More than 211,000 public comments were submitted on a proposed rule change regarding pistol stabilizing braces. (Sig Sauer image)
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- A “Joint Status Report” on the Second Amendment Foundation’s January lawsuit against the Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over ATF’s reversal on how it would regulate stabilizing braces on pistols reveals that 211,564 comments were submitted on the proposed rule, and processing them all will “require more than 120 days.”
“In light of these developments, and in the interest of judicial economy, the parties have conferred and agree that this case and all proceedings should continue to be held in abeyance to allow Defendants to undertake these steps,” the status report said.
The update further notes, “Additionally, the parties have conferred and request that the parties be permitted to file a joint status report on or before January 19, 2022, indicating whether this case and all proceedings should continue to be held in abeyance.”
At issue is a proposed rule, posted by the defendants on June 10 at the Federal Register on “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached Stabilizing Braces.” The 90-day public comment period ended Sept. 8.
As originally proposed, firearms with stabilizing braces would be regulated under the National Firearms Act the same as short-barreled rifles. This change would require a special license and $200 fee for each firearm fitted with a brace. Without the special license and fee, guns fitted with the stabilizing braces would be illegal to own. ATF published notice in the Federal Register on Dec. 18, 2020 “seeking to impose NFA controls on braces meeting certain ‘Objective Factors for Classifying Weapons with ‘Stabilizing Braces’.”
SAF quickly filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division in January. The case is known as SAF et. al. v. BATFE, et. al. SAF was joined by Rainier Arms, LLC and two disabled private citizens, Samuel Walley and William Green. According to a SAF news release, Walley is a distinguished disabled Army veteran who suffered a traumatic injury while serving in Afghanistan in 2012. He was wounded by an improvised explosive device resulting in partial amputation of his right leg and left arm, and a salvaged left leg limb. He uses arm braces to stabilize firearms he shoots recreationally.
Green is a police officer who suffered a line-of-duty injury resulting in permanent nerve damage to his right hand. He also uses arm braces to stabilize firearms while he is shooting.
In addition to DOJ and ATF, the lawsuit also named acting ATF Director Regina Lombardo and Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, in their official capacities as defendants.
On May 4 of this year, the court granted an agreed upon motion for a stay, which was extended on June 15, five days after the defendants published the proposed rule in the Federal Register seeking public comment. As noted above, public reaction was overwhelming.
Now, according to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, additional time is being sought to allow the DOJ to process all of the comments.
“Depending upon the DOJ’s final ruling,” Gottlieb said, “SAF reserves the right to amend the court filing to include provisions of the new rule.”
When SAF filed the lawsuit more than nine months ago, Gottlieb said there were “several issues at play” including alleged failure of the agencies and their officials to abide by long-established and Congressionally-mandated rulemaking requirements, threatening rights protected by the Second Amendment.
“Another issue,” he said, “is the question whether the Executive Branch has the authority to re-define stabilizing braces without approval of Congress. This is especially important to disabled persons because these devices were originally developed to benefit shooters with physical disabilities.”
Gottlieb said the past nine months have confirmed his concerns, expressed at the time the lawsuit was filed, that “The Biden administration has made no secret it intends to take various regulatory actions and issue executive orders directly affecting gun owners.”
Joe Biden acknowledged during a July CNN Townhall broadcast that he would like to ban so-called “assault weapons” plus 9mm semiautomatic pistols. SAF immediately released a 60-second message (below) highlighting Biden’s comments. His now-withdrawn nomination of gun control proponent David Chipman to run the ATF was another clear signal the president is no friend to the Second Amendment.
Stabilizing braces are now used by people with and without disabilities and more than 2 million have been sold, the lawsuit estimated.
In late August, SAF reminded gun owners about the original Sept. 8 deadline for comments. At the time, Gottlieb warned, “ATF wants to reclassify millions of stabilizing brace-equipped pistols by making them subject to the National Firearms Act. If that happens, current owners of such pistols would need to register their guns and pay a $200 tax on each one, or turn it in to the ATF, or take one of several other undesirable options.”
