He tried to point out, at a sparsely attended meeting of the Membership Council, that perhaps their single-issue strategy, and total lack of coalition building with other members of what I call the "Liberty Community" was part of the problem.
He attempted to suggest that common cause with a broader base of Liberty Activists—like the growing Tea Party and 9.12 movement—would increase NRA's effectiveness and their chances of success where up to now they have engaged in the rather pathetic defensive strategy of losing gun rights slightly more slowly than the Leftist gun-grabbers would prefer....but losing them just the same. The recent passage of the Ammo Tracking bill, AB962, signed into law on October 11, demonstrates that admirably.
The upshot is that he was told to shut up and go away. Literally.
Now, he admits that he wasn't as circumspect or delicate as he might have been, but that looking at a very large meeting room with less that two dozen atttendees—most older than Moses— he thought they might be open to a suggestion or two about their current, and obviously ineffective strategy.
They were not. I was surprised, indeed, rather shocked when he described their high dudgeon at his temerity in daring to suggest that there may be another, better way to defend gun rights that might actually include people who don't own a gun, are not members of the NRA, and don't pee on themselves at the opportunity to shoot a fully automatic weapon on Easter Sunday.
We had both imagined that the gun community was a natural constituency of the growing Liberty Community. But it seems the Leadership, at least, is unwilling to see the bigger picture.
Of course this doesn't mean that individual NRA members and gunnies won't join our efforts, but it means the instant communication, the established networks of information flow within the official "gun community" are closed to us because of the stubborn tunnel vision of its leaders.
Of course there are younger groups that might be amenable...but at least one veteran of the movement made this observation...
". . . gun people are just gun people, they are not freedom people. They don't really believe in rights, they believe in guns. Like any other single-issue organization, it's not that the larger picture has succumbed to tunnel vision over the course of time. Tunnel vision was the goal from the outset."Clearly it's not true of all of us. But it's disappointing to realize that it's true of any of us. And while one can understand that in the mists of the past this might have made sense, we are now at a point in our history where this sort of limited vision is dangerous, self-defeating and frankly, stupid.
Of course, that just motivates us New Rebels to further effort. But it's too bad we have to spend the energy and time on people who should be our natural allies—against an organized coalition of enemies that has us ALL in their sights RIGHT NOW!
The Gunslinger
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