The ONLY gun legislation I am concerned with in Georgia is the removal of all restrictions for LEGAL CITIZENS with no criminal records. A law-abiding citizen has the RIGHT to protect himself ANYWHERE.
I agree, but until that Utopian day arrives I want to be able to legally carry a weapon without worrying about breaking a vaguely worded section of the weapons law that could at best end up costing me a small fortune for legal representation, and at worst, incarceration in Reidsville.
I also don’t know if this is true or not, but it would surprise me only a little. I always get a few nasty criticisms when I criticize the NRA here, but here goes.
I joined two years ago after years of ambivalence, and have found their approach distasteful. I don’t know if it was the MD after my name (a BIG mistake, I think, to put that target in front of a lobbying/fundraising group), but the frequent and strident unsolicited evening calls hitting me up with one story after another explaining why I should donate more and more money quickly turned me off, and didn’t stop with the first few hints or requests. The endless mail I can just throw out - the evening calls to an unlisted number after repeatedly requesting it stop grew very off-putting: I had to just start hanging up on them.
Their long-term defensive approach to the erosion of 2nd Amendment rights - essentially sticking fingers in a crumbling dike - seemed very ineffective as well. Their arguements were also behind the curve as the Left manuevered into power, seeming for far too long to focus on our right to hunt and sport shoot, as opposed to our right to protect ourselves from crime, or the ultimate meaning of the 2nd - to protect ourselves from tyranny. Others woke up long before they did, and presented a less passive approach, and now they have thrown their weight behind the movement as if to claim it as their own.
I have wondered, watching them merely try to defend against repeated assaults to our rights through the years, if they have a mission statement or some other stipulated stand which states that, beyond this point or that point, or after this many more or that many more attempts to disarm us, they would admit their organization’s legal and legislative approaches were ineffective, and advise their members to actually exercise the 2nd Amendment for the purposes for which it was written. I doubt it. Based on their behavior, it has seemed to me they would have just continued the fingers-in-the-dike approach until it was a moot point. I have little respect for such an approach.
Have they and do they serve a purpose? Unquestionably. But it is ultimately a fund raising organization, and one that played defense far too long and far too ineffectively on an issue vital to our freedoms. Whether true or not, it does not surprise me to hear that petty stuff like a scorecard of victories or somesuch that can be used for publicity and fundraising is more important to them than the victories themselves - that does not seem beyond belief with them, at least to me. Sad.
Anyway, one bloke’s opinion. /rant. Flame away!
>The ONLY gun legislation I am concerned with in Georgia is the removal of all restrictions for LEGAL CITIZENS with no criminal records. A law-abiding citizen has the RIGHT to protect himself ANYWHERE.
I’ll one-up you; a freeman (i.e. non-prisoner) should not be debarred the use of arms. I absolutely HATE the once-a-felon you cannot own/use guns laws, even after serving your sentence; I hate the ‘domestic violence’ misdemeanor [or in some cases the mere allegation thereof] disbars their use of weapons laws.
It is no longer enough to qualify those who should be allowed to carry as “law-abiding” for the reason that Ayn Rand pointed out: when the government doesn’t have enough criminals to control [because it cannot control freemen] they simply declare enough things to be illegal that you cannot help but BE a criminal.
We have seen this here with the addition of “repeat misdemeanors become felonies” laws & the proliferation of ‘laws’ which are themselves in contradiction to the ‘supreme law’ of the governing Constitution.