Found this to be an interesting analysis.............and no, there is not a CliffNotes version.


OPINION: Would a Nicer NRA be More Effective?By Reason Foundation , Free Minds and Free Markets - 18 Hours Ago

By Jacob Sullum | February 2009 Print Edition

Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, by Richard Feldman, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 296 pages, $24.95.

In September the National Rifle Association unveiled a $15 million advertising campaign urging voters in key states to “Defend Freedom” and “Defeat Obama.” It declared that the Illinois senator “would be the most anti-gun president in American history.” FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, issued a scathing analysis of the NRA’s effort, saying it “distorts Obama’s position on gun control beyond recognition.” A co-author of the FactCheck critique went further, telling Fox News the ads were “one of the worst examples of lying” he had “ever seen.”

FactCheck made some legitimate points. An NRA flyer, for example, misleadingly presented inferences based on positions Obama has taken over the years as his “10 Point Plan to ‘Change’ the Second Amendment.” Yet all the verifiable claims in the NRA’s TV spots had a factual basis, a point FactCheck missed largely because the NRA refused to provide its sources and explain its reasoning. According to FactCheck, the NRA’s public affairs director “declined to speak to us except to say that the claims are based on Obama’s voting record and statements he has made in the media.”

The episode made me think of Richard Feldman, the former NRA and gun industry lobbyist who argues that such apparent errors in public relations are in fact calculated attempts to foster unfair treatment so the NRA can complain about it. The organization and its supporters portrayed FactCheck’s critique, which was parroted by The Washington Post, as yet more evidence of the mainstream media’s anti-gun bias. The NRA reinforced the impression of a conspiracy against gun rights by noting that “FactCheck’s primary funding source,” the Annenberg Foundation, had given $150,000 in grants to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

As Feldman tells it in Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, picking such fights is part of the NRA’s strategy to build membership and raise money. During nearly two decades as a lobbyist against gun control, he says, he discovered that the NRA was “a cynical, mercenary political cult” whose leaders “weren’t interested in actually solving problems, only in fueling perpetual crisis and controversy.” Since its financial health depends on keeping its constituents in a constant state of alarm and indignation, Feldman writes, the organization eschews compromise and “would rather fight than win.”

The NRA, which memorably alienated some of its supporters by calling agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms “jackbooted thugs” shortly before the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, surely has been guilty of hyperbole and rhetorical excess over the years. (So, too, have countless organizations that rely on direct mail to raise money—including, as Feldman notes, the NRA’s opponents.) But it’s not true that the NRA never compromises. The organization seems to accept all the major features of the current federal gun control regime, including the prohibition of firearm ownership by certain categories of people, the background checks used to enforce those criteria, and the ban on civilian ownership of post-1986 machine guns. Feldman’s own narrative depicts an organization steering a middle course between an old guard that preferred to eschew politics and the activists he calls “Second Amendment fundamentalists,” zealots eager to defend their right to own automatic weapons. The existence of alternative gun rights groups such as Gun Owners of America (which advertises itself as “the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington”) demonstrates that some people think the NRA concedes too much.

To the extent that the NRA doggedly pursues enemies of the Second Amendment, it has been remarkably successful in scaring politicians away from gun control, as Feldman himself emphasizes. By contrast, Feldman’s attempts to appease gun controllers, the “heresy of compromise” for which he was ostracized by the NRA’s leaders, met with mixed results at best. His account suggests that people with a visceral antipathy toward gun ownership may not be interested in understanding their opponents, except as a way of defeating them. Trying to placate such people may only embolden them. And even if some supporters of gun control are willing to negotiate in good faith, Feldman’s vague call for ending the “stalemate” that stands in the way of “a serious attempt at making public policy work in the best interests of the American people” is of little use in deciding which kinds of gun control are reasonable, effective, and constitutional—questions that are especially salient now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Feldman, a Long Island native who graduated from Boston University, began his political career as a liberal Republican, working for anti-gun politicians such as Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate John Buckley, co-founder of People vs. Handguns. He says his Second Amendment epiphany came when he was working as a deputy tax collector and auxiliary police officer in Cambridge in the late 1970s. There he encountered a grocer in a rough neighborhood who “had been robbed at gunpoint three times in a little over a month” but could not obtain a handgun permit because, as a police lieutenant put it, “he’s one of them Portugees, just off the fuckin’ boat” and “the chief doesn’t believe people like him should have guns.” Recognizing that “police could not and would not protect their fellow citizens,” Feldman concluded “that shopkeeper had the constitutional right to defend himself and his business.” That experience, along with three years at Vermont Law School, where he spent a lot of time plinking with gun-enthusiast friends, evidently changed Feldman’s outlook to the point where he considered working for the NRA his “dream job.”

