Redstate

I, of course, encourage everyone to join the NRA regardless of their firearms ownership status, but you don't even need to be a member to recieve their email legislative alerts.

At the very least, receiving these alerts will provide you with a more balanced and comprehensive view of 2nd Amendment legislative action across the country. The NRA is one of the few organizations with the expertise, the resources and the mandate to keep law-abiding citizens apprised of this information, regardless of their political affiliation or membership status.

Not from my reading of their statements on their website and in the American Rifleman over the past two years. If you join and get the magazine, you'll know that one of the things they have most adamantly stood against is the Clinton AWB and any attempts to resuscitate it at the federal level, or anywhere else.

I think it's fair to say that the NRA has always treated the Clinton AWB and any attempts to resuscitate it at the federal level with very forceful opposition. I know Wayne LaPierre is absolutely opposed to it, and so is Chris Cox.

You can read more about it here and visit the website at ClintonGunBan.com.

I would say that their positions on the AWB have been unequivocal, but there is a lot of misinformation out there by groups who would prefer to be considered the authentic source of the information. Always remember to check your sources. The NRA has been opposed to it from the beginning.

As a Romney supporter myself this has been one of the toughest issues for me, because of his public and vocal support of an AWB in Massachusetts. I know the circumstances under which he signed it here, and that's part of the reason I've been willing to give him latitude on the issue, but it's been a sticking point nevertheless. He did forcefully advocate for a repeal of McCain/Feingold on the NRA website, but there is no way he can put the toothpaste back into the tube, so to speak, on signing Massachusetts' ban. He just hasn't been able to bridge that gulf very well, and that's why on this issue he's pretty badly compromised as a candidate.

Now Romney did say in the last debate that he didn't think there should be "any new legislation" and that kinda sorta palliated a lot of people. But it wasn't as strong as other people would have wanted. I just don't think he could make the stronger statement given his record.

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People like to believe that the 1st Amendment of the United States is so beautiful that it could stand forever on its own without anything behind it to keep it in place.

Unfortunately history has shown again and again that is simply not the case with human beings.

Moving away from such weighty matters as defending your liberty against such a threat, there is absolutely no reason why guns as machines are something the population should be prohibited from owning.

And the truth is that they're a lot of fun to shoot! Nobody should be denied that opportunity by government fiat. I had some of the best times of my life on a high-school rifle team in New Jersey, on a bus loaded with 16, 17, and 18 year-olds and at least two dozen competiton rifles. It wasn't environmentally unsound, it wasn't violent or threatening, and it fostered a sense of shared responsibility and teamwork. We also got a lot of homework done in between practice relays at the range. I would bet that as a group we had a consistently higher GPA than the football team, for instance: and we were the only gender-integrated varsity sport at the school.

The idea that people shouldn't own firearms for whatever lawful purposes they want them, including if they just want to lay them all out on the floor and drool over them, is ludicrous. And even teenagers can handle the responsibility in an environment with a little structure. My friends from that team are now adults, productive people in all walks of life: lawyers, doctors, professional machinists, scientists, real-estate agents, etc., etc. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I would bet that as a group we had a consistently higher GPA than the football team

That goes for pretty much every other team in the school environment, you should benchmark against the swim team...(he said with a grin).

You said it exactly right, the 2nd amendment is the one that guarantees and protects all the others.

I actually got tired of paying $35 every year, it was starting to irritate me. So, four years ago, I finally sat down and did the math:

$35/year * ~50 years (assuming I live to 90) = a lot* and decided the extended pay life membership ($750, $25 per quarter) was the way to go.

*(Ok, it's $1750 for those of you that are math challenged)

I know, I know, time value of money, present value is greater than future value and so on. Whatever. I consider it one of the more important organizations I belong to and do so now for life.

