Yeah I made a slight change on the side of the page here. I removed the link to join Gun Owners of America and replaced it with a link to the donations page of the Second Amendment Foundation. After the two previously mentioned fiascos involving the NRA there has been a lot of calling for people to abandon the NRA and join Gun Owners of America. It was this that reminded me that I still had the link for joining Gun Owners of America (GOA) on the side of my page. I’ve been meaning to replace it for a while now but haven’t gotten around to it due to sheer laziness and a memory that doesn’t really remember things.
So why the replacement? Because after being a member of GOA for two years I’ve determined something, they don’t do anything. Well that’s not entirely true they do whine a lot. But in the two years I’ve held a membership I’ve not seen them actually work much for the right to keep and bear arms. Sometimes they send out envelopes with postcards pre-addressed to my representatives that they want me to sign and send. It’s an interesting gesture but I’ve already sent letters to those same representatives about the issue labeled on the postcard. Furthermore those postcards are far and few between. Their RSS feed for alerts almost never updates while the NRA-ILA feed has a rough average of 10 news items a day. The only decent thing GOA has is their rating page for representatives but that’s even tainted by non-gun related issues.
The bottom line is they claim they are the only no compromise group in Washington but don’t actually do anything. This is where people usually tell me GOA can’t accomplish much because they don’t have a whole lot of money. Bullocks. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) doesn’t have nearly the same number of members as the NRA, nor nearly the same amount of money, but they manage to bring up lawsuits against entities who infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. Heller vs. D.C. and McDonald vs. Chicago were both SAF initiatives. They also hold a Gun Rights Policy Conference every year (where they work with other gun rights organizations like the NRA which GOA seems unwilling to do).
Another gun rights group is the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO). Once again even though they don’t have the membership numbers of money of the NRA JPFO manages to do something. They produce literature and videos dealing with the right to keep and bear arms. They did an English translation of the Nazi’s gun laws and compared them to the Gun Control Act finding them to be very similar. They produced several videos relating to the right of self defense and the roots of gun control, racism (real racism not what the “progressive” liberals accuse pro-rights people of being). Like SAF JPFO is able to do something with less money than the NRA. Also you don’t have to be Jewish in order to join, just thought I’d toss that out there.
So really my point is this, if you don’t want to be a member of the NRA at least put your money somewhere useful. Join SAF or JPFO for instance. Join a local gun rights organization that’s doing something. But please don’t join GOA and then claim your money is being used to fight for your right to keep and bear arms. Unless I’ve missed something in my two years of membership I haven’t seem them do a whole Hell of a lot.
Maybe I’m wrong and my rage is misguided. I would love to be proven wrong on this so if you believe GOA is doing something please comment on what it is. I love being wrong on these kinds of issues. I do believe their hearts are in the right place but their lack of action depresses me.