USA –-(Ammoland.com)- About 14 years ago, my wife and soulmate said something I disagreed with. So I divorced her. As if that wasn’t enough, about a week later, my kid got a detention at school. So I sold him into a life of slavery with Tusken Raider Sand People. My actions may sound harsh, but I have principles.

There are certain issues where I simply won’t compromise!

What? You think that’s harsh? Or maybe ridiculous? You’d be right. But that’s exactly the argument I hear from people all the time when the proudly tell me they will never join the NRA again. Ever. So there.

By the way, although I did sell my kid to Tusken Sand People, I didn’t really divorce my wife. We just resolved our disagreement like adults and are continuing to live happily ever after.

Back to the NRA issue.

I get that the NRA sometimes does things we don’t agree with. Sometimes, they make mistakes. Other times, they’re playing long term chess, and may make a short-term move because they have no other option or because it’s step one of a longer term strategy.[like supporting Harry Reid to block Chuck Schumer as head of the senate.]

It’s easy for us to sit on the sidelines and throw stones and yell about how they should never compromise, ever. That kind of strategy sounds great on paper but rarely works out in your favor in real life. Think about the years 2008 through 2010. President Stompy Feet had full control of the United States Government. Oval Office, House, and Senate.

Do you really want to pick a no compromise fight when your opponent holds all the high cards?

But I’m not here to defend the NRA – they tick me off too sometimes, and I’m sure I tick them off on occasion. I’m here to discuss how the real world of politics works, whether you like the NRA or not.

We’ve got four groups of government gnomes to worry about when it comes to protection of gun rights: The executive branch (President Rhetoric or whoever is in office at the time and all the minions that work for the Prez), The Judicial (Supreme, Federal and local courts), Congress (House and Senate), and of course state and local government. For this discussion, we’ll focus on Congress and state and local representatives as that’s the NRA’s main playground.

Yeah, they get involved in legal actions, but quite frankly, organizations like the Second Amendment Foundation are far more successful (and aggressive) in the court system.

So when it comes to influencing legislation, we have to remember one thing about elected officials. All they care about, without exception, is getting re-elected. They spend their days, night and weekends worrying about how many people love them and how many hate them. There’s always another election around the corner.

When they take a meeting with someone from the NRA or any other organization, you can probably guess the first question that Congress-Critter asks.
That’s right. “How many members do you have now?”

They’re not stupid. If someone from some podunk gun rights organization that has seven members waltzes in, that politician could care less. It doesn’t matter how pure that organizations positions are.

However, if Uncle LaPierre sashays in and says, “Well, we added 2 million new members last quarter,” you can bet your bippy our favorite re-election marathon competitors are going to take notice. Heck, they’ll probably offer to wax Wayne’s Suburban.

Right now, the NRA has about 5 million members give or take. There are somewhere around 90 million gun owners in the U.S. That means just over 5% of gun owners forked over $35 to sign up. I know it’s a fantasy but just imagine for a second what life might be like if every gun owner was a member of the NRA. I can pretty much guarantee that your local politicians would drive your kids to school and deliver supper to your house – daily. On a national level, our Senators and Congressmen would flock to the NRA Annual Meeting in droves to volunteer and hand out donuts. Heck, they’d give Congressional Gold Medals to every employee of the NRA home office.

I know that’s a pipe dream, but 10 million members is not. Heck, if only the people who refuse ever to join the NRA because they have some past gripe with them, grew up, held their nose, and renewed, we’d get to 10 million members in a heartbeat.

To be serious for a moment, I’d stand behind the statement that if the NRA had 10 million members, we’d never hear a credible member of Congress so much as whisper something like “common sense gun legislation.” Yeah, crazy Aunt Dianne out in California would still rant and rave, but she wouldn’t have any votes. We certainly wouldn’t be facing the constant battles that we do now.


Read more: http://www.ammoland.com/2015/06/why-its ... z3nQKIF2tQ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

OK I have heard all the BS about why some of you refuse to join the NRA......well put your petty shit aside and put on your big boy pants, we NEED members now! We are about to face another round of attacks on our rights and if we don't come together we are doomed ...(what was that Ben Franklin said about hanging separately?.... )

It costs as much as two boxes of 9mm or one 500 round brick of .22 (if you can find them) to join for a year...

I am putting my money where my mouth is I will give away one membership here and on TOS (I do this every year, I have given away nearly 100 memberships in my lifetime).

If you can't afford the $25, sign up for my PIF, or look into the cheaper memberships, they have cheaper deals where you can opt out of the magazine subscription.

So forget what you have heard, put aside your hatred and join us!


Hell they are even giving away a free duffel bag right now

https://joinnra.nra.org/join/join.aspx


I'll post in the PIF section for the free membership


Who here will match my offer?

Too easy to get the Annual membership for $25 even: https://membership.nrahq.org/forms/sign ... d=XC027739

Just signed up. Who's with me?

Thank you!

Life member as of 2012 I've had that same argument for a while now. But some people have their feet stuck in concrete and won't do it.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Stand and fight or lay down and die. Unfortunately, certain rights need to be fought for.

agreed, if we do nothing, they will take all our rights.

Talk to your gun owning friends, relatives, co-workers we need members more than ever

I will.

Lot's of time the NRA will have a table at Cabelas. You pay $25 for membership, and get a $25 gift card = Free!

And for y'all that don't know. A Lifetime Membership with the NRA includes optional firearm insurance with a $2500 maximum that is no additional cost but, you must opt in. It's a supplement to any other insurance you may have. I had to make a claim almost a year ago and they paid two weeks after I submitted my claim, with not even one bit of hassle. Just mailed in the appropriate paper work and two weeks later a check for the maximum benefit of $2500 arrived.

I've been contacting the NRA trying to get them to release the info of how much money they raised from the 10-20 different emails and phone campaigns they made for the IRA-NLA here in WA during the 594 campaign that was directly related to their 594 scare tactics.

They spent a measly 400k here in WA. My guess is they raised well above that in the name of promising to fight 594 and then took that money and ran. It's hard to get a total amount but I've heard some rumors that it might total over half a million to upwards of 2 million. What this means is that not only did the NRA abandon us (and no, we didn't need them to match 594 dollar for dollar, a 1 to 4 ratio would have worked, look how close it was with almost no money!), but they probably lied to us, took money with false promises to fight 594, and ran out of WA with it.

This would mean that the NRA are thieves.

We cannot tolerate that. If the NRA engages in behavior like that then it needs to cease to exist and be replaced with a more ethical organization. Right now I belong to a gun range that requires NRA membership. I will be going to their next board meeting to suggest allowing people to donate a similar amount of money as NRA membership requires to any gun rights organization, especially the local SAF or CCRKBA, which I am a lifetime member of and have a plaque to prove it.

I think they just did that Sept 12th.

The way to fix that is join the NRA and vote for the board of directors, voice your concern......

So hang around for years and years feeding them more cash to misuse or funnel them tons of money for a lifetime membership so I can vote to stop backstabbing us? Seriously? Even if all of WA members did that it's a national organization, so how would those votes pan out? No thanks.

Just like with the national congress and 60% of republicans feeling betrayed by the leadership there, many WA NRA members feel betrayed here and instead of working hard to get the NRA to stop screwing us over there are organizations like POGR, SAF, CCRKBA, etc., that don't need any "fixing" and are already doing good work and deserve the support instead.