[threadjack](As a side note, my sense at the time of McCain-Feingold was that it was directed mostly at the NRA and their power to unseat incumbents who were against or squishy on the 2nd)[/threadjack]

The greatest single cause of Atheism today is Christians who pr.ofess Jesus with their lips & then go and deny him by their lifestyle. That's what an unbelieving world simply finds..unbelievable -Brennan Manning

The good thing about the rifle team as far as homework and studying is concerned is that when you're sitting at the range waiting for your relay, what you want to do more than anything else is to stay focused and relatively quiescent. When you're shooting at the level we were, it's the involuntary muscle control that separates a 100 10X target from a 98 or a 99 4X target. That lends itself to doing your homework, so you really have no good excuse not to.

I can't say we *always* did that, sitting there like a bunch of studious little elves, but everyone knew that sitting quietly and reading was a good way to get ready for the intense concentration you needed while you were on the line. We also used to meditate; it was a lot of fun. The last thing you want when you try to stay in kneeling or standing position and accurately call your shots is to be working with an elevated heart rate: I used to be able to get mine down below 50BPM.

And sqrt(-1) your impression on McCain/Feingold.

I knew a couple of guys on the swim team and they were awfully sharp. It would have been a good contest: guns and water!

Is the profound degree to which the left has used stereotypes against gun owners and how easily the public buys into it.

Myself included, for many years: I'm no angel in that regard.

When I moved to Massachusetts almost two years ago, it was after having lived and worked with liberals in Baltimore and Chicago for more than ten years. Moving to a semi-rural town in the middle of the state here was a bit of a culture shock. It had been almost two decades since I'd visited a shooting range or a gun store, and in that time I'd conveniently bought into, through a process of osmosis and also deliberately, a lot of those negative stereotypes that evoked my outrage when I saw this news item.

A little over a year ago I decided that since I was going to live in this town for a while, I should take advantage of the fact that there's an active hunting and sportsman's culture that's been a part of the social fabric here since it was founded. But I didn't want to head to the range and look like a complete neophyte, so I decided to buy a powerful airgun first and brush up my rusty marksmanship skills.

You can read those two blog entries and the big lesson I learned here and here.

The upshot (pardon the pun) at the 2nd link was:

It turns out, not surprisingly to me (at least after I remembered who I was) that the owner of Nick’s is a very bright and gregarious fellow with a great sense of humor and an absolutely razor-sharp mind, who would give most college professors I’ve met a run for their money. He’d look just as good in a cardigan or a turtleneck as he would in mossy oak breakup camo, in other words. His little girl is a joyous jewel and his wife can crack a heck of a joke, also. What nice people! What was I thinking for all of those years?

I realized as I left the shop how badly my years as a leftist/progressive had skewed and debased my perceptions and attitudes about people who own guns, and I was ashamed of myself for letting it happen. However, all was not lost: I made a couple of new friends at Nick’s and I intend to put those times behind me comprehensively in the spring. I also came to appreciate the power of suggestion and just how impressionable all of us can be when it comes to emotionally-charged issues like firearm ownership. If anything, the people who legally own firearms and understand them well in America are not the “bad guys” – rather, it’s the ones who wish to cast aspersions on them and restrict their liberty for dubious and manufactured reasons.

I had forgotten who I was, and I didn't realize how bigoted my own thinking had become, and I was ashamed of myself. I made a commitment to myself never to let that happen again. America's law-abiding gun owners are not the problem in this country.

You can also read my FID/LTC Safety Course report...

The boys who took the course with me today were really a tribute to their parents. Both of them were extremely interested in what they were doing, and they really focused on taking the course seriously; they asked some very good questions too, some of which only a kid can ask! I really enjoyed having them there. When you can get a 12 year old kid in a room full of adults who are covering some occasionally dry material to really focus on what he's learning for four hours at a time, you know that he is *interested* and that his parents have done a good job. Both of the boys comported themselves very well, and they each passed the shooting and written tests.

I took that class with a few adults and a couple of adolescent boys whose father brought them to the range. He's a Master Carpenter who has helped to restore several national monuments, and he's one of the guys that Howard Dean looks down his nose at when he describes guys in pickup trucks. What a travesty.