Feldman is clearly still proud of his political work in the Northeast, where he helped defeat candidates who received bad grades from the NRA. In 1984, he reports, the organization “backed candidates in 1,128 federal and state races” nationwide, and 956 of them won, “an amazing 85 percent pro-gun victory.” Years later, working more surreptitiously, Feldman helped anti-tax activists defeat New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat who had championed that state’s “assault weapon” ban, along with several of the legislators who voted for it. At the national level, Feldman notes, President Bill Clinton himself attributed the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress to the NRA, which mobilized voters against Democrats who had voted for the federal “assault weapon” ban. The NRA, Feldman says, has earned its nickname: Never Re-elected Again. As for presidential races, he plausibly argues that the NRA played a crucial role not only in the defeat of Al Gore in 2000, which is widely attributed to anger at Clinton’s gun policies, but also in John Kerry’s loss four years later.

The Democratic platform seems to reflect a gradual recognition that gun control is a risky issue for the party. The 1996 and 2000 platforms both contained several paragraphs on the subject, bragging about the Clinton administration’s achievements (passage of the “assault weapon” ban and the Brady Law, which created national waiting periods and background checks for gun purchases) and calling for more gun control, including “a ban on cop-killer bullets,” “a full background check,” and “a gun safety test to buy a new handgun.” In the 2004 platform, the gun discussion was reduced to one sentence that promised to “protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms” while “reauthorizing the assault weapons ban” and “closing the gun show loophole.” The 2008 platform had a paragraph on the subject, devoted to reconciling “commonsense laws and improvements” (such as “closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system, and reinstating the assault weapons ban”) with “Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.”

That latest platform included a line similar to one Barack Obama used repeatedly during his campaign: “We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.” What works in Chicago, according to the Democrats, is a handgun ban very similar to the Washington, D.C., law that the Supreme Court overturned last year. Obama, who repeatedly voiced support for both laws, nevertheless managed to praise the Court’s decision, which he said was consistent with his own longstanding view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, albeit one that is subject to “reasonable regulation” (the definition of which seems to vary from city to city). He countered the NRA’s anti-Obama ads with testimonials from gun owners who assured voters of the Democrat’s dedication to the Second Amendment. And to a large extent those reassurances worked. In its critique of the NRA’s ads, FactCheck repeatedly suggested that Obama’s general statements of support for the Second Amendment somehow canceled out his specific positions in favor of gun control. So even though the NRA may well be right that Obama is “the most anti-gun president in American history,” he feels obliged to pretend otherwise, which is in itself an accomplishment.

If Richard Feldman, advocate of the artful compromise, were to sit down with Barack Obama, would they be able to reach an agreement about what constitutes “reasonable regulation”? Probably not. For all his complaints about the NRA’s rigidity, Feldman agrees with almost all of the group’s positions, ranging from its opposition to waiting periods for gun purchases to its support for nondiscretionary carry permit laws of the sort that would have helped that Portuguese grocer in Cambridge. Like the NRA, he shakes his head over the misconceptions underlying outrage about “Saturday night specials,” “plastic” guns, “cop-killer bullets,” “fingerprint-resistant” guns, and “assault weapons” (although he faults the NRA for not doing enough to clear up those misconceptions, saying it prefers to preserve the ignorance of gun control supporters as a subject of derision and fund raising letters). There is not much room here for common ground between Feldman and our new president.

