wannabeagunsmith
Member
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2011
- Messages
- 669
Any other members out there?
National Association for Gun Rights said:I’m in a bind.
It’s illegal for me to tell you which candidates the National Association for Gun Rights PAC supports. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) expressly forbid me from telling you which candidates are so solid on gun rights that I want you to help us help them.
It sounds crazy, I know.
But the anti-gun Obamacrats who run the federal government don’t want gun owners and activists like you and me to be organized going into the 2012 election.
That’s why the IRS/FEC will only let me tell “a restricted class” of “legal members” of the National Association for Gun Rights who they should –– and shouldn’t –– support in the election.
The good news is, I’ve found a loophole around their legal gag, and frankly it’s pretty easy.
All you need to do is chip in at least $5 (or more), and take a positive pro-gun action, and you can then be counted as part of our “legal membership.”
Yep, Dudley Brown stirred it up on that forum. Every gun rights organization out there backs candidates for political office.
IMO: Dudley Brown is a self serving shyster whos made a career of bashing the NRA. Beware of any so called "gun rights" organization that has a "donate now" on its homepage. Brown finally made a very small monetary contribution to our gun rights in 2010. It's much too small to show up on this chart:
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2010&ind=Q13
I'm a newbie to THR. I have a somewhat different take on the issues discussed in this thread. I've never met Mr. Brown. I have no idea what his motives are. NAGR is not directly involved in Wyoming gun rights issues.
Wyoming Gun Owners Association, which has a loose association with NAGR, was the organization responsible for putting the pressure on Wyoming legislators to enact the Wyoming FFA in 2010 and the license-free concealed carry law (Constitutional carry) in 2011. GOA and the NRA were missing in action in each of those legislative battles.
Don Wills
Laramie County, Wyoming
He’s built RMGO and the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) into a double-barreled fund-raising machine that bullies anyone who compromises Brown’s pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda. (A favorite showy tactic is driving around in a Pinzgauer, a boxy, big-wheeled Cold War–era Austrian troop truck that Brown calls his “political pain delivery vehicle.”) Says former state Representative B.J. Nikkel, a Larimer County Republican who ran afoul of Brown last year after she voted for civil unions legislation: “He’s a political terrorist and a modern-day charlatan who operates in the shadows and portrays himself as a supposed ‘Christian,’ but he uses the people naive enough to believe him and financially support him.”
He’s also a primary, if almost unrecognized, reason why Democrats, in a little less than a decade, have turned this once-red state a deepening shade of blue.
It turns out this modern-day Machiavelli amasses more influence and income when his party loses than when it wins. By taking out moderate Republicans in primary races, he’s left the GOP with fewer officeholders . . . . . . As Democratic majorities at the state Capitol pass more progressive laws, Brown’s members have begun to literally hit a panic button: the “contribute” links in his organization’s near-constant emails. It’s created a golden opportunity for Brown—and maybe for Democrats, too. Progressive activist Ted Trimpa, an architect of the Colorado Democracy Alliance, says Brown’s nefarious ways have aided his causes . . .
“[Brown] wants us in the minority,” says Nicolais, now a Republican candidate for one of the more competitive state Senate seats in 2014. “For him, it’s mostly about a mailing list.” That’s because whenever he watches a pet issue flame out, Brown knows he’s won: Consider that in the several months it took the gun control bills to go from Democratic proposals to law, the NAGR’s membership numbers exploded. Suddenly, the cash is rolling into Brown’s office faster than his interns can count it, so anyone who concludes he lost because the bills he opposed were passed may simply be looking at the wrong scoreboard.
NRA-ILA’s legislative victory stands in sharp contrast to what happened here in Colorado in March, where a flood a draconian gun control bills sailed through the Colorado legislature, and swiftly were signed into law by the Governor. So, how did two legislative battles so similar in substance, have such markedly different outcomes?
One could sum it up in two words; Dudley Brown.
. . . we know a little more about where Brown has been directing RMGO’s money, time, and energy over the years. Here’s a hint: it hasn’t been spent defending the Second Amendment.
Apparently, Mr. Brown has been (for many years) using third-party “front groups” that claim to represent hot-button social issues (like abortion and gay marriage), but in reality, are little more than direct mail operations designed to “punish” Mr. Brown’s opponents. When voters receive these last-minute attack mailers they get the impression that the candidate in question (whichever candidate Mr. Brown opposes at the time) are also opposed by a “wide spectrum” of other conservative groups. The mailers are often completely false, as with my own legislative race, where Dudley’s Beltway minions sent pieces that claimed that I was pro-gay rights and “soft” on Pro-Life issues. Anyone that knows me, knows these claims are laughable. But by then, the damage has been done.
I use the term front group intentionally because there is little evidence these groups do anything except serve as a sort of “ideological back channel,” for operators like Brown. These “groups” have no real influence of their own (at either the state or federal level), they produce no publications of any substance (either in the policy or legislative arena), and their money (and direction) comes primarily from other conservative groups seeking to use them as “cover” for their electioneering (excuse me “voter education”) activities.