According to the Joint Status Report, “In the event the parties are of the view that the case should not remain stayed, they would include a proposed schedule for continuing the litigation in the joint status report.”
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Wisconsin’s Senate Committee on Insurance Licensing and Forestry is hearing Senate Bill 516, for Wisconsin to recognize concealed carry permits from all states. IMG NRA-ILA
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Insurance, Licensing and Forestry is hearing Senate Bill 516, for Wisconsin to recognize concealed carry permits from all states. Please contact committee members and ask them to SUPPORT SB 516.
Senate Bill 516 grants universal recognition to concealed carry permits held by non-Wisconsin residents issued by any other state. It repeals the requirement that such recognition is only for permits from states on an arbitrary list maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Justice. This reform recognizes that visitors traveling to Wisconsin should not be left defenseless simply by crossing a state line.
Again, please contact committee members and ask them to SUPPORT SB 516.
About NRA-ILA:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- On September 23, 2021, the Firearms Policy Coalition filed a lawsuit challenging a ban on the sale and possession of precursor materials used by individuals to make their own firearms. The ban flies in the face of long-standing precedents. Individuals have been legally and practically able to make their own firearms ever since the Republic was founded. From firearmspolicy.org:
“The right of individuals to self-manufacture arms for self-defense and other lawful purposes is part and parcel of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and an important front in the battle to secure fundamental rights against abusive government regulations, like San Diego’s unconstitutional ban,” said Adam Kraut, FPC’s Senior Director of Legal Operations. “FPC will continue to aggressively work to defend the People’s rights and property in this case and dozens of others throughout the United States.”
The United States chose not to follow the path of Japan, where the warlord/rulers, after using firearms to unify Japan under one government, made the individual manufacture of firearms without a license illegal, then consolidated all firearms manufacture to one city; then banned firearms manufacture and all ownership by private individuals. In most governments around the world, the private manufacture by unlicensed individuals is forbidden.
Most other governments in the world have strict controls on what can be said or written and published. Such controls are becoming more common in formerly free countries such as Australia, England, and Canada.
34. In the First Amendment context, free speech rights include the ability to build one’s own printing and communications devices, print one’s own fliers, and utilize largely unregulated channels of speech in the exercise of the rights secured. In that context, it is well established and readily accepted that the government cannot lawfully narrow the channels for exercising the right to freely speak through government-approved gatekeepers who create or provide limited channels of speech and limited means of distribution for a beholden populace.
35. Likewise, in the Second Amendment context, the government cannot lawfully narrow the channels for exercising the right to keep and bear arms by limiting one’s access to the instruments essential to self-manufacturing in the exercise of that right, by forcing people to exercise it solely through the acquisition of firearms from limited, government-approved manufacturers of firearms and firearm predecessor materials.
It is likely this complaint will go to Judge Roger T. Benitez, of the District Court in the Southern District of California. Judge Benitez is the author of other decisions about the scope of the Second Amendment. Judge Benitez is a careful scholar with excellent logic and writing skills.
If he is assigned the case, we should know relatively soon. The lawsuit calls for an immediate injunction against the enforcement of the San Diego Ordinance no. 0-2022-7.
A ban on the possession of objects which can be made into firearms receivers or frames is a very broad ban indeed. It logically would include a great many metal pipes; perhaps blocks of metal or plastic. It is part of the rabbit hole of gun control. You cannot effectively control guns in an industrial society unless you control the information about how to make guns, and the tools needed to make them.
The idea that “untraceable” and “unregistered” firearms are a unique threat to society is false. Most guns in the United States are untraceable and unregistered. If even a million of them are made in a given year, it is a small number compared to the hundreds of millions already in existence in the United States.
The firearms made are of the types in common use for self-defense and other legal purposes. The ordinance is not narrowly tailored to have minimum impact on ordinary citizens, nor is the “harm” from the private manufacture of guns shown to be more dangerous than the ordinary manufacture of firearms.
The Second Amendment necessarily takes some policy decisions “off the table”. This is one of them.
