How did this guy get to be the lone industry person at the signing table?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQOyELxJyzE/

The NRA pisses me off so much.

I was just going to post this. Considering how little the NRA did he should have stayed home. Someone from GOA would have been more appropriate.

GOA sent out an update that has lots of pics.

Any of those people here?  Feel free not to out yourself, but I thought it would be cool if arf members were recognized by GOA.  I know we did more than FWLP did...

Because GOA is usually only good at sending emails.  They suck at marketing successfully.  The only people that know much about them are people that are already on board with the 2A.  This is why nobody in DC and the press gives a crap about them or knows they even exist.

To be honest the GOA kinda sucks at doing much.  I know this will piss some people off but I really wish they were better at what they are supposed to be.

Both Rachel Malone and Felisha Bull were at the signing. The NRA was not on board with Constitutional Carry until those of us in GOA lobbied Speaker Phelan to appoint a strong 2A chairperson to Homeland Security Committee and that 4 versions of Constitutional Carry was to be heard by the Homeland Security Committee. When the committee hearings were taking place the room was FULL of GOA members wear GOA shirts as a sign of strength.

The GOA actually understands grassroots organization, the NRA is dead set against any form of grassroots organization. Also the GOA does not pay a bunch of fund raisers sending you crap like the NRA does, with no money getting to the lobbying.

I have been a NRA Life Member since 1967, and Benefactor since ‘95. We tried to organize gun owners in California before the real bad bills started, both WLP and Marion Hammer stabbed everyone in the back.

Looks like the did get a photo-op eventually:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQPDgv2NYPq/


If there is a way to embed I/G tell me.

Not an embed, but here ya' go.

FUCK THE NRA AND WLP!! That useless shithead did nothing. FUCK HIM!

here we go
Attached File

??. Those two ladies did more than anyone else to get Constitutional Carry over the finish line.

NRA was only there to get checks for Wayne's fucking suit collection. He can eat a sack of dicks.

What exactly did the NRA do to help get this passed?

101% CORRECT!!!

GOA TX carried this bill all the way across the Goal Line...

LOTS of Grass Roots Support from here & other gun owners, but GOA TX was running the offense while Wayne was still "Suiting" up elsewhere.

BIGGER_HAMMER

I was at both House and Senate hearings, as was Don of Kail.

Bigger Hammer was at the Senate one.

Good times for both.  Strong showing of pro-gun speakers, and we acted far better than the gun-grabbing shrills who often resorted to curse words and forecasts of impending Doom!!!

Fuck the NRA

And especially FWLP.

I hope there's some drastic change, but it appears that current leadership is intent on driving it into oblivion.

That's not even slightly true.

GOA Texas had three main components of their efforts this session:

1. Grassroots organization, which started with the laborious process of signing a bunch of cats up to their initial video conference and then organizing us down into Senate and House Districts.  Then setting us up to work as independent groups within that district.  I was leader of the House and Senate groups in my area, and was given a list of names and contact info to use in our efforts.  We had video conference meetings with our Representatives and the Senator's staff, and got to know Sen. Taylor's 2A staffer on a first name basis we contacted her so much.

This was assisted by weekly video calls with Rachel and Felisha of GOA, who let us know what had happened last week, and what to focus on in the upcoming week, and yes emails about it too.

They organized attendance at all the House and Senate hearings on gun bills, including information as to how and where and when to attend, how to frame your speeches and what to mention, getting rooms reserved to meet and prepare, brining in food at every meal time, reviewing speeches, and letting us know when our time to speak was coming up.

As Rachel said at the beginning of the session - they can't get bills passed for us.  They can help pro-gunners with the mechanics on how to effectively work to get our own bills passed by working in the Legislative process.

2. The grassroots work was augmented by very effective documents prepared by the GOA crew.  They wrote up data sheets n each important bill, listing all the aspects of what it did, why it was needed, and what to focus on when discussing it.  They prepared a huge Excel sheet of all 150 Reps and 31 Senator's contact information, including who their 2A staffer was - which is really the person to contact during the session about gun bills, as the reps own email is most likely reviewed by a staffer.  

It was so much more effective for us to have such great data already ready to use, and to allow us to both come across as professional and knowledgeable on the issues when contacting our reps, and to be able to share things with others and get them involved as well.