To get a sense of how far apart this pair’s definitions of reasonable would be, consider the “assault weapon” ban. Although many Americans were under the impression that the law banned machine guns (a misconception that gun control activists did their best to perpetuate), all of the weapons it covered were semiautomatic, firing once per trigger pull. Feldman notes that the guns were chosen based mainly on their scary, militaristic appearance, as opposed to capabilities that would make a difference in the hands of criminals. The law banned certain firearms by name, along with guns that accepted detachable magazines and had two or more of these features: a pistol grip, a folding or telescoping stock, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher. Before the law took effect, Feldman notes, the impending ban triggered a “buying frenzy” as people lined up for the targeted guns (along with magazines holding more than 10 rounds, also banned by the law). After the law took effect, manufacturers made trivial changes to popular models (for example, renaming them or removing a bayonet mount) so they could continue to make and sell them. Neither the ban nor its expiration in 2004 had any noticeable effect on crime, which is not surprising, since there was never any evidence that “assault weapons” played a significant role in crime to begin with.

Like most Democrats, Obama considers the “assault weapon” ban the epitome of reasonable gun control, although it’s not clear he understands what the law did. In a 2004 debate with Alan Keyes, his Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Obama explained the rationale for renewing the “assault weapon” ban this way: “Unless you’re seeing a lot of deer out there wearing bullet-proof vests, then there is no purpose for many of the guns.” He thereby conflated the “assault weapon” issue with the “armor-piercing bullet” issue, apparently not realizing that ordinary hunting ammunition fired by ordinary hunting rifles can penetrate “bullet-proof vests.” It’s unlikely that Feldman could educate President Obama out of his support for this silly law.

Feldman’s previous efforts at getting along with gun controllers—the ones that caused his erstwhile allies at the NRA to turn on him and thereby led to this score-settling memoir—do not inspire much confidence in conciliation. In 1997, when Feldman was executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, an industry group, President Clinton was contemplating legislation that would have required gun manufacturers to include “child safety locks” with their firearms. Feldman headed off this mandate by getting manufacturers to voluntarily include “child safety locks” with their firearms. That did not stop the Democrats from continuing to demand “mandatory child safety locks” in their 2000 platform.

Shortly after gun makers gave in on the trigger lock issue, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell (now Pennsylvania’s governor) was talking about suing them for the damage caused by gun-wielding criminals. Feldman tried to persuade Rendell that the industry took his concerns about urban violence seriously and that cooperation would accomplish more than litigation. Rendell met with Feldman repeatedly, gave the impression that he appreciated the industry’s readiness to talk, and then went ahead and filed a lawsuit anyway. So did more than 30 other local governments, posing a serious threat to a relatively small industry with thin profit margins that could ill afford years of expensive litigation. Ultimately the gun manufacturers were saved not by a willingness to bargain but by laws that put an end to Rendell et al.’s legal assault. Guess who lobbied for those?

The NRA’s swift action in stopping the government-sponsored anti-gun lawsuits does not jibe very well with Feldman’s claim that the organization prefers to keep controversies going for their fund raising value. On the face of it, the NRA’s reaction to the lawsuit that ultimately led to last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Second Amendment fits his theory better. The association initially opposed the challenge to D.C.’s gun ban, which was spearheaded by Cato Institute legal scholar Robert Levy, arguing that it was premature and could lead to an adverse Supreme Court ruling. NRA officials said they wanted to wait until there were more conservatives on the Court. Feldman (who does not discuss the case in his book) presumably would say the NRA’s real motivation was to avoid a ruling that would reassure gun owners about the security of their rights, making them less responsive to fund raising solicitations.

But as it turned out, the Court’s decision left plenty of things for gun owners to worry about. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia went out of his way to say “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” He also suggested that the Second Amendment permits bans on carrying concealed guns and on possession of “dangerous and unusual weapons,” in contrast with weapons “in common use.”