If the lawsuit goes to Judge Benitez, I expect it to be found unconstitutional. There is no longstanding law that forbids law-abiding citizens to own, make, or sell partly finished firearms frames or receivers.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Geneva Switzerland – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Seventh Conference of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) met August 30, 2021, through September 3, in Geneva. And as expected, the treaty dragged forward for another year, but only because time and the calendar told us that it did.
The reality is that the ATT only lurched farther towards failure, as there was no progress to global peace via weapons control.
Last year a Diversion Information Exchange Forum (DIEF) was discussed in order to deal with diversions of weapons into the Black Market and the criminal transfers from it.
The DIEF is touted as a sui generis, that is, something unique. It is a new subsidiary body, and it is expected to do the impossible – gain control of arms diversion into the global Black Market!?
And why is it considered unique? It’s unique because it has never been tried before.
It has never been tried before because the idea behind the DIEF is so silly.
Nations will be tasked with reporting ALL the details of diverted weapons in order to deal with the Black Market. It is hoped that states “will mainstream sharing relevant information through the DIEF about every case of diversion that was prevented and addressed.”
But nary a Nation wants/will talk about those pesky secrets.
The arms Black Market is all about secrets. As Allison Pytlak, a Civil Society activist, complained in 2017, “It is no secret that the international arms trade is full of secrets. Stories of corrupt brokers, forged documents, erratic supply chains, hidden cargo, and cash pay-offs are not just the stuff that films are made of…” And then she explains the theory behind the ATT;
“Bringing the arms trade “out of the shadows’ was one of the motivating factors behind the ATT, in the hope that improved control of legal markets would prevent diversion to illicit ones.”
But corruption at the highest levels of government is extremely common. Imagine the embarrassment of Presidents, Chairmen, Kings, and would-be Kings when favored sons, daughters, and nephews are caught to be participating in Black Market activities! Or if they themselves are caught taking payoffs.
So because of the potential sensitivity and confidentiality of these reports and meetings. and not to mince words, any meetings would be in-person and very secret. Luckily, the 2021 DIEF meeting was postponed because of Covid-19, but countries are asked to divulge and discuss diversions and the national responses to those diversions.
For security reasons, the DIEF has limited the reporting of all that sensitive information to treaty states only, and some of them may even be enemies of each other. But “Participants can share all the information that they obtained within their competent national authorities while maintaining confidentiality.”
‘While maintaining confidentiality!’ Really? How so? So is the information secret or is it not secret? Why would any country take a chance of having their enemies know what they have, and what they are doing? How can this silly scheme be effective in combatting diversion to the Black Market?
Rival countries would be participating, listening, learning, and strategizing. This is a very strange combination of transparency and secrecy, and it is going to make participating nations very nervous and insecure. The DIEF forum invites serious problems of suspicion and mistrust into the ATT process and is not going to work as promised.
We predict the DIEF forum will fail because it requires the sharing of the most sensitive kind of information. The new ATT DIEF scheme requires more information, and more transparency than participating nations are willing to give.
“Transparency” is a word that means that everyone interested will find out. But transparency is potentially harmful to Nations, especially when that transparency relates to state security or illegal activity supported by national elites.
“Diversion” is the nice name socialists give to the Black Market when they don’t want it easily understood. And understand, that they don’t have a clue about Black Market Control, oops, we mean Diversion Control. When Nation States sign on to the ATT, they obligate themselves to take measures to prevent diversion into the Black Market, but they all do it.
Even the great global law known as the Arms Trade Treaty can, and is, subverted by the Black Market, as is just about every other restrictive law written by governments.
Simon Yazgi, a senior UN advisor, acknowledged, “That these groups arm themselves on the illegal markets also means that they bypass the State-based instruments which regulate government-authorized arms transfers.”
Nevertheless, the ATT’s proponents know it is failing and they are extremely desperate to try anything, and the postponed DIEF is it for now. We will not know if DIEF working as expected at least until the Ninth Conference in 2023.
It’s obvious to us that the reporting and transparency issues are a major trouble point in the ATT. What makes the ATT proponents expect that a new forum, tasked with gathering even more sensitive information, can possibly succeed when the proponent’s ability to gather even simple, basic information is already failing? The ATT proponents even now admit that the ATT’s pillar of information reporting and collection is slow, and getting slower.
