Who's doing the "heavy lifting"?

Next to target shooting and hunting and arguing the merits of the .223 vs. the .308, the favorite activity of hard-core gun enthusiasts is without a doubt NRA-bashing.

For those Warren readers not familiar with the Gun Nut subculture, that's not a typo. The NRA catches as much grief from the right wing of the gun owner community as it does from the left wing of the gun control community ("the entire community is "left wing"; there is no such thing as a "right wing gun-grabber" -- Ed.). And leading the charge is the much smaller but much noisier Gun Owners of America.

Not without justification, of course. The NRA has often "gone along to get along", especially when the Congress was controlled by the Democrats. Back then their philosophy seemed to be "we can't stop it, so let's make it as gun-owner friendly as possible". Since 1994, they've stiffened their spine somewhat but their reputation as compromisers has lingered.

The GOA has exploited this to portray the NRA as perfidious turncoats and they themselves as the only "true" defenders of the Second Amendment. While it is true the GOA never compromises, they also never advance. The GOA will often kill a good pro-gun bill because it isn't "pure" enough. They seem to be under the delusion that the only reason all gun control laws were not repealed years ago is because of the spinless Republicans and their greedy NRA masters. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not far off the mark.

An example I am personally familiar with is Utah's concealed carry law, passed in 1995 with NRA support and GOA opposition. A representative of the Utah GOA affiliate branded it "gun control" because it required fingerprinting and background checks (necessary for it to even be considered) and refused to support it. Thankfully, they were ignored, and now after a decade some in the Legislature are seriously considering passing Vermont-style concealed carry, something that never would have happened back in 1995. Had we listened to the GOA in 1995, Utah would still have a "may issue" system, and there would still be only 3,000 permittees in the state as opposed to 65,000 today.

Even now, they are hoping to kill the important lawsuit pre-emption bill that recently passed both houses of Congress because it might be interpreted to require trigger locks. Their lack of foresight is astounding.

In the wake of Katrina, we see the same dynamic at work with individual members of the GOA. Because the NRA didn't file an immediate lawsuit after the gun confiscation order went out, some NRA-bashers accuse the NRA of lassitude or timidity or cowardice. The GOA is touted as the more dedicated defender of gun rights, even though they didn't respond any differently than the NRA, other than to issue a press release a few days earlier that was largely ignored by the MainStreamMedia. In their alert for that day on their website, they only dedicated a few lines to the confiscation after several paragraphs describing how to stop the lawsuit pre-emption bill.

But let's put last week behind us, and consider what each organization is doing now. The NRA has announced that they have sent an investigative team to New Orleans in order to interview the victims of the gun confiscation. The GOA has set up an information page and is promising to draft new legislation to prevent this in the future. Quite important, but the NRA will undoubtedly do the same thing and their bill will be far likelier to pass Congress.

Consider also the lawsuits that will be filed over the confiscation order. The GOA states it will only take gun confiscation reports from their affected members; the NRA is hoping to interview all confiscation victims. The GOA understandably wants to save its limited resources to help its members. The NRA is willing to help any citizen affected by the confiscation order. So which one is helping the average gun owner more?

Honestly, I really don't have a beef with the GOA. I appreciate the fact that sometimes they help keep the NRA honest. But I've seen enough of their backward tactics to decide that they don't deserve my support. They're kinda like the Democrat party, still living in the past, following the same outdated paradigms. They fail to realize that it's now time to move forward with steady, realistic steps, instead of standing still because something might go wrong in the future.

To put it simply, if you want to stop a gun control bill, join the GOA. If you want to pass a pro-gun bill, join the NRA. And if you're a gun owner in New Orleans, the NRA is your best friend right now. Unless you're a member of the GOA, you can't count on them.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.