Minnesota Gun Rights Continues to Look Like a Scam

Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) is a local affiliate organization of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). If you’re never heard of NAGR, and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t, it’s an organization that labels itself as a “no compromise” gun rights advocacy group. In reality it is an organization that appears to exist solely to separate gullible gun owners from their money. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve never heard of MGR. It’s a fairly new organization in Minnesota that mirrors its national affiliate organization in providing gun owners no tangible benefit whatsoever but constantly begging them for money.

One may wonder how I came to my conclusion regarding MGR. It’s simple really, I hang out with a lot of the people it targets. By calling itself a “no compromise” gun rights organization it targets people who believe the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) has compromised too often in the battle for gun rights. Many of these people are members of the local liberty-lite (my name for people who call themselves liberty advocates but continue believing that there should be a government) and liberty (anarchists) movements. Whenever one of these people posts about their dissatisfaction with GOCRA somebody jumps in to promote MGR. On July 4^th one of my friends posted about his dissatisfaction with GOCRA. Within hours a person who I know to be one of the kingpins in MGR swooped in (please note that I have anonymized all comments except my own because it may be possible to determine the identity of my friend by using me and the commenters as connections):

This is always the tag line they use. If I didn’t know otherwise I would believe this commenter to be an automated bot written by some stooge at MGR. Either way I don’t take scammers targeting my friends lightly so I decided to jump into the fray:

My attempt at both trolling MGR and preventing a friend from giving money to a, as far as I know, scam organization elicited a response from a second MGR shill:

In all honesty this is the most information I’ve ever gotten out of an MGR shill. Apparently the only way you can find out what the organization does is by attending its super secret (since they’re not posted anywhere on MGR’s website) weekend classes (which MGR probably charges for). The last time I heard about an organization that required people to attend super secret meetings just to find out what it does there were tests for thetan levels involved.

Since antagonization seemed to be working (at least better than any other tactic I’ve used to get information out of MGR shills) I decided to try some more:

I guess he must have been in contact with the mothership because after divulging information about MGR’s super secret weekend meetings (which, I’m now convinced, may actually involve thetan level testing) he resorted to the usual MGR shill tactic when pressed for information: deflection:

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I decided to go for the jugular. Now that I know MGR hosts biannual super secret weekend meetings that supposedly explain what the organization does I decided to ask why that information wasn’t posted on its website. After all, you would think any organization that held regular events would have a schedule posted on its website letting people know when and where they are:

I even performed a courtesy check of MGR’s website just in case some evidence of its super secret weekend meetings was posted since the start of the conversation (after all, it’s possible that nobody from MGR had thought to post information about its meetings to its website). Nothing was. Instead the shill simply said he would keep me in mind the next time one of these super secret weekend meetings occurred:

How he planned to inform me of the next meeting when he doesn’t know me and we’re not friends on Facebook is beyond me. He didn’t send a friend request or anything. But I digress. If MGR has actually held any of these super secret weekend meetings in the past I would think some information about them would have been posted on its website (you know, so its shills could point to said information when somebody like me accuses it of not doing anything):

What followed was a misunderstanding on my behalf:

I believe my misunderstanding was honest. After all, if somebody said evidence that your organization has done something is entirely absent from your website and you said “Actually there is.” you should assume that that person will assume that you are referring to evidence existing on your website. But that wasn’t the case here:

MGR must have been founded by the most operator of operators that has ever operated in areas of operations because it practices some extraordinary operational security. Its super secret weekend classes are, in fact, super secret. If you want to learn what the organization does you will have to wait for it to contact you, probably through a ninja courier, so you can get a personal invitation with the time and location of the next meeting. And you will probably have to memorize the information on your invitation because it will almost certain self-destruct five seconds after you receive it.

This, above everything else I have learned about the organization, reinforces my belief that the organization is a scam. It will gladly swoop in on vulnerable gun owners and ask them to give it money by whispering “no compromise” into their ears. But if its targets actually want to know what the organization does before giving it money that’s just tough shit. And, yes, I did let the shill know this:

It was obvious that I wasn’t going to get further information out of him so I gave up. However I do want to take a moment to point something out here. Political and business tactics are often kept secret. But if I want to know what a politician is claiming to fight for or what a business is selling I need only ask. Both are more than happy to provide me with such information. Likewise if I want to know what a politician or business has done I need only ask. Again both are more than happy to provide me with such information. They both know that you need to entice people. If you’re a politician you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re fighting for. If you’re a business you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re selling. Providing a track record of past successes helps assure people that you’re not just trying to scam them.

No politician or business, upon being asked what it has done, is going to tell you to attend a super secret weekend meeting at an undisclosed location and time.

My recommendation is to avoid MGR. I can’t find any evidence that indicates it is anything other than a sad attempt to separate Minnesota gun owners from their money. Red flags should go up when nobody involved with an organization is willing to tell you what, exactly, the organization has done. Even if you have misgivings about GOCRA its members are more than happy to provide you with a list of things it has done, and proof that verifies that list, so you can make an informed decision. MGR’s members are unwilling to even do that.