NRA Convention-Wrap Up

It’s all over now—the 135th Annual Meeting of the NRA. Having one hundred and thirty-five "anniversaries" is an accomplishment.

Bill and I roamed around the convention floor for awhile. I was able to shake Ronnie Barrett’s hand, now that was a real privilege. We had a chance to chat with Michael Bane about blogging.

We also got a little shooting time in. Well, with a pellet rifle in the Convention’s pellet gun range. As one who travels a lot for work, I’d like to see such a range in every conference I attend. Granted, it was a little pricey (a dollar for five pellets), but it is in a convention center.

About One-Third of the Pellet Gun Range

We had fun even while we became footsore and tired. We enjoyed our time there and will try to go again next year. I’ve said before that NRA is not perfect and has made some missteps over the years. Who hasn’t? It is the only pro-gun organization that anti-gunnies fear and NRA knows how to use that power.

You ever wonder why they have that fancy building in Virginia? Or why they plan such fancy conventions? It’s a projection of political power. It demonstrates to anti-gunnies that NRA has money and clout. It convinces a fence-sitting Congress critter that its outreach and influence could end his career. It helps protect our gun rights even while asking us for our money.

I’d prefer that all infringements on my gun rights would end tomorrow, but it’s not going to happen. There are too many people in this country who want to ban guns. Or limit our access to guns. Or tell us what type of guns we can own. Whatever.

Most of these people are not evil or even misguided. Most are simply ignorant, too urban, or too "sophisticated" to know any better. They are our neighbors and they vote no matter how silly they might be.

So, I’ll keep going to NRA Conventions, keep writing about guns, keep shooting them, and keep supporting gun stores and gun companies (particularly ammo companies). These actions may be small, but when yoked to similar actions by millions of other gunnies, we might stop the banners in their tracks.

And if that doesn’t work and those poor misguided anti-gunnies decide to take any one of my guns away, well Molon Labe.