“Reporting” means that nations tell-all and a nice term that proponents like to use is “reporting fatigue,” which merely permits them to forget about the difficult truth that nations do not benefit by telling about their sensitive interests. What “Reporting Fatigue” really means is that nations are saying “NO” very diplomatically Reporting fatigue actually existed well before the DEIF idea.
Further proof of the reporting fatigue is that in April 2021, about a quarter of the reporting countries had not yet submitted their reports, and over a third were not up to date with their annual reports. Instead, participants blamed the lack of transparency on Covid-19 because they were unable to gather the information required to fill out the forms. They neglect the fact that transparency compliance was a problem prior to covid
Additionally, in 2015, 85% of countries submitted their reports on time, but in 2020 only 55% had submitted on time. Also, in 2015, 4% of the reporting countries requested that reports should be kept confidential, and by 2020, 29% wanted to maintain privacy.
These reports help ATT decision-makers determine which nations are worthy, and which nations are not, to be granted an arms transfer.
What a mess for the arms control crowd! Wishful thinking does not work. The disarmament proponents are on the wrong path. There is no end in sight to their folly because they hold so tightly to a plan designed to fail.
The major problem with the ATT is that eliminating arms sales does not benefit participating nations. As an example, about half the nations of Earth do not manufacture arms and if they could not import foreign-made arms, the balance of international power could quickly, and easily, become an unbalanced nightmare.
National borders often change, and that change is usually not beneficial to weaker, smaller nations, or their deposed leaders. So the crucial needs of nations cannot really be met by a treaty whose proponents fully intend to eliminate trade in weapons that nations need to obtain and possibly use in order to maintain their sovereignty.
Though these nations have been shamed into accepting the wondrous dream of peace through disarmament, they cannot possibly take the steps required to make the goals of the treaty into a reality. The only major interest they share with ATT proponents is civilian disarmament.
The truth is the real benefits to participating nations are more of a financial and political nature rather than a true desire for a fully legal, global arms trade treaty, whatever the current definition of a ‘legal’ arms transfers may be.
Filled with frustration and failure, Allison Pytlak spilled the beans in another editorial. She stated in Civil Society’s ATT Monitor, “The end result of arms transfers can never be a happy story, because weapons and related equipment are developed with the express purpose of causing death or harm, and so even “responsible” trading in them will inevitably lead to the same result. This is why WILPF (Definition added but not part of the quote: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) has always advocated for an end to the arms trade, not just doing it better or more safely.”
Why would she explain to participating nations that the result of their participation is eventual disarmament? Nations cannot afford to gamble on survival and cannot follow directions to that path, and so they have not and will not.
Pytlak’s dream of peace and human development is a wonderful dream, but the path of coercing global disarmament does not lead anyone there.
Just maybe, a wiser path to keep a balance of power among nations would be to include armed civilians. Humankind would slowly grow towards an understanding that we fare much better when we are armed and at peace.
We must now wait to see what excuses and complaints will be made about the failure of the DIEF idea, but as nations cannot live with such transparency, its doom is certain.
And that’s “What the Hell Just Happened!”
About The Authors
Alan J Chwick has been involved with firearms much of his life and is the Retired Managing Coach of the Freeport NY Junior Marksmanship Club. He has escaped New York State to South Carolina and is an SC FFL (Everything22andMore.com). AJChwick@iNCNF.org | TWITTER: @iNCNF
Joanne D Eisen, DDS (Ret.) practiced dentistry on Long Island, NY. She has collaborated and written on firearm politics for the past 40+ years. She, too, escaped New York State, but to Virginia. JoanneDEisen@cs.com
Do Not Fall For This Political Scam In Virginia. iStock-884220580
Virginia – -(AmmoLand.com)- In Virginia, some ads are running slamming Glenn Youngkin for an “insufficient” commitment to supporting our Second Amendment rights. Normal political stuff, right? Well, the timing is downright odd. Quite frankly, Second Amendment supporters should be suspicious about it.
