I wrote a strongly worded letter. I have written two letters to the editor of my local daily fish-wrapper, once as a kid as a Jr High project and once as an actual letter. The actual letter got published, I would guess five or six of the local lefties that read the dying paper saw it. The NRA likewise is dying. Gun guys have known this for years, those paying attention more than me far longer. We remember the stupid things they have done over the decades, using donations to fund lavish trips is a hallmark of charities, NGOs and advocacy groups. Why spend your own money to party when you have OPM (other people’s money)?
I wonder if Wayne LaPierre partied at the BDSM themed Republican Party put on by Michael Token Steele?
I joined the NRA as a life member back in 2000 or 2001, I was a broke college student but had recently moved out on my own and was managing my finances fairly well, paying my $98 a month car payment, $250 rent, $25 power bill (it was cold and hot in my place on crack and street), tuition, $80 fuel budget, and had an average of $35 left over at the end of the month to have a little fun on. I think I got a raise from $7.50 to $7.75 an hour and felt a little flush, it’s also possible at this time I paid off my car loan, I don’t remember. My girlfriend had dumped me the previous year and I also wasn’t buying the handful of concert tickets I had been anymore.
I moved a little bit of my budget around and bought two things, an ounce of gold at around $270 and a lifetime NRA membership. I thought about buying a lifetime Idaho hunting license but they were around $500 and I couldn’t swing it and still manage to pay for school.
Hindsight is 20-20 as they say.
My strongly worded letter which no one will read but you wonderful folks here at Hit and Run, and now Glibs.
To Whom it May Concern
Moving to the digital format for the NRA publications is quite possibly the worst decision the NRA has ever made. And there have been many over the years, both financial and political, remember the DISCLOSE act? I do.
I have no doubt that this e-mail will fall on deaf ears but I’m spending the time writing it regardless, consider it a farewell to a relationship that has spanned a quarter of a century. The adage out of sight, out of mind exists for a reason. The organization likely will never recover from this move; annual members want the magazine as much as they like the membership. Lifetime members and endowment members such as myself did not join for the magazine but enjoy it. We will en masse not seek out the digital format as it is not convenient for downtime, you can’t throw it in your lunch box or in the console of your pickup, there will be no more handing it to a friend or your child, you can’t ‘accidentally’ leave it at the doctors office or the hospital waiting room for others to find.
Simply said, we will forget you. We will not have the monthly physical reminder that you exist. I am sure that your mailers begging for donations will increase and these will have to opposite of their intended outcome, members will throw them away while thinking that they get more junk mail but not even a simple magazine from you anymore. We will withdraw our financial support and shift those dollars to organizations which we feel have not ossified and are pushing for the core of the second amendment, those dollars will go to pushing against the tyranny of unconstitutional bills such as the NFA which the NRA has directly supported and danced around other infringements for generations and tacitly supported them.
You have already been replaced by other organizations that didn’t lose the fight in 1934.
Not too far in the future your coffers will be empty and your offices shuttered.
Threedoor
Patron member 60659796
One of the options the NRA has for its publications, now shrank to one publication is a combination of digital (oh joy!) and a quarterly print edition. I’m guessing those that care to will change to this format for delivery. But I doubt it will last. The NRA deserves to wither and die. They have supported the most damaging of anti gun laws and anti speech laws over the last century and need to pay the price. As a young man I didn’t know they had backed the NFA, I only thought it was a dumb law. I didn’t know that the 1968 gun ban was and only knew that you couldn’t get a machine gun newer than 1985, I didn’t know just how few of them there were. I have grown in the last 25 years. The NRA has been dying.
I consider this my parting shot.
I figure the GOA and SAF do the heavy lifting in statehouses and courthouses these days, while the NRA are basically a Boomer-Fudd social club.
Ive donated to FPC recently and will continue to kick them some cash in the future.
Here in NH, I actually see more of the NRA at the state level than either the GOA or SAF. The NH Firearms Coalition used to beat out all of the national organizations, though the NH Firearms Coalition has been quiet the last year for reasons unknown to me. The biggest organization at the state level here in NH for guns is probably now the NHLA.
Before I left PA in the 90s, the NRA became persona non-grata for a while for getting into bed with the Brady folks to write a gun bill which Tom Ridge signed into law. I want to say Act 17 of 1995 but I cannot remember if that was the one. I remember I went to an outdoorsman show in central PA just not long after the bill passed. Every booth was busy except for the NRA booth. Folks walking past the booth were glaring at the NRA guys.
