[BeAuMaN]

Originally Posted by homelessdude

As stated above , You don't burn the house down because it has termites...you treat it and correct the problem. Unlike CRPA the leadership of the NRA is not as effective as I would like ( understatement ) but we need them in this fight if we are going to gain any ground. JMO

So... About this. If we were to take what Jeff Knox said at face value about how it's "virtually impossible" to remove Directors and Officers, and I believe in previous articles he's said that it's hard to effect any change within the organization, I guess the question is how would you "treat" the termites without just burning down the house?

I can't say that I am familiar with NRA bylaws, though perhaps Kestryll or someone else could comment on whether it is much more difficult to remove people running parts of the NRA at the top or not, or if that's just a fiction created by Knox.

I will say that if Ackerman is responsible for NRATV, and they're getting sued by the NRA, then I'm mostly happy. I'm not a fan of whatever NRATV was/is becoming... like some sort of third-rate Fox News or whatever. Though now that I look through the NRATV site as I'm writing up this post... for example... the calendar on previous episodes of Dana Loesch's Relentless, there seems to be a sharp difference between 2019 episodes that are now less than 60 minutes, and late 2018 episodes that were almost always 60 minutes. The late 2018 episodes, based off of just a casual scrolling, would diverge often into Republican talking points to... fill time maybe? Yet the current 2019 episodes are less than 60 minutes, and only seem to focus on topics that are, at the very least related to guns, if not strongly about guns and gun rights. I also remember previously that the front page was littered with various non-firearm stories as well, but that's going off when I checked out the frontpage sometime last year.

Perhaps upper management listened after that whole KKK-Hooded-Thomas-the-Tank-Engine video fiasco, and had them cut out non-firearm talking points? I remember reading an article that LaPierre was aghast when someone showed him that video.

Either way, I think that partisan-charged media when pushed by the largest organization protecting gun rights makes it difficult to reach out to people that aren't necessarily in the pro-gun camp. It's perfectly natural for the NRA to support one party for the most part because those are that candidates that are, in theory, going to be supporting (or at least not hurting, since there could be more that could have been done legislatively by many representatives) gun rights, but I think it's another thing to carry water for a party.

I think the CRPA does a better job at that, but it isn't a national organization and it has a different playing field as far as challenges than other states, being this is California. Though it does a better job (in my opinion) by not trying to do some 24/7 media thing.

My two cents. Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong, as I'm certainly not an insider (I mostly just try to read these laws and help people, and comment on regs and contact reps), but that's what I've observed thus far.

Originally Posted by mooner760HD

Being associated with CRPA isn't enough for me. I want to know what their role was in the benitez decision because as far as I can tell all they do is attach their name to the work of others.

I can't say I know how that works, but I know that the NRA and the CRPA do work together, including on state issues. At the very least, on the lobbying front, NRA keeps a lobbyist (Is it Dan Reed?) in Sacramento, who is separate from the lobbyist hired by CRPA (Roy Griffith?), as I've been watching the CA legislative committee meetings (like the Safety Committee), and my understanding is they work together (along with other firearm group lobbyists) to get as much coverage at committee hearings as possible, especially when you have multiple committee hearings going on at the same time with gun bills in each of them. If they aren't there, then the concerns of gun owners aren't heard, and the concerns aren't recorded in the record.

Perhaps on the litigation end, which you're interested in, the NRA provides some additional legal help in some cases and then also splits the bill with the CRPA for Michel & Associates (as well as other law firms) legal bills. The NRA likes to emphasize that they spend as much or more money than dues collected by members in California, especially back during those webinars when Gunmageddon was happening. I do think that it is not easily seen by members though how exactly that relationship between NRA and CRPA works, so it probably does leave gun owners wondering if they should support both or only one, and maybe they should explain that better.