When someone is running ads slamming Youngkin for being insufficiently supportive of Second Amendment rights in a general election campaign, they’re trying to get Second Amendment supporters to sit out the Virginia gubernatorial election – or vote third party. Those actions would help Terry McAuliffe’s campaign, which is not doing so hot lately.
McAuliffe’s fortunes have declined with those of Joe Biden. And how is Biden doing? Don’t just trust the polls that show him dropping – just look at and listen to the colorful chants that have been heard at various sporting events. McAuliffe’s being dragged down. In addition, there are trends that are not turning out in favor of anti-Second Amendment extremists as well.
Two years ago, the stakes of the legislative elections were very clear. We’ve seen what happened as a result. Keep in mind, Virginia is not as bad off as Maryland, and if the trends continue, Youngkin would be in a far better situation than Larry Hogan was. There will be, for instance, a good chance that there will be enough pro-Second Amendment votes to uphold a veto of anti-Second Amendment legislation.
The fact of the matter is that while potential Supreme Court rulings can be major game-changers, a lot can still be done at the state and local level. See the San Jose strategy for starters. You can bet McAuliffe would go for any such scheme – or even try to impose a licensing scheme like the one in Illinois.
Look, Virginia has changed a lot in the past quarter-century, and it hasn’t really been for the better. Anti-Second Amendment extremists have made a lot of gains, particularly in the suburbs. So some adjustment is necessary to get a reasonably pro-Second Amendment governor elected to, at the very least, arrest the erosion of our Second Amendment rights.
The good news is that a coalition that can deliver gains in the November elections the next four years seems to be forming. How permanent this coalition depends on the approach Second Amendment supporters take. The right approach could turn Virginia around as opposed to heading down the path of California and New York. But this scam is intended to prevent that.
Second Amendment supporters, clearly, have a lot to do. They need to support pro-Second Amendment organizations, then work to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists at the federal, state, and local level via the ballot box as soon as possible.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- You probably heard about the NRA’s big Annual Meeting and Exhibits scheduled for Houston, Texas on September 3-5 of this year. And you probably heard that those events were canceled just over a week before they were scheduled to begin!/
All this was supposedly because exhibitors were afraid of COVID-19 Delta. But did you hear about the rescheduled NRA Annual Meeting of Members on October 2nd 2021, in Charlotte, North Carolina? If you did, congratulations! You’re paying attention! Unfortunately, most of the rest of the NRA membership isn’t really paying attention, and they either don’t know that the meeting is about to happen or don’t know that attendance will be limited, requiring preregistration, which I’ve been told was already maxed out over a week ago.
The October 2 2021 meeting date was only announced to NRA Directors on September 12, just 3 weeks before the event. According to “Wayback Machine” which tracks changes across the web, the NRAAM.org page announcing the cancellation appeared on August 25. On September 15 the Wayback Machine shows that the page changed to an announcement that “THE 2021 NRA ANNUAL MEETINGS & EXHIBITS HAS BEEN CANCELLED (sic) AND WILL NOT BE RESCHEDULED.”
That statement makes the following headline announcing that registration for the 2021 Annual Meeting is open, seem incongruent, and probably an artifact left over from the original Houston announcement. Only when you read the smaller print under that headline do you see mention of Charlotte and October 3.
Finally, on Wednesday, September 22, the website was changed so that it automatically forwarded visitors to a ticketing site offering registration for the Charlotte event. On Thursday, September 23, people were reporting that the event was “sold out,” with no more tickets available. Apparently, the room the NRA reserved for their Members’ Meeting, has a maximum capacity under COVID restrictions, of only a few hundred, and the lions share of the tickets were doled out in advance to Directors and their families and friends, just as happened with the Tucson meeting in 2020. Since it only requires 100 NRA members to constitute a quorum at a Members’ Meeting, that requirement can easily be met with just Directors and their spouses.
Of course, there was never any announcement about the Charlotte Meeting in any of the NRA magazines, but a few members have reported that they received an email letting them know about the meeting. Every one of the members who reported to me about receiving that email was an Annual Member who has not yet reached the 5 consecutive years of membership required to be vested with voting rights in the Association. Maybe that was just a coincidence?
