Ammoland.
Now, let me just preface this by saying that I am a proud NRA member, a benefactor member, and have helped do many things for NRA. I am not anti-NRA at all. But what I’m going to tell you is, in effect, a painful history of things that occurred early on in the NRA. As the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, removing this painful history is not a good idea. We need to know and understand it. It is generally not known out there, but by recognizing it, we can look at the mistakes that were made, and mistakes were made. I am not talking about the modern situation now with the attack by the New York State Attorney General and all the politics going on here. Questions about whether Wayne LaPierre should stay in leadership or not. None of that. I am not going to get into that, and it is not about that. I want to look at the actual history of the NRA when it comes to gun control and gun laws.
You may be surprised to know that back in the 1920s and into the 30s, NRA was a proponent of gun control, and actually aggressively pursued the enactment of gun control laws. Laws that to this day, we are fighting. Laws to this day that the NRA is now fighting and has been fighting for many years to repeal and get rid of. But we need to know and understand what mistakes NRA made, and it was really done out of those folks being naive. If you want to read more about this, there is a really interesting article, believe it or not, in The Atlantic, which is a magazine that is generally considered, you know, left-wing, liberal without a doubt. But they had an article called The Secret History of Guns by Adam Winkler in the September 2011 issue.
It is a very interesting article to read. As much as I do not care for the politics of The Atlantic, and there, of course, is an agenda behind everything they do, this article does have many things in it that are factually true and surprising about guns and the history of guns. The fact that is put out by a liberal, left-wing magazine, and there is an agenda to it, does not mean that the history there is necessarily untrue or that we should reject it, want to close our eyes to it, and remove the statue. No, no, not a good idea. Instead, we should embrace it, understand it, and learn from it.
So, let me tell you that in the 1920s, NRA was actually a champion of enacting gun control. Because at that time, it had come over from England where there was gun control being pushed, and it came across the pond. It was after World War One, and there was this kind of a naive concept that gun laws could maybe work and go at crime and other concerns. The President of the NRA at the time was Karl T. Frederick. Karl Frederick was a Princeton and Harvard-educated lawyer. He was known as the best shot in America because he won three gold medals in handgun shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympics. So, he was a good shooter, obviously, a skilled shooter, and he was President of the NRA at the time. He was made a special consultant to the National Conference of Commissioners on uniform state laws.
In this role and during his NRA presidency, Frederick drafted what was called the Uniform Firearm Act. The Uniform Firearm Act was model legislation that was pushed in the States at the time throughout America with the NRA and Frederick pushing these uniform firearm laws because they wanted to see gun laws in all the states. It is shocking even say it, but what did these gun laws, these model firearm laws, what did they promote? Back in the 20s? I will tell you what they did. Number one, they required anyone that wanted to carry a concealed handgun in public must have a permit from the local police. Advocating permits. When what we had prior to that was constitutional carry. We had constitutional carry, and the NRA under Frederick pushed to not have constitutional carry and in fact have permits.
And he goes on but leaves the list woefully incomplete. There’s support for the NFA (and Hughes Amendment) and GCA, support for the original assault weapons ban, support for universal background checks, and the idea for the bump stock ban, and Trump was too stupid to be able to figure out that the NRA doesn’t have the support of modern gun owners but instead represents gun controllers.
A commenter posts this about the NRA National Firearms Museum.
“I’m the former senior curator for the NRA National Firearms Museum. Forced to retire after more than a year on furlough. Most NRA furloughed employees received no information on what was happening to the association. The designated staff chosen to “operate” various NRA functions were pretty much ones pledged to LaPierre. No matter what happens – I fear the NRA National Firearms Museum is toast. Believe they may have already sent part of the collection off for auction. When I went in to pick up my personal belongings (which was one heck of a process) – they would not let me, our museum registrar, or our FFL person into the galleries for even a goodbye photo. Interesting that they wouldn’t let an employee of 35 years (and the individual entrusted with the keys to every vault in the HQ) enter the galleries, but had allowed some VIP tours through previously.
“Millions of dollars are represented in the collection – just the Petersen Gallery held over $30 million and that was just the first gallery as you entered. The state of the HQ building is very bad presently – roof falling apart – they had to move the legal library from the 6th floor to another building next door because the roof collapsed in that area. Heard they believe it may take three more months to fully repair.”
That’s not from some outsider, but from the Senior Curator of the National Firearms Museum. And what will the board do? The board that has a legal obligation to protect the NRA as an organization? To protect the donations of those who support it? We can watch them re-elect the CEO LaPierre, continue his $1 million-plus salary, and give his cronies another year to complete their looting. This organization has endured 150 years. Founded by Civil War veterans, had 3-4 presidents who earned the Medal of Honor. It is now being ruined by a board too frightened of nasty words to do their duty.
This post is updated.
Update — a person affiliated with headquarters in the 1990s said there were many rumors back then that, while the museum itself was honest, some of the others who dealt with it were not. It would regularly receive collections, sometimes very big and fine ones, but not of museum-display quality. These would be given to an auction house to sell. There were rumors of insiders getting “first pick.” Also the possibility of kickbacks from the auction house to insiders who steered it business. At one point a staffer stumbled across a different firearm auction house that would offer NRA a better deal, and suggested that to Treasurer Woody Phillips’ staff. The person to whom he made the suggestion responded by going frantic and screaming at him until he left.
So even now they can’t stop their thievery. They (I assume LaPierre and his cronies) are looting the NRA National Firearms Museum for personal gain and financial protection.
Wayne LaPierre, Marion Hammer, Tom King and the rest of that ilk are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people. But most readers, I think, see this piece for what it is.
Yes, go ahead and admit that the old NRA made mistakes. I’m a proud NRA member, and we can all learn from this and move forward to make the new NRA. In other words, please send us your hard earned money and we can make it all better.
Here’s a one word answer: NO.