Responding to a criticism of the NRA's press conference

The following are notes from a letter to the NRA following the press conference on 12/21/2012 from a disappointed NRA member. (His original comments are italicized.)

I'm frankly appalled at today's press conference, and at the failure of the NRA in general, and you in particular, to seize this moment to become serious and credible participants in the national debate on gun violence.

What are we debating – how to keep kids safe, or what symbolic gun control laws we can pass? I think the NRA is focused on the right time-frame – Jan 1^st, and not waiting on the government. They’re not sitting around until some unspecified time in the future for a law to be passed, because they know that most proposed gun laws won’t be voted on until they've had a chance to be amended with features designed to make advocates of a complete ban happy. And that will result in a long, painful process.

If you think a magazine ban would be useful, I would like you to argue that facing a 10 round .308 rifle is significantly better for victims than a 30 round .223. (And if you don’t realize that will happen, you need to go back and examine the changes in handguns during the last ban on high capacity magazines. The Brady campaign later bitched about the “pocket rockets” they designed with the law. Welcome to the joy of unintended consequences.)

As far as I'm concerned, you squandered the chance to show that responsible gun owners would be in favor of  common-sense steps to keep guns out of the hands of the "bad guys" (such as closing the loopholes in national  background checks) in favor of ranting about media favoritism and putting forth unrealistic policy proposals.

Unrealistic policy proposals?  If all you got out of that was a policy proposal you didn’t actually listen to the press conference.

And are you actually arguing that background checks for private sales would do a better job at keeping kids safe? Have you not yet faced the fact that without real reporting of mental health issues that the background check is worthless?

Did you read CNN’s coverage of the press conference?  It was literally “the NRA calls for more guns”, just as Wayne expected it to be. They completely misrepresented the subject of the press conference.

Have you read anything by Lt. Col Dave Grossman, a retired teacher of psychology from West Point?  Grossman (who would seem to be the closest thing to an expert we have on the subject) has written comparisons of violent video games with the training that the military uses to desensitize soldiers to be able to shoot other people. You may disagree, but you certainly can’t argue that no reasonable person would feel that concern about whether people at risk for mental illness should be playing violent video games.

I am deeply disappointed in the NRA's leadership on these issues, and will be making it clear to my own  congressional representatives that the NRA does not speak for me in this matter.

Hey, we’re bound to have some people on the fence that will fall to the other side in a strong wind.

This is a nightmare for all of us. Some of are actually concerned about how do we see that it doesn't happen again, not if we can pass another meaningless symbolic gun control law so that we can say “we did something”.

Don't teach the law - teach staying out of jail

This seems to be the first and critical aspect of carrying - what you should do and not do in order to stay out of jail. Too much detail here is a waste of people's time, and can confuse people on what's legal vs what's going to get you arrested.

For example, carrying in a post office is arguable based on the language of the regulation. But that doesn't really matter unless we're preparing to take a case to court. The reality is, if you get caught carrying in a PO, you're probably going to jail.

I have in previous classes gone into the details on why it's arguable. So what do my students walk out of class thinking? Hopefully, that they should avoid it. In reality, who knows? I failed to stick with the principle of "teach what you want them to do", so I've confused the issue by telling them how they might not be breaking the law if they carry in the post office.


So, don't teach the law - teach staying out of jail.

If you're going to carry, carry wisely.

I've decided to start this blog discussing the subject of carrying a gun with a concealed carry permit. In my opinion, carry permit classes (including my own) still need improvement. They tend to go into too much detail on the law (which most people forget) instead of using general principles which people can remember.

The net effect is that people don't come out of the class with the understanding that they've just begun their training. They need to practice - and a lot of that practice doesn't need to involve a trip to the range.