointed me to this article by Brian Doherty who quotes Alan Gottlieb:

The invalidation of handgun bans throughout the country, accomplished in the space of two years, was sudden and surprising even to those who have spent decades laying the groundwork. Take Alan Gottlieb, founder and president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which began backing Gura’s various gun lawsuits after Heller. Since founding the SAF in 1974, Gottlieb has been hosting academic conferences, supporting legal scholars and historians, and filing carefully targeted lawsuits in defense of gun rights. Still, he says, “six years ago if you had said [the gun rights community would] see two cases get to the Supreme Court and two victories, I would have said, ‘Not in my lifetime. Maybe in someone else’s.’ ”

Gottlieb attributes the rapid turnaround in part to the brazen overconfidence of gun controllers. If Washington, D.C., had not challenged the March 2007 appeals court decision overturning its highly restrictive gun ban, the Supreme Court would not have had the opportunity to declare in Heller that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to arms. If Chicago had not insisted on maintaining its gun ban after the Heller decision, there would have been no McDonald, and the question of whether the Second Amendment binds states and cities would have remained unsettled. “We needed a little luck, and the other side gave us that luck,” says Gottlieb. “Our opponents are our biggest supporters.”

I had a long talk with Alan last November where he said essentially the same thing. My notes on that part of the conversation are:

We win because the other side screws up. All the big wins such as the 1997 I-676 in Washington state, Heller in D.C, and McDonald in Chicago could have been avoided if the other side “had been smart”. As soon as D.C. lost at the appeals court level they could have made a minor tweak in the law and we would have had to start over at ground zero and it would have decades, if ever because the court would have been stacked differently, before we could get it to the SC. Same thing in Chicago. I asked, “Do you really think they are stupid? If not then why are they screwing up?” “No. They aren’t really stupid”, he said. They have “true believers” who see things in black and white. He didn’t say it but I immediately thought of GOA on our side. “Politics is the art of the possible. Not the perfect”, he said. They haven’t been playing the game that way and they have been losing because of it. I didn’t ask but have been thinking that perhaps there is some way we can encourage them to keep screwing up.

Think about that.

They screw up and we win.

There are two lessons there. One is we need to encourage them to keep screwing up. And the other lesson is that we can screw up and lose. We can have too much overconfidence. We can be too aggressive. We can go for it all and they can win.

It’s sarcasm, right?

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It has to be sarcasm:

If you teabaggers don’t like the president, you can always leave

America voted for socialism and if you hate big government, you hate America. Teaching kids about homosexuality, taxing the rich, abortion and gun control are American values now, if you don’t like it, fuck off. Redneck scum that you are.

At least Marxism and Nazism were beautiful.

Sure, lots of people think that. But they wouldn’t come out and say it. Would they?

Quote of the day—Beverly Ackerman

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So that’s my response to the Dawson killings: No more guns. It’s as simple as that. Because no one can accurately predict who among us will become unhinged enough to explode in bloody slaughter, I believe that guns should be unavailable to the public.

Beverly Ackerman
September 13, 2010
The solution is simple: Canada needs MORE gun controls
[Using the same logic we can also demand guns be unavailable to the government. And of course pointy sticks and rocks should be unavailable to all as well. After all, no matter how much ammo you can carry you still run out of ammo eventually. But your pointy stick and rock never need to be reloaded. Think of them as infinite capacity assault weapons and you’ll understand just how dangerous they really are.—Joe]

Job opening for zero pay

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The Brady Campaign has some job openings. In this bad economy more jobs is a good thing—except they don’t have any money to pay you:

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its legislative and grassroots affiliate, the Brady Campaign and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence. We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities. We have several unpaid summer internship opportunities available:
…

  • Career Level:

    Student (Undergraduate/Graduate)

  • Pay Range:

    Unpaid

  • Job Function:

    Marketing

  • Job Status:

    Not Listed

  • Industry:

    Nonprofit / Charitable, Advertising / Marketing / PR

Didn’t Obama suggest mandatory “volunteer” work for everyone? Maybe the Brady Campaign is just getting with the program a little early.

I suppose it is fitting. The KKK probably doesn’t pay a lot these days either. You take a job like that because you believe in tearing down others more than enriching yourself.

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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Handgun Control Inc. has long said that the NRA leadership was out of step with the NRA membership. And HCI was right—but in exactly the opposite way from what HCI wanted to believe. For the second straight year the NRA membership has overwhelmingly elected Directors sponsored and promoted by Second Amendment Action, of which I am chairman. Last year, the members elected 11 of our 16 candidates.

This time,  in the results reported to NRA Directors today, Second Amendment Action swept every one of its 17 nominees into the 26 vacant seats on the NRA Board.

The house-cleaning assures that NRA will be taking a tougher stance in the legislative arenas.

Read the NRA election results and weep, Handgun Control, Inc. You’ve got a fight on your hands.

Neal Knox
April 13, 1992
Hardliners Sweep NRA Elections, from The Gun Rights War, pages 351 and 352.
[I love this book.

Nearly 20 years ago HCI had “long said the NRA leadership was out of step” with members. HCI was renamed “The Brady Campaign” in 2001 but they haven’t changed their rhetoric. They still claim the NRA is an extremist organization that does not represent its members. But if you read the blogs and the forums you will find far, far, more people critical of the NRA for not being aggressive enough than you will find those that say the NRA is too aggressive.

HCI or Brady Campaign–it doesn’t matter. They are out of touch with reality and have been for well over 20 years.—Joe]