Registered Gun Owner

I may regret this, but tonite I joined the National Rifle Association.

[This E-mail was generated automatically, please do not respond.]

Dear [Jerry the Geek],

Thank you for joining the NRA. We appreciate your interest in protecting and preserving our Second Amendment rights and promoting safe, responsible gun ownership.

Your credit card will be billed for $35.00* for a 1 Year Membership in the National Rifle Association with no magazine.

If you have any questions regarding your order, please email us at membership@nrahq.org. Or you may call our Toll Free Membership Account Information Hotline at 1-877-NRA-2000.

Thanks again for your interest in the National Rifle Association!

I take this step reluctantly, and with no little trepidation.

As far as I'm concerned, NRA membership is roughly equivalent registering as a firearms owner, and I do NOT like the idea that someone, somewhere, sometime will gain access to the NRA membership files and be able to identify *me* as a gun owner. Registration = confiscation, etc. etc. etc.

On the other hand, I've been a member of USPSA for a lot of years, and if anyone is really interested in finding out who owns guns in this country, one organization is probably as likely as the other to have their membership lists downloaded by a nefarious governmental agency for the purpose of confiscation.

Paranoid? Maybe, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

Why did I take this step, when I have spent the last 20 years avoiding it?

The Tipping Point was a recent article by Michael Bane, "The Shape of Disinformation". There's nothing really new there. Some liar who purports to represent a 'moderate position' on gun control distorted reality to meet his hidden agenda, Bane reported it, and I found myself in a place where I needed to take a stand against this pervasive bias.

Someone must stand up to such calumny. I can't do it all by myself. Although I object to many sins-of-omission which the NRA has historically visited upon its membership, it's difficult to object to the actions of an organization which one has deliberately NOT joined.

So I'm now a member, and my gut-reaction is, surprisingly, one of relief.

Not that I feel safer now, or more protected in my Civil Rights because the NRA is there to speak for me.

No, I feel that I now have the freedom to speak out against the compromises which the NRA accepts in the guise of protecting my 2nd Amendment Rights.

Whew!

What a rush.

Well, not really. Unfortunately, you the reader may be obliged to read an entire new set of rants as the NRA continues to agree to compromises which I consider unacceptable.

But that's something which I'll have to do later.

For now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to a lot of Charlton Heston speaches at the NRAHQ website.