Posted on 09/05/2001 11:07:46 AM PDT by skypod
The National Rifle Association has gone astray in the past few years. It seems to have become comfortable with trigger locks that can leave victims-to-be fumbling with combinations or keys while marauders play dynamic entry games on their homes and heads. It seems to find reasonable, gun and owner registration schemes that generate databanks hackable or physically pilferable by hooligans and authority abusers and are, on the record, at any rate maintained in ways that vary from prescribed procedures.
And, of recent notoriety, it has followed Congressman Don Young (R-Ak) in supporting the so-called Conservation and Reinvestment Act, CARA, though that threatens the rights of private property owners on its face, the abuse record of the government bureaus that administer it is not only predatory but homicidal, and the benefit to members eyed by NRA, more funds for lands and ranges where hunting and shooting can take place, is foredoomed by Green zealots wielding the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Act as swords of absolutism rather than the in-perspective, reasonably prudent measures they were originally intended to be.
Responding to articles in Sierra Times and elsewhere, a number of NRA members have expressed disgust and announced intentions to quit.
As one of them concluded, "What a shame."
The NRA is the big tent, and its potential for beneficial influence is unmatched by any other organization. Our recent investigations have yielded strong indications that its policy choices are made by a relative few people.
The staff, in turn, is in the Washington, D.C. Beltway community, constantly interacting with and sometimes to a degree accommodating the "go-along-to-get-along" culture that prevails there and shuts out America.
Our investigations have established that even the NRA Board of Directors has been incompletely briefed about the chilling ramifications of CARA.Thanks to leading questions and information downloads from activists and journalists, their interest prompted, (if, at first, in angry reaction), by Diane Alden's scathing and emphatic wakeup call,
and perhaps her stirring
we now know that NRA Board members are reviewing the record and debating the issue, eyeing a September NRA conference many of them will be attending.
Maybe, just maybe, NRA will be returned to a path that reflects the convictions of most of its members, and that in the not-too-distant future. If not, we can reasonably expect to be told the reasons why.As individual members, or non-members concerned with the issues NRA addresses, use the communications links following the KeepAndBearArms story mentioned above, soon to appear on SierraTimes's "Sound Off" page (http://www.SierraTimes.com/SoundOff.htm).If a member, say you are a member and that you require the "mynra" URL NRA uses be honored as it's stated. Use your standing as a member, and let it be known "I'm the NRA and I vote" applies to NRA policy as well as governmental elections.
To let those who disagree with you run you out of your institutions is no different from letting somebody run you off your land or out of your home. Once it happens, they're strengthened by having the asset you've worked for, and you're weakened by being out in the cold. By all means join and support more emphatic organizations. But don't give up the ship for the lifeboats. Prospects are best when cruisers have the use of both at hand.
The old cliché' image of these situations has to do with being outside the tent or inside it, directing personal irrigation inwards or outwards. Submitted: The most effective stance of all is to be inside, directing your self-expression inside. After all, the tent is designed to shelter its denizens from outside deluges.
Stand up, sound off, and say "Mine!". Even a toddler has that much sense. It's a basic survival impulse.
Heck, you could even use it on the Oval Office, the Congress, City Hall ---
John G. Lankford
What's really interesting is that the only ones playing "go-along-to-get-along" are conservatives. Leftists never yield. Democrats never yield. But, I repeat myself. My point is that Rush is Right. The only way to beat these guys is to streamroll them politically. They will not accomodate. They will not compromise. So why the he!! should we? Get them out of there before they do more long-term harm to America. For example, beating Puff "Commie" Daschle in South Dakota should NOT be a difficult task.
This article makes some good points that we all ought to think over.
TRT BUMP!
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