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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!

dagogo - who has a more subtle tagline than I – views it correctly:
“…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.”

Such a passive, misdirected tactic unnecessarily avoided the issue and gave the argument to the gungrabbers.

gaffer correctly stated: “A law-abiding citizen has the RIGHT to protect himself ANYWHERE.”
Whereupon the obviously well-meaning and intelligent epow responded: “…until the Utopian day arrives…”

That exchange points out the difficulty.
At what point did we agree to give up that natural right and wait for that Utopian day, a foolish move by any standard? Or, was the option taken from us by “law” by the government we formed?

When we determined to form a government which was to operate with and by our consent did we also, under any reasonable theory, step aside from our natural right to protect ourselves? (Did it commence with a couple of thristy drunks and a “Check your guns at the Sheriff’s Office” sign?)

For instance, when did we expressly or impliedly agree to not carry firearms into a courtroom for a public trial, or a city council meeting, or a government buiiding - where passions might run high?