I talked about here how the Anti-Gun people are doing whatever they can to make political gains and make money from the emotions in the aftermath of the Arizona Shooting. Well I just listened to a radio interview with Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America do essentially the same thing. He had an opportunity to talk about gun politics, and gun control, as well as give sympathy to the victims, and maybe talk about self-defense. He did talk about the last bit, and did mention that people like Carolyn McCarthy were releasing legislation soon. But he used most of his time to simply attack Democrats including Congresswoman Giffords.
Hearing this in the wake of actions like this solidify my feelings for GOA.
I will never join GOA as long as I live. I will ask all my friends who are members of GOA to rescind their membership, or simply let the membership lapse. They are a classless organization, as well as a group centered completely around political divisiveness, and have accomplished nothing, nor will they accomplish nothing.
I am a NRA Life-Member, but they have upset me in the past. Still they are starting to get the point, also unlike GOA and other groups they are not simply a political group, they also do safety training, maintain shooting clubs, hunting grounds, and run shooting sports. While I’m a bit luke-warm on their politics, I do strongly support the NRA in their outreach to gun ownership and gun safety, as well as gun sports.
If you want to take a more politically aggressive route I strongly recommend everybody join the Second Amendment Foundation. (I am a life-member, and it was only $150) They are the group behind Heller, McDonald, and many other large Second Amendment Victories. While they don’t have the membership numbers of the NRA, they are really the big political dog out there right now, and if you’re not a member you really should be!
Of course there is your local 2nd Amendment group. Here in Mass its GOAL (I am also a life-member of GOAL), the state groups are actually the groups that will most impact your gun rights issues on a day-to-day as most gun issues are state and local ones.
Another Group I love is the Second Amendment Sisters My wife has a family membership to this group that includes me, and it was a Second Amendment Sisters Introductory shoot that really got my wife into shooting. I worked as an instructor at that shoot and it was a really rewarding day for me, as well as the 20+ women who attended.
I am not a member of Pink Pistols but I really like what they stand for.
All-in-all there are many great organizations for you to join that actually support gun rights, rather than just stump for Republicans and bash other 2nd Amendment Organizations.
If you are a Member of GOA, I can understand why you may have joined, but I believe you have made a mistake. Rescind your membership, and shred your renewal organizations. If you care about gun rights you should not be helping them.
Might I also suggest JPFO? And yeah, GOA will never get a dime from me.
You may suggest them. I will state that I know very little about them, so I cannot endorse or condem them.
2A is a good group! Concur on GOA…
In my humble opinion, the biggest insight here is that GOA is not on “our side” unless “our side” is hack Republican partisans.
Very good point. This is classlessness on the far right vs. far left. But just like I will point out that George W. Bush was hardly on “my side” (nor authoritarian RINOs like Huckabee or Romney) there are certainly those on the right who are almost as politically distant to me as those on the left.
One of the tremendous strides made in the 20th century by the anti-liberty movement is that they moved disarmament out of the gutter of racial politics. Granted it at first went from the Negro Peril to Chinaman / Irishman / Italian / Jew Peril, but then a general, poorly-defined idea of “safety” thrust a basic civil right into the political arena. (And unlike the slow chipping to religion, speech and private property, disarmament’s arrival was sudden and the participants, including “public servants”, were openly hostile.) The danger then became a ridiculously exaggerated risk created by anonymous bad guys–except when you need to defend yourself, then there’s no risk whatsoever–and only unlimited, dictatorial government could save us.
Pratt is very much old school in this respect; he still follows the political model. In his defense, the political model has been dead only a few years. He does, however, have to realize that the political model essentially argues that one political group makes a better custodian of a *privilege* than some other, when the argument should really be that it’s a *right*, and therefore no custodian is trustworthy other than the individual.
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