October 14, 2007
An open letter to the general leadership of the NRA:
I write to you today to inform you that I’ll no longer contribute to the NRA, not a single penny. This is in response to the NRA leadership’s bizarre and unconscionable betrayal of all American gun-owners by working with our opponents in crafting ‘compromise’ gun-control legislation that would disarm all of our combat veterans, and swing open the doors of gun confiscation by giving legal precedent to government bureaucrats’ deciding who (or, more likely, who may not) own a firearm based on whether the government is absolutely assured of the mental stability of any gun-owner.
What would possess the NRA to sit down with gun-ban extremists like Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) [and former NRA Board member] and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York)? This is like a lamb sitting at the table with a pack of ravening wolves to decide what’s for dinner!
I have a pretty good idea what motivated the NRA board, even if some don’t get it. I suspect that it has a lot to do with money, and membership, and assuring a perpetual ‘constituent base’ in our country’s growing but unconstitutional system of ‘representation by special interest groups’. The NRA board has benefited in the past by compromising with anti-freedom forces. When the 1968 gun control act passed, I suspect that even the NRA leadership were not aware of the Nazi origins of how GCA’68 was translated by the staff of Senator Dodd from the original German 1938 gun law. I seriously doubt that the NRA gave a moment’s thought to the direct assault on our gun rights because at the time that’s not where the NRA’s thinking was at.
Over time, the battle over the Right to Keep & Bear Arms - and shield laws against ATF abuses were fought for by independent gun-owners. Fast forward to the Clinton era, and the growing emphasis on RKBA defense among gun-owners and their associations. The NRA took the lead in opposing most of these onerous and wholly unacceptable proposals. However they saw an opportunity, by letting pass wholly unconstitutional laws like the Assault Weapons Ban, to swell their ranks with freshly outraged gun-owners.
I, for one, take a zero-tolerance view when it comes to gun control laws. They are unconstitutional, therefore they must go! Ditto for any proposed bill that violates that golden, constitutional standard. Arguments about the need for constitutional rights to reflect the requirements of modern society by changing with the times are moot, as their logic presumes that Rights are revocable, colorable, or transferable. You cannot have ‘some Rights’; either you have the Right or you don’t.
This is the mystery of iniquity: why would the NRA, heretofore the most powerful special-interest organization in the country, compromise on an inestimable safeguard to all of our other liberties? They can succeed in opposing any gun-control bill IF they want to; this track record is indisputable. However, it also is proven that any gun control that gets passed did so only because the NRA ‘blinked’, thus allowing it to become law. Also allowed to pass were ‘instant checks’, the assault weapons ban (AWB) that refuses to die, restrictions on all manner of firearm accessories, imports, parts, pieces, and assemblies; and the enforcement of existing (unconstitutional) gun laws, also known as ‘Project Exile’… As it stands right now, a citizen can forever lose their gun rights because of something like a traffic ticket or spanking their kid!!
Thanks, NRA, I really needed that!
The NRA has also hindered the successful pursuit of pro-gun lawsuits, such as the 1993 CATO Institute lawsuit against the DC gun ban; or they have falsely claimed credit for work done by other pro-gun organizations who did the “heavy lifting”.
I cannot give a single penny to an organization that claims to defend our rights, but is willing to sell us out by cutting backroom deals with our enemies on legislation like H.R. 2640. This bill sailed through the House of Representatives and went to the Senate for to await approval there because it was backed by the NRA leadership! Normally I would support a complete housecleaning of the leadership, but this betrayal of American gun-owners is multigenerational and not limited to a few terms of the NRA board. I’ve already stopped payment on my NRA life membership for precisely this reason, and instead became a life member of Gun Owners of America. This latest betrayal of gun-owners by the NRA confirms in my mind that they compromise on gun control precisely because it has increased their membership rolls and their treasury, taking advantage of the fear, anxiety, and apprehensions of less-informed gun-owners.
The NRA lobbies a legislature hostile to our Constitution in static defense of our gun rights. Does lobbying actually accomplish anything? Freedom activist Devvy Kidd does not think so. She wrote, “The NRA is aware of Edwin [Vieira]’s project, yet they have not come out nationally to support forcing the states to comply with the Second Amendment. Why not? Isn’t the Second Amendment and what it stands for the main purpose behind these national gun organizations? More lobbying might be good for donations, but it will not fix the problem as we have seen over the past forty plus years. To continue "lobbying" for the right to own and bear arms is an exercise in futility. It's nothing more than a constant merry go round depending on which sellout is "elected" to office.”
I am a gun rights activist. I am better informed than the vast majority of NRA members, and I track the legislation that either threatens or protects our gun rights. I am a freedom activist in general, so I also track other threats to our liberty and especially those that can do an end-run around our gun rights, like the REAL ID Act, that establishes a national ID card standard that will be operational by May 2008. The NRA did NOTHING to warn its members about this insidious, un-American, un-constitutional, tyrannical law. Did the NRA not consider that if the government has a database on each and every human being living in the USA, that a national ID card can (and will) be used to covertly identify who all the gun owners are? And that for all its bluster about opposing a national gun-owner registry, the NRA was silent about the implementation of a system that accomplishes precisely that, and more?