There are about 50 updates they sent out during the session, with each one of them packed full of information, links to other data, contact information, and all the other tools we needed to be effective.

https://texas.gunowners.org/category/activist-resources/

3. Direct work with the reps.  During both the House and Senate hearings on CC key legislators came up and talked to Rachel and Felisha on strategy, and after the Senate hearing, the came out and took a group picture with us.   Those two visited every important rep in person and kept the contact up throughout the session, including meeting with LTG Patrick at important times while CC was in the Senate.  

Quite frankly, I don't know how those two ladies did it all.  They must have worked 18 hours a day from February until the end of May to get all the above done.  And throughout, the quality of all their work was extremely high.  Data packages were detailed and accurate and well organized.  Information was pushed to members at the right time.  They were very effective in communicating to us and the reps.  I've organized some very complex and expensive projects in my engineering career, and the work these ladies did was as good as any I've seen.

So yes they did send out emails.  And all of the above as well.  Proof is in the pudding - this was the best pro-gun session in Texas history, and would not have happened without Rachel and Felisha from GOA Texas.

If you listen to actual NRA staff, not the attention grabbing "Suits Pierre", the national NRA does not directly get involved in state legislative work.  They have a series of state affiliates that do this - and that's not a bad model to follow.  Partner up with existing groups who live in the states and can lobby and organize far better than people getting moved in from elsewhere.

The NRA affiliate in Texas is the TSRA, and they, under Andi Turner their new director, did a fine job.  They kept their members informed, provided useful information, and worked with the reps.  Did they do as stellar a job as GOA Texas - no, but I've never seen a pro-gun group as effective as that crew.  Victory has a lot of fathers, defeat is an orphan.  Plenty of credit to go around to all those that were involved.

Now how much did the national NRA do in terms of support and funding of TSRA?  I have no idea.  Hopefully all the NRA's money isn't just going to lavish living for Pierre and his legal cronies.  

But, for him to be at the signing is bad, as the NRA's contribution may, may have been to help fund TSRA.  But he's He's just jumping on a bandwagon now.

The real question is why would anyone in the Governor's office let that slimy and ineffective phony anywhere near this ceremony?  He's despised by most of his members, which would be a recipe for removal in a non-crooked organization.

When I lived in California I was up at the Capitol for every anti-gun bill that the Democrats put up, you guys in Texas think California has bad gun laws, they had many that were even worse a few I was able to stop, others got bad chunks taken out. I had no grassroots support in the Capitol, I did have a decent phone bank system put together to call legislators. But no where near the level that GOA put together in Texas.

One reason GOA is so successful is that they are not side tracked by anything else other that gun rights. Not matches, training classes (other than politics), insurance or all the other stuff the NRA and TSRA is involved with. TSRA could be a good organization if they would have dumped Alice Tripp years ago. More stuff got passed in Texas in spite of her not because of her.

TSAR does other stuff like safety and training classes, and that's fine, we need that as well.

GOA Texas can just focus on elections and bills, and they do that very well.

Here is a good rant by Tom Jefferson of Lone Star Gun Rights, both he and Chris McNutt of Texas Gun Rights were invited guests by the bill author yet they were both kicked out of the even on others from above. He calls out how Wayne LaPierre was invited.

https://www.facebook.com/100006343621118/videos/3003524503202308

The link doesn't work unless you are logged into Fakebook.

Can you cut and paste the meat of it here?  I'd be interested in reading how Suits got invited when the NRA did nothing except maybe send some funding to TSRA, and I'm just guessing on even that.

Try this link and see if it works as an .mp4

Link

If not I'll try to upload it somewhere a bit later.

He's a mother fucking, doooosh bag idiot

I think your hope is misplaced.

Few times have Truer Words have ever been posted on ARFCOM...  

Those two ladies did a WHALE of a job to Mobilize, Organize, Advise & Advocate for Constitutional Carry than that Sack of NRA Shit Wayne LaPierre could ever dream of doing.  

Constitutional Carry in Texas was a SUCCESS because of the Grass Roots Actions (Calls, E-mails, Visits, Attendance at those hearings) from Texans working from the actions of the GOA, not the Lil' Wayne & the National NRA.

Edited - I don't hate on the NRA for doing things at a national level (if they have any money left to do so after constant vacations & wardrobe renewals), but for Wayne to sweep in at the last minute to sit up front at the Captains Table for the signing ...   is so infuriatingly more than I can comment without getting a C.O.C. Lock is all I can say ...  

BIGGER_HAMMER

I put it up on Rumble, here it is.

As if I needed another reason to hate the NRA.

Lapierre is distasteful in the extreme...

