Good question. Bad answers.
While the reality is far more complex than Mr. Scott seems to “feel” (I won’t credit him with thought), the truth is that the NRA leadership does speak for very few of the 55 million to 120+ million American gun owners.
The lamestream media likes to pretend it does, out of laziness that lets them use “NRA” for “all those backwards, gun-clutching, rednecks.” Until it suits their (and Scott’s) purpose to explain that gun owners really want a lot of infringements of their human/civil rights. Then that “radical” NRA is a bunch of out-of-touch whackos.
Let me tell you the truth about us non-NRA gun owners. A lot of us hate the NRA. Because the leadership are money-grubbing appeasers and compromisers, who use every new infringement they allow or even promote as an excuse for fundraising to “fight” that infringement.
The reality is that millions of the rest of us are armed, trained, and practiced. And we didn’t spend our hard earned dollars on guns and ammo so we could give them up.
What are you going to do about it?
The NRA Does NOT Speak For Me
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2018/02/22/the-nra-does-not-speak-for-me/
No, the NRA doesn’t speak for me, and never did.
I had never been a member of the NRA until Barack Obama was elected, then I joined as a knee jerk reaction. I was unaware of what they were all about, I just knew that I had to do something, anything, to show my displeasure at what I saw as a sure picture of my rights being eroded even more. I of course, had the so called Patriot Act fresh in my mind, as well, thank you Bush and Cheney.
To be honest, the small amount of money that it cost is probably not a big deal for anyone now days. In fact, I would bet that if someone wanted to join, but really and truly didn’t have the money, they would have people that would pay for their membership. The big deal is that when I support something by lending my money and name to it, I want to know that we are on the same page. However, I found two things about them that caused me to stop renewing.
First, it was just like when I gave money to Jerry’s kids telethon for MD. Again, it wasn’t much, but was a few hours pay, at the time all I could afford. But over the course of the next year, I was inundated with so much junk mail, that I know that they spent well over the amount that I sent them on producing it and mailing it out. That was the last time I gave money to them. I from that moment on sought to give my money locally to charities that I knew and could firsthand make sure as to where the money was going. I don’t have a lot of money that I give, but in relationship to my income, it tends to be a percentage that is high enough that I don’t want it wasted on administration or junk mail solicitations.
The second thing that sealed the deal against the NRA for me was that of their politics. As you said, they seem to always be making the wrong deals. I have seen them endorse the wrong candidates for office time and again. I have seen them endorse deals like the no fly list thing, and others like it, as well. If I saw that this was a strategic move and that they used it to springboard to a deal that gained us ground that we had lost plus more, that might be tolerable, but all they do is give and give, and never get anything in return.
Now I see in some places that Trump sat down today with the NRA and they got him to back pedal some on his ringing endorsement of DiDi Feinstein’s assault weapons bill, and other things, as well. I saw the video of when Trump was sitting and saying that we should add that so called assault weapons ban to the bill, and DiDi literally bounced in her seat and clapped her hands in glee. I almost gagged, it was so much like one of the high school plays with the wicked witch and the 10th grade actress wannabe and the director who didn’t know any better telling her to act like that when the hero gets caught in her web of deceit. I wonder how it will play out for her, if Trump was doing what I thought he might have been at the time, setting them up. He has been known to do that with the democrats, in his time in office already, with DACA and with the budget deal.
The things that the NRA does well, they do VERY well, like education and gun safety for children. The things that they do badly, they do VERY badly, like lobbying for us. Perhaps it is time that they realize that, and consider splitting into two separate groups, with the two dissimilar missions, operating under two separate banners. Of course, that would mean new leadership at both places, which is needed. They might be able to get more than a small percentage of gun owners to join them if they simply did a better job of what they were doing on both sides, and didn’t try to hide it from their membership.
Unfortunately, the NRA has screwed up the training part so badly that large numbers of former NRA trainers have quit in disgust. What is needed is for a completely different outfit to organize and offer nation wide training that is effective, and has no political agenda. That’s what is killing the NRA training programs.