Now we are faced with a government that has effectively undermined our most precious guarantees of liberty. We can be kidnapped under the pretext of arrest, denied habeas corpus, spirited out of the country, tried by a tribunal without a jury, in secret, tortured or executed – again in secret – without a fundamental regard for basic human rights. Have we not noticed that all of the so-called anti-terrorism legislation passed in the last 15 years have all been aimed at Americans, and deployed through our criminal justice system against common infractions of the law? None of the nation’s anti-terror laws are geared to bring justice to foreign terrorists except through the deployment of our Armed Forces, the sword of the nation.
This presents a quandary. If the key phrase in the second Amendment, “A Well-Regulated Militia” is to have any effect, then it naturally follows that the goal-line defense of our remaining freedoms must necessarily begin with citizen volunteer militia organizations in every state. We The People ARE the militia! Unlike the Gun Owners of America, the NRA goes to extreme lengths to distance itself from militia groups. In the past, the American people were more apt to fall for the mainstream media lies about militia groups being racist, criminal, or just plain kooky. These lies have been thoroughly debunked as anyone who uses the internet has discovered. In fact, these freshly-liberated minds are discovering that the threat to our liberty is so clear and present (some would say imminent), that they are joining these militia groups because they believe in the lawful use of force to defend our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic!
Oh, and while I mention the Constitution, why has the NRA not reported to its membership the threat to the entire Bill of Rights posed by President Bush’s secret treaty conference with Canada and Mexico to create a North American Union that would supersede our Constitution and Bill of Rights with a supranational government?
Is that not the epitome of TREASON?!?? And would that not END the 2nd Amendment as we know it? And isn’t this the second-to last step that would be needed to create a world government under the United Nations, that hated, anti-American, anti-Liberty den of vipers that the NRA recently became a participating partner with as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)?
No, the NRA crafting and support of the most odious gun control bill in over 10 years is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Not only will the NRA not get another solitary penny of my money, I must insist that my membership be immediately terminated. Furthermore, I will educate all my gun-owning friends about the NRA betrayal of gun-owners and encourage them to quit the NRA too! Your organization can no longer be called pro-gun and I will have nothing to do with you.
Respectfully submitted,
William Andrew Flatt, sui juris
PS: I submit the following articles in support of my argument. This is not an exhaustive list, just a sample of the most prominent articles & authors whose opinions I respect:
“Am I the NRA?” By L. Neil Smith
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?id=420
“No More Angel Shamaya’s” by Devvy Kidd
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd174.htm
Pro-RKBA groups stand against the NRA and ‘Project Exile’:
http://www.petitiononline.com/exile/petition.html
NRA SUPPORTS GUN CONTROL!
http://gunshowonthenet.com/AfterTheFact/NRAGunControlSupport.html
GOA open letter to the pro-gun community
http://www.gunowners.org/a100407.htm
Problems with the NRA-backed gun control bill HR 2640:
http://www.gunowners.org/netb.htm
May 14, 2008
To the NRA and its leadership:
Seven months ago today I wrote to the NRA to express my extreme displeasure with the manner in which the organization has betrayed gun owners by supporting compromise gun legislation that serves to advance the anti-gun lobby while simultaneously creating a “need” for gun owners to support the NRA. I reject this scheme without equivocation.
The NRA’s response was to write back and insult my intelligence by deliberately trying to peddle more lies, claiming that the language in the Veterans Disarmament Act (HR 2640) is helpful to gun owners. With “help” like that, who needs enemies?
Now any veteran returning from combat – and anyone else who has withstood any form of critical incident stress (including police and correctional officers) – are now at risk for being disarmed by an unelected star chamber of antigun bureaucrats.
You, NRA, further insulted me by disregarding my demand to immediately terminate my membership and remove me from ALL your mailing lists. Yet I continue to get your propaganda in my mailbox for these past several months, wherein you try to instill fear among gun owners and play a guilt trip on those who choose other organizations like GOA instead of you.
In truth, the NRA steals credit for the good work and heavy lifting in the fight for RKBA by groups like GOA, CCRKBA, GOF, Citizens of America and others. The NRA interferes in the lawsuits of groups like GOA and GOF in order to steal some thunder and to undermine the definitive pro-gun rulings sought in court.
I continue to stand by the statements offered in these articles.
The NRA leadership continues to demonstrate by their actions that they are not the friends of gun owners. While the vast majority of its membership remains willfully ignorant of the facts, and disdainful of any documentary evidence that contradicts the propaganda of the organization and its leadership… I am part of a growing movement of gun owners that have come to realize that the NRA leadership is backing some of the worst anti-freedom politicians in the history of this nation. By extension, the NRA is helping to create a police state, one which will inevitably come to see gun owners and patriots as the enemy, and seek to disarm them.
Once again, under existing federal law concerning the mailing of unwanted materials - and under the applicable sections of the uniform commercial code, I hereby demand that you cease and desist from all future mailings and remove me from all your lists. This will serve as a legal final warning.
Respectfully submitted,
William Andrew Flatt, sui juris