Hking

The NRA and Wayne are a stain on gun owners. I am NRA  life member and my money for the last three years has went to GOA.

FWLP

Yep, same for me.  Used to donate a lot, now it goes to local outfits like GOA Texas who actually accomplish things.

Well that's some BS.

we (as individuals) did more than old boy Wayne to get this moved through.  he can fuck start a toaster in the bath tub.  

I saw and heard some of the stuff he and McNutt did and neither looked good for our side. We all know Bonner was a jackass as speaker, but in the end he ruined his political career. Now his brother won a house seat and got on board pretty early on with Constitutional Carry. I never heard him argue or even run to the camera to make up lies like his brother did.

Others have said it, but I will repeat it.

GOA is excellent at getting 2A folks to come to the capitol and engage with legislators. I know this because I am the Hill Country Coordinator for GOA Texas and I work for Rachel and Felisha. We spent several months going to groups and asking them to show up at the capitol this session.

They worked extremely hard this session. Definitely disappointed but not surprised to see Abbott and LaPierre take credit.

I don't know any of y'all by your ARFcom names on here, but we most likely crossed paths at the capitol this session. Glad to know y'all in person!

I can’t say anything bad about Governor Abbott, he did everything he could to ge Constitutional Carry passed. Right up front he said he would sign it, he never bad mouthed the bill as it went through the legislature, and would not be surprised if when a legislator got a little weak in the knees he made a phone call or two.

Now I did not think Patrick got on board early on, if he was on board he would have had a hearing on SB 540. Now once HB1927 got to the Senate then Patrick kind of got on board, but made a lot of statements to the media ‘he didn’t have the votes’. Once he got ‘his amendments’ attached to HB 1927 then he supported it. Now in the end Patrick still came through for us.

Now the NRA was very late getting on board with CC, the NRA had other bills they were behind like the anti-gun banking bill. Now the GOA was also on board with SB 20 as I testified for the bill in the first hearing. Where the NRA really screwed up IMO was for 14 days the ILA e mail sending out e mails with each anti-gun bill that ding dong up by Dallas was handed to try to push. Most of those bills were so bad they never got a committee hearing and the anti-gun bills by the El Paso/Beto crowd could not get out of committee. Only ‘anti-gun’ bill that got passed was what I called ‘The Hunter Biden Bill’ making it a state crime to lie on a 4473.

It was not good optics for WLP to want to sit at the table when Governor Abbott signed the gun bills, when there were people who did a lot more work to get Constitutional Carry and other gun bills passed. In the end if the NRA really wanted CC to pass they would have got Patrick on board before the session even started.

As important as getting folks to the Capitol, GOA Texas did a fantastic job with their data packets on each bill, and updates on the status of the bills and who to contact.

It allowed us rabble-rousers, both on this board, and in our respective House and Senate district teams, to effectively contact key elected officials at the needed time, and armed with the information needed to present the image of an engaged, knowledgeable citizen.  

All you guys with that group did a fantastic job this session - truly could not have accomplished it all without you.

As for Suits Piere stinking up the joint - I blame the Governor and his staff for that.  It's like if you see a racoon in your open trash can - it's really your fault for not shutting the lid.  The coon is gonna eat garbage, that's what they do.

And Suits is going to fly in on the company jet, and wear a new suit just for the occasion, if he gets the invite.  The question is why was he invited?

I think it's the disconnect between elected officials and their staff, and what's happening at voter level.  Suits would rival Nanny Bloomberg in un-popularity among citizen gun owners, but as the self-imposed king of the NRA, he's who the Governor's staff calls when they want a Represenstiave from a gun organization.  

These are the ones who made it happen:

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/105421/RachelFelisha_jpg-1981861_jpg-1982171.JPG

I've said it since Dan Patricks first primary......he is not an advocate of the Second Amendment.

January, 2015 he tried to kill campus carry....."not enough support".
September, 2019 he was "willing to take an arrow" and oppose the NRA on universal background checks.
April 19, 2021 “If we have the votes to pass a permitless carry bill off the Senate floor, I will move it. At this point we don’t have the votes on the floor to pass it,”

As the most powerful position in Texas government is the Lt Gov, he sure doesn't act like it in regards to the Second Amendment.

Rather than getting him on board, he should be walking the plank.

Didn't Patrick also give lip service to RFLs around the same time Cornyn did?

Yep, Patrick was kind of vocal on RFL’s and UBC’s. He needs a better advisor on the Second Amendment and guns.