I agree on almost all fronts. But I can only think that whatever the NRA's choice was to minimize their participation in this presidential election, it wasn't done with a crystal ball, that no one in the NRA had enough data or was enough of a fortune teller to decide in the Q4 2019 planning stages that Trump was going to lose in 2020 no matter what.srothstein wrote: ↑Wed Dec 16, 2020 3:47 pm I think the NRA did all it could this election and was wise not to spend extensively on the presidential race. I say this because of two things. First is that the lines were much more clearly drawn this election than with Clinton. People who supported the NRA probably already supported Trump and nothing the NRA could do or say would have convinced the remainder. The people who voted for Biden were either Democrats voting for their party or the Never-Trump crowd of Republicans who would not vote for him no matter what. I do not believe there was nearly as much middle ground this time as there was last time. In the 2016 election, one of the factors that worked for Trump were all the Never-Clinton people of both parties. They could be motivated to come out and vote for Trump instead of just sitting it out. This time, there wasn't a middle ground that could help Trump. If the NRA saw this and instead concentrated on some of the lower ballot races, it would help explain how the Republicans did so well in the House and Senate races over predictions.
The second reason is that I honestly and truly believe that there was fraud in this election, and that it was on a scale much more massive than any presidential election before in the US. It just boggles my mind that anyone could believe that both Biden and Trump received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. And, in case anyone cares, I don't believe the mass media and the politicians who are saying there is no evidence of massive voter fraud. They are ignoring the evidence presented. I note that there has not been much of a response to the finally allowed forensic audit of the voting machines that says they were designed to rig the election. If I am right that there was fraud in this election, nothing the NRA or anyone else could do would have changed the outcome.
As to lower ballot races, Texas was considered something of a battleground state this round, and I live in Texas's largest city in its largest county. I saw down-ballot advertisements on the TV daily from the Bloomberg machine. I remember a grand total of one--and I saw it only twice--shown as funded by the NRA. Maybe they were more active than I can guess in other states, but those numbers I showed, $9 million spent this election compared to $54 million in 2016, were for the entire election cycle, both presidential and congressional; I don't think tracking of any purely local-level race ad spend was in there. If that's correct, it wasn't a redirection of effort; it was in fact a significant contraction.
What I keep thinking about are new gun owners. The firm McLaughlin & Associates (https://mclaughlinonline.com/), published their "National Post-Elect Survey Results" last November. Among others, this question stood out to me:
Overall, 27% of the voters had been unaware; 36% of those who voted for Biden had been unaware; 32% of all women had been unaware; and 34% of all voters lining in urban areas were unaware."At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that evidence exists in emails, texts, eyewitness testimony and banking transactions that the FBI has been investigating since last year directly linking Joe Biden to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party and Hunter Biden’s business, which may have personally benefited Joe Biden Financially?"
When I first posted here, and linked to, Biden's gun platform, even a number of our highly informed membership were unaware of the extent of it.
This year has already set massive firearms sales records. As of the end of July, NSSF numbers indicated that in 2020 over 5 million Americans had purchased their very first guns. The NICS numbers are still at record levels. So far, NICS inquiries every single month in 2020 have been greater than any month in the program's 22-year history (see attached chart). As of the end of November, there have been almost 35.8 million inquiries to the system. Last year held the previous record high with 28.4 million; 2016 ended with 27.8 million.
Now, NICS checks can never correspond to actual numbers of firearms sold; I get that. But seems to me like it's a pretty solid bellwether of the market. And if we already had all-time record first-time gun buyers as of the end of July, something tells me those purchases didn't just stop. I think it's very easy to believe that 2020 will see maybe as many as 7 million first-time gun buyers.
If 1 voter in 4 was unaware of Hunter Biden and China when they cast their ballots, and if even many on this forum were unaware of how far Biden's published gun policies would go...I can only wonder how many of those 6 or 7 million first-time gun buyers were unaware of the Biden/Harris plan.
In hindsight, would turning some of those votes have made a difference? Probably not. But those first-time buyer numbers are equal to or greater than the total existing NRA membership.
So, no; in hindsight TV ads and more grass-roots expenditure and effort by the NRA would probably have made no difference in the election's outcome. But does that mean they shouldn't have tried? At least a little harder? Does that mean those efforts might not have paid huge dividends down the road when 7 million first-time gun owners suddenly find themselves with an extremely anti-gun administration in the White House? And that suddenly they may be personally affected by new executive orders and new taxes and new control measures? Could we have gotten a million new gun buyers to join the NRA? Heck, could the NRA have given away a couple million free "special" one-year memberships to try to bolster numbers, awareness, and future membership and donation revenue?
I don't know. I'm just a guy sitting at a keyboard. But a crucial step in winning is showing up. You can't win if you don't play. We can go on and on about "it wouldn't have made a difference," but the fact is we don't know. Because it doesn't look like we ever really showed up.
So I'll flip the question and hope that it isn't too far off topic. What is the NRA doing now to engage and inform those 6 or 7 million brand new, first-time gun owners? To get them to understand the battle for their 2A rights? To get them--and apathetic or simply unaware existing gun owners--to join in to help hold the lines in light of Trump's loss, and an incoming four years of an administration that has openly stated its best-case result would be to effectively disarm America?