Until just a few months ago, the NRA Bylaws required that information about the where and when of the Annual Meeting of Members – a business meeting that is required by law – must be published in at least two consecutive issues of the Official Journal of the NRA (the three or four pages of inside NRA information published toward the back of each of NRA’s magazines). That Bylaw fell by the wayside after the Association failed to meet that standard last year. After rescheduling and canceling the 2020 Annual Meeting several times, they finally settled on a short-notice, shoestring meeting at a hotel in Tucson. At a subsequent Board meeting, the Board changed the Bylaws, creating exceptions for the meeting requirement in extreme circumstances such as hurricanes or pandemics, and changing the meeting notice requirements.
Under the new Bylaws, the Association is just required to meet the minimum announcement requirements of the state in which the Association is incorporated – New York – which offers several options for alerting members to a meeting. The easiest and cheapest of those options is for the Association to publish an announcement at least once per week for three weeks prior to the scheduled meeting, in a newspaper in the local area of the Association’s primary business location. So the NRA, with some five million members nationwide, is only legally obligated to let those five million members know about their Annual Meeting of Members, by publishing a classified ad once per week for three weeks, in some local Fairfax, Virginia newspaper. But all indications are that they didn’t even bother to do that.
What can members do about the lack of notice of the meeting and the limited capacity of the meeting room? Sue? That would be just another opportunity for the current “leadership” to funnel even more member money into the pocket of the NRA’s $2 million per month attorney, Bill Brewer.
The obvious first question is, why was the original meeting canceled?
Even if exhibitors were uncomfortable with the idea of attending a huge trade show during a Delta variant surge in Texas, the Association could have canceled the exhibits and other ancillary events, retaining only the already planned Annual Meeting of Members and the subsequent Board of Directors’ meeting. That would have been the easiest option and one that would have avoided confusion while providing the best opportunity for NRA members to participate in their Association’s business. Not to mention guaranteeing that they were in compliance with the laws and their own Bylaws.
But of course, the NRA brass is not interested in members interfering – err excuse me – participating in the Association’s business, nor is there much evidence that they are worried to any great degree about adhering to the Bylaws, or the laws of the state of New York.
Instead, they canceled everything, then at the last minute quietly rolled out plans for the meeting to be held in Charlotte, leaving most members in the dark. On top of that, the location and venue they have selected are under masking and social-distancing mandates. Everyone who attends will be required to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination or prior infection with COVID-19, and the number of attendees that will be allowed into the meeting room will be further limited by capacity restrictions. At last year’s Tucson meeting, Directors and their families and friends, comprised at least half, if not two-thirds, of the attendees in the main room. Some additional people were able to participate from overflow seating on a patio just outside the meeting room, with closed-circuit TV feeds, but few of those people stayed long in the Arizona sun.
I had hoped to see NRA members make a solid, loud, angry showing at the Members’ Meeting in Houston. After all, Houston NRA members formed the core of the Federation for NRA, which was the group behind the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977. Our plan was for the members to raise such a ruckus that they would wake up their derelict Directors to the destructive choices they’ve been making, and convince them to take major steps toward protecting the NRA. Major steps like replacing Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and Secretary Jon Frazer, both named defendants in the lawsuit filed by the state of New York, and reorganizing the leadership of the Board of Directors, taking power away from “leaders” who have blatantly lied to the Board and NRA members, and who have been complicit in allowing LaPierre and company to rape the Association while neglecting their core responsibilities.
At this point, I see no chance of the Board doing anything at all to mitigate the coming disaster. For the NRA “the worst is yet to come.”
The New York Attorney General’s Office has made it abundantly clear that they intend to push for nothing less than the complete dissolution of the NRA, and they have built a devastating case to support that objective. The judge in the case has made it clear that dissolution of the Association is absolutely on the table, and he’s signaled that some of the claims NRA’s “leadership” and high-priced attorneys have made about their “strong legal position,” amount to tissue paper shields.
In short, the NRA is in serious trouble.