The “dangerous and unusual” standard seems to be aimed at saving federal restrictions on civilian possession of machine guns. But all weapons are dangerous, and any weapon that is banned (such as the guns arbitrarily prohibited by the “assault weapon” law) will thereby be rendered unusual, which makes Scalia’s reasoning circular. In any event, the “dangerous and unusual” exception, along with Scalia’s more general statement that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” will provide grist for gun debates (and fund raising appeals) for many years to come.

Richard Feldman, met him last week, listened to his lecture.  My first impression: What an ass.  Not that some of what he says about the NRA isn't truthful and not that he doesn't believe in the RKBA (in a RINO kind of way). Still an ass.

No.

Being nicer will get you no more favor with the libs than it will with terrorists (after all, aren't they all just different species of the same moonbat?).  

Personally, I think the NRA needs less tinfoil emotional stuff and more logical discussion about the 2nd amendment. Present the calm and the reason to the public and I bet their membership increases and we garner more supporters to the cause. Fight legal cases tooth and nail mind you, but the PR needs to be less shrill.

liberals are winning the "culture war" in this country, and they aren't doing it by being "nice" or "reasonable".

they are in your face, they are angry, they are unreasonable, they are childish, and they are kicking our asses.

i'm not saying that this is the course that we need to take, but exposure is key, and i think the NRA would be better served with a bit more of it. in all my years i've only seen a handfull of pro-gun ads outside of gun publications. on the other hand, i'm inundated with anti-gun propaganda, TV, print, even billboards. we need a response.

I think a time is going to come where concessions of some kind are a reality.  After a certain point, credibility begins to erode when any form of regulation is fought against.  

Although people here freak out at the mention of it, the fact that private parties can transfer long arms without background checks when retailers can't doesn't make much sense to me.  The purpose of background checks is to prevent firearms from ending up in the wrong hands, and clearly this sound objective isn't achieved when the requirement only encompasses retailers.  I wouldn't be surprised if this issue is one of the first the NRA budges on.

Until more of the "nice" and "reasonable" people understand this, we will continue to lose.

this war is being fought over the public's ignorance of firearms and crime

"assault rifles" are a non issue from the standpoint of crime, but they are central in the public's mind

the NRA has to fight this battle very carefully, because the public's perception is what will rule the day

look at it this way.. we have a black panther for a president because the public wants "hope and change"

that's what all the full-auto GOA warriors on this website dont understand... if the NRA started talking about machine guns, the politicians would run away

this is a tricky, bullshitty subject and the press is against us

the best thing that the NRA can do is target and destroy selected politicians.  that scares the shit out of the rest of them.  they are genuinely afraid of the NRA's mad-dog voting bloc

the NRA will indeed "budge" on this issue, and the "gunshow loophole" will indeed be closed in the near future. closing this up however, is not to "prevent firearms from ending up in the wrong hands", but rather to begin the talk of firearms registration which is impossible so long as people can freely buy and sell their posessions.

you hit on one truth. PERCEPTION IS KEY. this is precisely why the NRA needs exposure. the anti's have the exposure, which has allowed THEM to frame the argument, and resulted in us playing defense yet again.

NRA is absolutely too "nice".  Cite 1994.

Prepare to get piled on, and with good reason.

I think getting a lot meaner would be the way to go.

This.  

Lib-tards don't care what anyone thinks of them while they fight for their "causes", so why should we.  Anyone that would support abortion, gay marriage, taking "In God We Trust" off the money, removing "under God" from the Pledge and other distasteful, wrong things is immoral and amoral.  Immoral and amoral people have no standards of right and wrong, only "Situational Ethics" and are therefore the most dangerous of opponents.  Being "nice" is just where they want us to be.  We must educate and educate and educate.  Take your non-gun-owning friends, family, church members out shooting.  Teach them the Constitution, and how the Lib-tards are perverting it, help them to understand what Freedom is all about.  Only then, will we begin to take the territory that we've lost to the lib-tards.

