The “I Hate The NRA” game reached new levels by people declaring that the greatest advancement in Gun Rights of the 20th Century and the beginning of the avalanche in our favor is a hindrance and unconstitutional.
The level of imbecile
The logic part of me is saying that we cannot have people this stupid within our movement. They have to be well-paid plants or trolls, but not this irrevocably ignorant gun owners moved to re-write history because it is cool to hate the NRA.
We were a nation with few states having any kind of carry. Whatever carry we had was May Issue and the issuance and laws changed within state from county to county. We are now a country where all 50 states have Concealed Carry which had led the way for 13 States to have Constitutional Carry and hopefully more in the way. Alongside with CWP, we have expanded Stand Your Ground, and Immunity From Prosecution, reinforced Castle Doctrine and even managed to get a couple of interestingly favorable cases in the Supreme Court to fall for the Second Amendment.
But no. That movement is bogus because the NRA did not get Constitutional Carry from day one.
What is next? To say that Gun Rights are valid only if you belong to a Militia?
I do believe they’re attempting to slam Charles Cotton. If so, it’s a valid point; after getting CCW passed, the man attempted to insure that open carry never got to the legislature, much less Constitutional carry, arguing that bringing public attention back to guns risked a backfire that would get any carry at all repealed. In truth, he was one of those that, after making a niche market for CHL instructors, proceeded to then attempt to entrench and protect that niche market, fearing that any further expansion/restoration of rights would cut into his business bottom line. One of those “I got mine; screw you” types.
I got banned from his online forum last decade over this, during one of his ideological purges of members. Didn’t even call him out in public, either.
And he’s a Wayne acolyte. He’s exemplary of the corruption in NRA leadership.
But he is NOT “the NRA,” and those that would attempt to conflate him, or even the entirety of the Wayne cabal and Ack-Mac factions put together, as the whole for all of its history, are foolish, stupid, or working against us.
How about foolishly stupid working against us.
Virtue Signaling isn’t just for Leftist SJW’s.
And like most Leftiods, the Thumpers do not care one whit about the issues they are supposedly fighting for. They just want to look like they are more pure & holy in the cause than the other rabble.
Think 19th century Modern Major General, who thought Glorious Mass Charge was the ONLY proper tactic for proper well bred gentlemen- and sent hundreds of thousands of troops to be slaughtered by German machine guns and cannons during WWI.
And I have been looking for a good analogy and that is the one I am gonna steal
This is a “nirvana fallacy” — that there is an achievable perfect solution and anything less is useless.
Plus, complaining that something isn’t perfect is a great way to pretend that you are doing something to help without actually having to get off your fat arse and do anything at all!
Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
It seems to me that these people are the gun rights equivalent of the abortion advocates who run around in velvet vagina costumes demanding an end to the Hyde Amendment and push for 100% taxpayer funded abortion.
I think it is people who are:
1 – Stupid.
2 – Too young to remember the bad old days or have too short a memory.
3 – People who will never understand that just because something should be one way, it won’t magically be that way with the snap of a finger; it takes time because government grinds forward ever slowly and the whims of people are ever changing. There isn’t much difference here from the idealistic people can’t understand why we don’t live in some paradise where everyone holds hands and gets along.
4 – People who don’t understand strategy in general.
5 – People who no longer remember what having to work for or wait for something means because modern society has made everyone demand instant gratification in everything now.
Seriously. How many of the chest thumpers remember paying $120 for a cheap pre-ban mag? Or the ever expanding restrictions on “assault rifle” features like pistol grips, folding stocks, flash hiders, and so on?
Go back to 1992-94, and things looked pretty bleak for gun rights. The NRA and others did a hell of a lot of work to bring us to where we are now.
As a Texan, I’ll second the observations and comments on Charles Cotton. He is the reason we are no longer members of the Texas Rifle Association. His opposition to Open Carry as well as Constitutional Carry wasn’t “strategic,” it was economic. If you adamantly supported Open Carry and/or Constitutional Carry on his old TexasCHL website, your time there was short.
Now he’s ostensibly one of the top three people in the NRA? No thank you and good bye. He’s a perfect example of the Board’s failure to either A) have any power over who the Association hires or promotes, or B) further proof indicating just how tight of a deathlock Wayne LaPierre has on virtually every single facet of the Association.
I’m a retired ad agency executive from one of the world’s big agencies. There’s a saying in that industry that goes, “You’re only as good as your last ad.” That applies to PACs as well, and the NRA’s overall record is very good. In fact, I helped some of that happen in a very small way in the early 90’s when I worked for AMc. We gun-owners had some great victories on the heels of the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban.
But fast-forward to 2019 and the Association’s “last ads” aren’t very good. In fact, some would say they are a step backwards. Red flag laws are the most concerning. Bump stock bans were sacrificial, but the problem with making small sacrifices is that they all too easily start becoming larger sacrifices. This is not to say that I am a basement-dwelling “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” Cheetoh-dusted loon typing away in all-caps during my lucid moments. I understand strategy.
But I also understand economics and so much of the desperate draconian threats that have been received by gun-owners in regards to the NRA’s insatiable need for more money have come to light via these lawsuits.
When it takes over ONE-FOURTH of your annual membership to sustain LaPierre’s salary, wardrobe, travel and the daily legal expenses being paid to the law firm run by their ad agency’s CEO’s son-in-law and you’re compiling a losing record of late on the national scene, changes have to be made in order for the Association to survive and continue its mission.
But nobody seems to want to see that.