The Houston meeting might have been the last flickering hope of mitigating the devastating outcome we all see looming. With the cancellation of the Houston meeting and the subsequent scheduling of a limited, masked, distanced, and no doubt sparsely-attended (not to mention, tightly controlled) meeting in Charlotte, I honestly believe the battle to save the NRA has been lost. NRA Director Phil Journey will be virtually alone as a voice of reason on the Board, after the Charlotte Members’ Meeting, and I expect another wave of resignations from the Board within days of the close of that meeting.
If you are an NRA Voting Member (Life or at least 5-years consecutive membership), and you live within reasonable driving distance of Charlotte, I encourage you to attend and do your best to make your NRA Directors see the cultish mindset that has consumed the Board. Demand answers to simple questions like; “Why was Wayne given a $500k bonus while donations were down, membership was stagnant, Carry Guard was crashing, budgets were being cut across all NRA programs, there were growing accusations of impropriety, and Wayne admitted to having received over $300k in excess compensation,” and “Why are we paying Bill Brewer millions of dollars each month?”
I encourage your attendance knowing full well that there will be little opportunity to accomplish anything meaningful or worthwhile at the Members’ Meeting in Charlotte, but I know that a few stalwarts will be there to wave the flag for a rational approach. Your participation would be appreciated. If you can’t get a “ticket,” don’t be deterred. I believe there will be a whole bunch of no-shows, providing an opportunity for others to attend.
I expect the meeting in Charlotte to go very much like the meeting in Tucson did, beginning with a video message from outgoing President Meadows, apologizing for her inability to attend, and praising the amazing accomplishments of our Dear Leader, Wayne LaPierre. Then First Vice President Charles Cotton will take charge of the meeting, praising Wayne, and declaring that nothing that touches on anything involved in any of the various lawsuits can be discussed during the meeting, even though virtually all of it is a public record already, through depositions and testimony in the various suits and the bankruptcy trial.
At that moment the members should rise up and demand that Cotton relinquish the gavel as being biased and having serious conflicts of interest, and have the Parliamentarian chair the meeting. That won’t happen, but it should. Of course, the Parliamentarian was hired by and is paid by the current “leadership,” but he has his public reputation, certifications, and career to consider.
From there, the meeting will go into reports of the officers, where they’ll tell you what a great job everyone is doing, and what great accomplishments are just around the corner. Then they’ll finally get to Resolutions, where a few “disgruntled members” will try to express their frustration with poorly worded and confusing resolutions calling for various unspecified actions, and other resolutions calling for “No Confidence” votes against LaPierre and other “leaders.” Each of these will be met by a phalanx of Directors rising to say that the whole thing is silly, that everything’s great, and Wayne’s the only one who can lead the Association out of the bottom of this deep well that Wayne and this Board have dug us into.
Then someone will call for adjournment and the meeting will close.
Later that same day, the Board will hold their meeting. The officers will again tell everyone how great everything is, the Nominating Committee will offer a slate of candidates for officer positions, led by Wayne LaPierre for Executive Vice President and Charles Cotton for President. Hopefully, Phil Journey will then rise to nominate alternate candidates. There will probably be some argument about the nominating process, and the Board might even go into Executive Session to try to hide the appearance of any dissent within the Board. There will then be some argument about the voting process, trying to avoid secret ballots, and finally, a vote will be taken, Wayne and company will be reelected, there will be an effort made to have the record reflect the vote as “unanimous,” and the meeting will quickly be wrapped up.
That’s my prediction. I’ll let you know how close I came, shortly after the meeting.
If you’re thinking of attending the Members’ Meeting in Charlotte, be sure to go to NRAAM.org and try to reserve your seat in the meeting. If you can’t get a “ticket,” go anyway. For the Tucson meeting, they told many people they couldn’t register because all of the tickets had been reserved, then when ticket-holders failed to show up, those people who had been turned away weren’t around to claim the open seats, leaving lots of empty chairs.
