I tried to stop this GOA against the NRA stuff since I’ve been a member of FR. I even met Larry Pratt and found him to be a decent guy.
No longer. The GOA isn’t trying to stop any gun control since they have never had a track record of doing anything. It seems they think they can simply expand their numbers by complaining about the NRA and taking some members. They must think there are only a set amount of gun activists and in order to get more money they have to get those members from the NRA.
Compare emails from the NRA and the GOA. The NRA doesn’t even acknowledge the GOA exists. Not so with the GOA. That no compromise ad slogan might as well say they don’t do anything except complain about other gun groups.
My boss doesn’t pay me for good intentions. He pays me for results. I don’t give out blue ribbons to ten year old just because they showed up.
I don’t pay money to the NRA because of a snappy slogan. I pay them because they defeated gore in 2000, passed Castle Doctine, passed CCW laws, passed the gun manufacturer’s protection act, lend legal protection in sixty cases a year and fight to keep gunranges open.
No one can ever tell me what the GOA has ever accomplished on their own. No one.
Much of that was done by state associations, sometimes working against the NRA, sometimes with it. The NRA first opposed, rather than supporting, the case which saw the DC gun ban overturned by a Federal Appeals court on the basis that it violated the *individual* right *of the people* to keep and bear arms. The NRA has no such victories. Emerson, which the NRA did support, ended with what can be read as dicta in the case supporting an individual right, but the gun law concerned (Lautenberg Amendment) upheld, and with Emerson stripped of his RKBA, forever.
That said, there is room for both the 400 pound Gorrilla, the NRA, and the little yappy dog, GOA. I'm a member of both. I don't see the GOA grabbing members from NRA, certainly not many, but rather serving as a "rougher around the edges" group that does a better job of keeping the main issue to the forefront, and has probably helped turn the NRA around somewhat. These days La Pierre sounds more like Larry Pratt than Pratt himself sounded 10 or 15 years ago. Similarly the SAF/CCRKB provides a more "intellectual" counterpoint to both GOA and NRA. Then there is the JPFO, talk about edgy. Whoo FReeping Who!.