USA – -(Ammoland.com)- It’s that time of year again when voting National Rifle Association members can cast their votes for a third of the Board of Directors. If this year is anything like years past, eligible members (those having five years of continuous membership and those who are Life Members or higher) will vote in the single digits, the Nominating Committee slate will carry the day, and Wayne LaPierre will once more secure a rubber stamp board.
AmmoLand has been posting articles about candidates to let us know who is running and what their qualifications are. Some are Nominating Committee picks and others are running after obtaining member signatures on petitions.
I’ll state up front I don’t have a dog in this fight. That’s because I only endorse candidates who unequivocally and correctly answer my Board of Directors questionnaire. No one is talking about the greatest threat to “gun rights” — a “pathway to citizenship” for alien populations that by all objective measures are “anti-gun.”
That said, a recent article characterizing the “new blood” as “the enemy within” by former NRA President Marion P. Hammer is uncalled for, obnoxious and flat-out wrong. To accuse them of wanting “to disrupt NRA, our mission and our cause” and to call their character and motives into question is inexcusable and indefensible. Based on comments under her swamp screed, most readers aren’t falling for it.
While I’m not endorsing any candidate (yet), I have no reason to doubt the sincerity and desire to help advance the right to keep and bear arms of any of the petition candidates. I’d be surprised if most of them aren’t fine people who genuinely want to defend the Second Amendment. I’d even presume many would provide satisfactory answers to most of my questionnaire. But there is one question – the most vital, as far as I’m concerned – that I have not seen any candidate even acknowledge, let alone comprehensively address:
Do you agree that politicians should be held accountable in their NRA grades for immigration actions that undermine the Second Amendment? If “No,” provide credible and testable evidence – not anecdotes and not just opinions — to show that will not happen.
It’s relevant because such populations favor gun restrictions by an overwhelming (71% to 25%) margin, and this is also proven in the real world by the California experience. Further, after over 20 years the needle barely moves to the right, so the “assimilation” argument has had decades to work and hasn’t, despite “welcoming” moves up to and including “progressives” creating so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Here’s a challenge for anyone who wants to tell us otherwise: Audit all credible polls against experience in places like California and then produce credible data – not isolated examples, but something that can be independently validated – demonstrating that “amnesty” and a “pathway to citizenship” for millions of foreign nationals in this country illegally (and legally, with current culturally suicidal policies) will not overwhelmingly favor Democrats and anti-gunners. Show your sources and methodologies for determining this will not result in supermajorities in state and federal legislatures that will then be able to pass all kinds of anti-gun edicts. Show how this will not result in confirmations of judges to the Supreme and federal courts who will uphold those edicts and reverse gains made to date.
Democrats recognize the advantage. So does Michael Bloomberg (who has partnered with one prominent candidate endorsed by the Nominating Committee and Hammer).
Why can’t “we” recognize it?
This is not (contrary to what those behind the cultural terraforming would have you believe) “xenophobic” or worse. They do that to make people afraid to be called “racists” if they even bring it up. What they won’t tell you is, immigration law protecting national identity and interests is basically the same policy enacted and administered by the government of Mexico. As they should.
This is something NRA management has refused to acknowledge, enabled by “pragmatic” defenders who fall back on the “single issue” deferral while avoiding questions they can’t and won’t answer. I’m not holding my breath, but it would be refreshing to see at least one petition candidate prove he or she really is different from the status quo, and ready to do more than rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.