When it comes to Second Amendment advocacy groups, the NRA isn’t just the 300-pound gorilla, they are an aircraft carrier with all other groups being PT boats and dinghies. While the rest of the fleet is agile and quick, and sometimes able to lay down some serious, concentrated fire, none of them can do what the NRA can do, and not one of them is in a position to grow into that role. The NRA’s membership list alone is more valuable than all other 2A groups combined. We’ve seen how such a powerful organization is a two-edged sword, but not having them would be very difficult, so we need to try to save the Association, in spite of the foolish actions of the Board of Directors.
I think our last, meager hope will be a letter-writing campaign to the judge. I’ll keep you posted on that idea as things develop. Meanwhile, keep your powder dry, support your local grassroots organizations, and keep reading AmmoLand News.
About Jeff Knox:
Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org.
New York’s Attorney General lied to a local paper, saying guns are more common than apples in NY. IGM NRA-ILA
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- A local paper quoted New York State Attorney General Letitia James as saying, recently, “What’s so tragic is that in some parts of New York State, you can find a gun more easily than you can find an apple.”
Problem is, New York State is flush with apples. According to the U.S. Apple Association, out of the 32 states that grow apples commercially, New York State is the second-largest producer of the fruit in the country. Last year, for example, the yield was an estimated 1,385,000,000 pounds of apples. The New York Apple Association even has a “find apples” search feature on its website.
Compounding her very strange comment is the fact that New York State – A-rated by gun control groups like Giffords – already has what are arguably the nation’s most restrictive gun control laws. In fact, Giffords claims the state “serves as a national model.” A few highlights of this model regime include a mandatory NICS check by a licensed gun dealer prior to almost every transfer, sale, exchange, or disposal of a firearm in the state. A state license is required to possess a handgun. Although the state does not publish data on carry licensing, one estimate is that only 1.27% of the state’s adult population has been issued a carry license, and New York does not recognize any other jurisdiction’s carry licenses or permits. There is a long list of persons who are prohibited from possessing guns of any kind – felons, those convicted of a “serious offense,” the mentally ill, anyone subject to a protection order, and others. “Assault weapons” (except for those grandfathered in and registered with the police) are banned, as are “large-capacity magazines.” New York City – the Big Apple – has its own more prohibitive gun control laws.
The odds of simply “finding” a gun are made even more unlikely due to a state law that requires every owner or custodian of a gun, in specified circumstances, to keep the gun in a “safe storage depository” or otherwise secured so it is incapable of being fired, and all persons lawfully in possession of a gun must report its loss or theft to law enforcement within 24 hours.
Of course, guns and lawful gun owners are not behind the surge in gang and violent crime in the state.
A “friend of the court” brief filed by law enforcement groups (including the New York State Sheriffs’ Association and the National Association of Chiefs of Police) in the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen emphasizes this point. “Evidence and law enforcement experience confirm that most violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, whose criminal records generally render them ineligible even to possess firearms.” The brief cites an analysis of homicides done by the New York Times which revealed that “more than 90% of the killers in New York City had criminal records, as did more than half of those killed.” Additional factors fueling the crisis in crime, according to the brief, are the failure of politicians and prosecutors to respond to the “accelerating criminality” that erupted last year, and the impact on public safety when politicians defund and delegitimize the police. In New York City, for example, the number of shooting victims increased by 78.6%, (with a staggering 165.7% increase in the Bronx alone) in the one-year period from May 2020 to May 2021.
The NYAG must take her cues from former President Barack Obama. Back in 2015, then-President Obama misleadingly sought to describe the “availability of guns” by proclaiming that “you can go on into some neighborhoods, and it’s easier for you to buy a firearm than it is for you to buy a book, there are neighborhoods where it’s easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable.” He repeated a variant of the claim even after the Washington Post’s fact-checker determined that the statement was a three-Pinocchio rated falsehood. Not only was the president “playing fast and loose with his language,” the fact-checker ruled that the statement was “just a very strange comment that appears to have no statistical basis… As far as we know, there are no areas in the United States where background checks are needed to buy vegetables.”
Fundamentally, the problem is that criminals in New York State and across the country aren’t looking for healthy snacks and aren’t interested in complying with the law. Resorting to silly and discredited hyperbole simply trivializes the violent crime epidemic that confronts our nation – and that’s the real tragedy.
About NRA-ILA:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