YMMV

I agree with alot of what the article says. The NRA does rely on creating alarm for gun owners and is sometimes more concerned with its own welfare than gun laws. Despite this, I'm still a life member and support them because they have and still do alot of good for the movement.

+1
Well fucking said.

[Obama]I want you to get in people's faces.[/Obama]

That's how the collectivists have steamrolled us so badly; their arguments are assinine, paper thin, and are destroyed like tissue with any application of logic but they just sit in the middle of the town square and rant and whine and cry while we are sitting around with our hand raised, waiting for teacher to call on us.  

It doesn't work like that; our innate reasonableness allows us to be shouted down by a bunch liberal arts majors with the mentality of first graders.

No sir. The less the government is involved in my business the better, and this is especially true in what guns I do or do not own. THe fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that suggests that criminals obtain a significant portion of their guns from private sale. Inevitably there will be a few that slip through the cracks, but there is always a price that we pay to sustain freedom.

ETA: And I could give a rats ass about my credability if it means I have to advocate giving away freedom.

No, you're right.  It doesn't.

What does "shall not be infringed" mean to you?

Lemme guess; you're so "patriotic" that you think I should pay more taxes, a la Joe "drunkoffmyass" Biden

Like we haven't already made enough concessions?



-K

Is the Israel lobby "nice"?

They politically obliterate anyone that doesn't support them 110%, and it is all very personal.

100% fail, anyone who's either too stupid or willfully chooses not to accept the fact that factcheck is not 100% in the pocket of obama and bill ayers has no credibility.

This guy wants to go back to the way the NRA did business twenty years ago...compromise your rights away.

Finally we're seeing some effectiveness in the war to keep our rights and have been successful in rolling back some gun control, and this clown wants to throw it away.

The cynics in the abortion debate have just watched the door swinging on "reasonable".   First it was "reasonable" for Bush to withhold funds for abortions as part of policy, and now with Obama it "is reasonable" to fund them directly.

Any deal with "reasonable" means, "having a reasonable relationship to public benefit".   If you want your rights hanging on that slim a thread, so be it.   Being Nice will fail.  This is the same way they will banish Rush Limbaugh and internet bloggers and then pretend the NY Times is a public service.

Nicer?

Why?

Is the Brady Campaign nice?  Is anyone who is anti-gun in congress nice?  They make up statistics and lie and then put it on TV.  I don't think that is nice.

The NRA needs to be more aggressive IMHO

What is with all this be nice to the liberals How has that worked out so far

"Nice" doesn't enter the discussion when violation of the Bill of Rights is the issue.

Exactly.  Their PR sucks, and as a result they are seen as a fringe organization full of extremists.  They need to present a mainstream image that non gun owners can appreciate and respect.

I think this is right on!
Its the problem with the Republican party as well. We gun owners, by default, play by the rules and try to be "fair". The left are driven by their agenda and will take no prisoners.

Been saying FOR YEARS that the NRA needs Ted Nugent instead of Wayne LaPierre.

Ted will take off the gloves.

I think we need better PR.  Something that would educate and win over the 50th percentile person who doesn't really have a dog in this fight.  The soccer mom or guy who has a pump shotgun in the closet.  

That's where we're losing.  The rhetoric and public discussion is being guided by the left.  Ask the average person what they think about the NRA and they know 'from my cold dead hands' and that they support 'cop killer bullets' and 'assault weapons'

I don't even think it's a matter of compromise.  I just think we could be doing SO much better in the PR department.  Do we just think because we're *right* and the left are a bunch of retards that we don't need to play the PR game?

No!  What the fuck do you think this is?  Goddam Tiddleywinks?

On one side we have people who believe in freedom.  On the other we have people who want to take it all away.  Who is supposed to start being nice here?  WTF?

