I think that we have a very powerful tool in our hands in our fight to protect our second amendment rights. Forums like this allow us to
-notify each other of offensive legislation
-organize people common to our cause
-mobilize large numbers of people to contact their legislators
-encourage and educate new shooters to the sport
-organize and setup range days and competition
I've been lurking here for a long time and have heard a lot of doom and gloom. I've also seen many positive things such as appleseed shoots, threads notifying everyone of harmful legislation, and talking about myths held by the public of firearm owners.
I don't know about the rest of you but there is a large and growing "subculture" of young and old persons alike becomming members of forums and communities like this one. My fiance even asks me when I'm talking on the phone or writing an email whether or not i'm talking with my "internet friends" or my "real friends."
I belong to atleast 6-10 internet forum communities ranging from professional associations, car clubs, firearms, bbq, myspace. Usually several of each genre.
Does anyone else participate in multiple forums with all of their hobbies? Recently I've been trying to interest some of those members of other communities, particularly the car clubs I belong to in participation at my local pistol range.
Could we use these forums to vastly increase the numbers interested in our hobby? In the past 4 years of participation in my "car club" they have attracted staggering numbers of people with one shared interest. We used to informally get together to drive some of the back roads on weekend days. It started out being about 5-10 of us a couple of times a year. The last meeting we had at "the dragon" included well over 150 cars and had participants from states as far as California. The police even volunteered to escort our vehicles as they traveled down the highway to our destination within Knoxville, TN . Smaller groups get together more frequently at least once a month. We even have community organizers for each city. We regularly get together go out to eat and talk shop.
The forum I'm a member of with my car club has fewer members than this site (abou 35,000 last i checked). One of the things that really started upping participation was local forums, usually one for each state. After serveral years we even started to subdivide some of the states into regional forums because participation really started taking off.
A lot of us talk about how we need to appear and seem more normal to the rest of the population. Anyone else here think more regional participation and more of us going to the range just might help bring us into the "mainstream?" in the public eye? I think so as it really has worked for the motorcycle and car enthusiast groups... so why not ours?
Anyone else have suggestions for being more proactive? Any ideas for getting others interested in this sport? While I think that "notifying our congressmen" is great and we need to encourage this type of participation it's really too late when it gets to that point.
-notify each other of offensive legislation
-organize people common to our cause
-mobilize large numbers of people to contact their legislators
-encourage and educate new shooters to the sport
-organize and setup range days and competition
I've been lurking here for a long time and have heard a lot of doom and gloom. I've also seen many positive things such as appleseed shoots, threads notifying everyone of harmful legislation, and talking about myths held by the public of firearm owners.
I don't know about the rest of you but there is a large and growing "subculture" of young and old persons alike becomming members of forums and communities like this one. My fiance even asks me when I'm talking on the phone or writing an email whether or not i'm talking with my "internet friends" or my "real friends."
I belong to atleast 6-10 internet forum communities ranging from professional associations, car clubs, firearms, bbq, myspace. Usually several of each genre.
Does anyone else participate in multiple forums with all of their hobbies? Recently I've been trying to interest some of those members of other communities, particularly the car clubs I belong to in participation at my local pistol range.
Could we use these forums to vastly increase the numbers interested in our hobby? In the past 4 years of participation in my "car club" they have attracted staggering numbers of people with one shared interest. We used to informally get together to drive some of the back roads on weekend days. It started out being about 5-10 of us a couple of times a year. The last meeting we had at "the dragon" included well over 150 cars and had participants from states as far as California. The police even volunteered to escort our vehicles as they traveled down the highway to our destination within Knoxville, TN . Smaller groups get together more frequently at least once a month. We even have community organizers for each city. We regularly get together go out to eat and talk shop.
The forum I'm a member of with my car club has fewer members than this site (abou 35,000 last i checked). One of the things that really started upping participation was local forums, usually one for each state. After serveral years we even started to subdivide some of the states into regional forums because participation really started taking off.
A lot of us talk about how we need to appear and seem more normal to the rest of the population. Anyone else here think more regional participation and more of us going to the range just might help bring us into the "mainstream?" in the public eye? I think so as it really has worked for the motorcycle and car enthusiast groups... so why not ours?
Anyone else have suggestions for being more proactive? Any ideas for getting others interested in this sport? While I think that "notifying our congressmen" is great and we need to encourage this type of participation it's really too late when it gets to that point.