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Ziran wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:What has GOA accomplished? Nothing, not one single thing.

Chas.

It did achieve something. It made you and the NRA look like moderates.

K.

I hope no one downplays or overlooks the importance of this fact.

If the NRA is the only game in town, if they have no one whom they can point at as advocates of really radical change, they will then have to offer up their own good cop/bad cop bills. One proposing actual radical change, and another that is "reasonable". They haven't done so well with that, tending to seek the achievable and compromising on something less than desired.

I think NRA should be quietly funding big ad campaigns by GOA and JPFO and SAF. That way, they could say, "See? We aren't the radical pro-gun lobby, we're the reasonable ones! Now, let's talk about repealing the Hughes Amendment to FOPA-86... "

seamusTX wrote:P.S.: For the record, I think the U.S. should never have started down the road of "gun control."

I agree. But, as uncomfortable as the truth might be, the NRA had a hand in crafting every major piece of federal gun control legislation. Starting with NFA '34, through GCA '68, to the Brady Acts.

Not all of it is negative: the AWB had a built-in sunset clause (I wish all federal legislation did!), and NICS/Brady II is better than Brady I (and its waiting period). But, that's akin to arguing whether it's better to be slapped with the left hand, or the right: both sting, and free people should suffer neither.

Nobody in the current NRA hierarchy can be blamed for NFA '34 or GCA '68, but the proper roll of the NRA at that time would have been to throw a huge fit in opposition to either.

That old attitude of "damage control" rather than reversing course, seems to continue to this day.