No the NRA doesn't need to be nicer.  They need a simple factual repeatable message.  They need to point out over and over again how leftist gun laws are not reducing crime.

sometimes I think gun owners would rather be right than win

The NRA has nothing to gain by being "nicer".  In fact they are too quick to compromise now - and too slow to act when significant violations of the Second Amendment occur (NOLA).  The NRA is unwilling to engage in a number of states as those state legislatures consider state bills to limit legal ownership of firearms.

The NRA needs to stand up and show some backbone.

No. In fact they need to get nastier. Here's some of the things I'd be doing:

1) Any firearm or accessory manufacturer that sells anything to LEOs that civilians in the same state can't buy gets an NRA sponsored  boycott after 90 days notice. This does not need to apply to military sales.

2) A black-list of individuals who have spoken against gun ownership in any way shape or form shall be set up and gun clubs and competitions required to ensure that members and competitors are not on the black-list. Failure to comply shall result in the officers of the club being placed on 'the list"

3) There shall be no "LEO-only" training provided by NRA instructors, nor shall there be any "LEO-only" competitions.

4) Any NRA member involved in providing LEO-specific training that is closed to citizens or lawful residents shall be placed on "the list".

You get my drift.

We hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately.

Fudd or ??

Can't be anything else!

False dilemma.

Conservatives apparently believe that one should be nice in politics.  The simple fact is that politics is a nasty undertaking.  Participants must be willing to get dirty.  As long as liberals play by a different set of rules, one that appeals to the undecideds, they will continue to win.  Only when conservatives understand that they must get down to that level will they begin to win again, sadly.  It would be nice if politics was done by way of Marquis of Queensbury rules, but that doesn't happen & probably never will.

One of the main reasons that John McCain lost was because he was above the fray.  He didn't want to get dirty by exploiting Obama's ties to Wright, Ayers, Pfleger, et al.  Neither would he mention the method by which Obama won his senatorial seat, by illegally opening Ryan's sealed divorce details.

Will the conservatives grow a pair in the next 2 to 4 years?

NRA had a similar experience back in '68, when it thought that everyone was acting with best interests at heart, and that education could bring politicians to the right decisions. That failed, and NRA (unlike Feldman) learned the lesson.

No, there is truth to it.

Consider GOA opposing shall-issue laws, since anything short of a universal right to carry is a sell out.

Or all those who are upset with Bush for not rolling back all gun laws passed since '34. Nevermind we got lawsuit protection, AWB sunset, and Heller due to Bush . . .

Obama won the election because he played nice while McCain played dirty, not the other way around.

The left has a plan for your PR too.   How do you match up with CNN,and the other media sycophants with just FOX and whatever the NRA can boot up via direct mailings.   I know you watched the MASSIVE contribution campaign via the internet that propelled Obama.  Even with a massive infusion of $'s we can little depend on their effective use in the media.     The media is a poisoned well.  The AMA is a poisoned well, Education (schools K=12 and beyond) is poisoned.  We are like the Israelis, surrounded, with little room to be nice or maneuver.

The DU is that way <––––

I understand the media is in the tank for the left.  There's still a *lot* that can be done in this area.  I just shake my head when these threads come up and the answer is always how stupid and retarded the left are.  How we need to knock some sense into these idiots.  All the while they're kicking our asses in the area of public opinion.

We need to find a way to start to re-shape the debate on our terms.  Ann Coulter finds her way onto every talk show, why can't a reasonable sounding gun lobbyist/writer do the same?  

Like I said, I don't think we want to win so much as we want to be right.  It's like a 6 year old who doesn't want to eat brussel sprouts so he goes to bed hungry, thinking he's won some kind of moral victory.

Exactly. Being nice and rolling over is what has gotten us in this mess in the first place.

I think money had a lot more to do with it and media bias (which they seem to freely admit).   As much as the NRA got Bush elected in his first run, media smoothed the path for this guy.   They controlled the debate.

He won because he was able to push that perception to otherwise apolitical citizens, with the help of a sycophantic media, proxy hatchet-men,  and a few people willing to act like douchebags at Palin rallies.

NRA sold out years ago.

Don't waste your money.

There are much better groups for truly defending the 2am.