I asked one of the ATF guys at SHOT 2012 if he could feel the hatred.
I joined the NRA as a life member back in 2000 or 2001
I think I got my life membership in 1998 or so. I’m probably costing them money so I’m going to hang on.
I am happy to see LaPierre go.
I signed up for the quarterly print edition because I prefer print. The magazine changes don’t really bother me. I skimmed most of them and only read the handful of articles that interested me.
Pound me too.
Is Charles Cooke still writing a column?
No
There was an NRA booth near the exit at the Gun show. Guy trying to sell memberships tried to claim a better record than they had. At the time I was sick of the crowds, and in no mood to debate. Rather than recount their numerous failings, I simply told them that they did not have a good record on rights and walked away.
I’m surprised there are any print magazines left at this point.
The only one I truly miss is Petersen’s 4X4 and Off-Road.
Old folk aint quite dead yet and their children knew print media. I dont think it will ever go away
And printing’s *expensive.*
Fond memories of Dad showing me ’round the Evansville Courier’s printing press on site. That was a fun, fun fun whirling and derbing, all the Terminator machines working (seemingly) endlessly, all working in an intricate assembly line to print out that days’ morning or evening edition.
I’m glad I got to experience that, and to grow up with it, but I understand it’s (mostly) time to retire much of it. Rather tricky, though. I fucking fucking HATE QR codes and menuless restaurants. Yuck.
QR codes are just asking to get hacked. Never, ever use one unless you absolutely trust the source.
I have yet to experience that joy, not with table service at least. Only at take out or fast food with kiosks, and that’s always by myself so no big deal.
I have been to a couple that had QR codes.
I asked for and received a menu.
@rhywun explain the hacking through QR codes to me. I haven’t heard that before.
It’s a just a way to direct you to a specific URL. Anything can be hiding there because it’s buried in the code.
And it’s very easy to place a malicious QR code over a legitimate one.
Plus they’re only useful on phones and using the internet on a phone is hell. I glibbed (glab?) in transit this afternoon and the experience is less than optimal.
Thanks Rhywun
Thanks, indeed. I had my own reasons for hating ’em, and I’m glad my Cyber Senses weren’t flashing for no reason.
Gustave, as per dead thread and my comment about F450 King Ranch and farmers.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear.
https://ibb.co/C5xR6N0P
I, too, gave up on the NRA, I’d been a member for 10-15 years. Saw a lot of pictures of Wayne shaking hands at gala affairs. I saved my magazines and recently dumped all the Reason, Liberty and NRAs into the stove, a few at a time. Took a while but there was no one interested .
I pick up a Guns/Ammo to read when I at the dentist’s office but the articles don’t interest me. Do Sports Afield/Outdoor Life/Field and Stream exist any more?
On Liberty magazine, the website has been gone since Stephen Cox died. That website had the full archive of Liberty magazines in PDF format.
I discovered that Stephen Kinsella has published the full archive.
I’d love to find an outdoor publication that wasent global warming enviro nazi for the boy.
I haven’t seen anything.
Original Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is on MeTV now though.
“I’ll slip into this tent with a pitcher of mai tais while Jim wrestles the crocodile…”
-Leisure Suit Larry
We would watch Wild America
I remember that being pretty cool.
Tres knows.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IHcr-En4ZyY
Has Marlin Perkins really been dead for forty years? My, how the time flies. From Wiki:
Perkins briefly attended the University of Missouri, but quit school to become a laborer at the Saint Louis Zoological Park.[2] He rose through the ranks, becoming the reptile curator in 1928.
Herp derp.
Ah, Wild America with Marty Stouffer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST68OOa0bTk
My dad didn’t want me and my siblings to watch TV, but we were allowed to watch PBS. Then broadcast TV. Then cable. But that took years.
I watched all the BBC nature shows that Attenborough guy put out during a year or so when I was unemployed and you could trace how over two decades they got more and more preachy. Just so tiresome.
The Armed Citizen channel is better than anything the NRA puts out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmadBLAvnfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPfz7ENFUB0
I’ll catch Colion Noir from time to time. He’s better unleashed.
Your parting shot was well played.
*thumbs up*
Everbody daid?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RLmYxknKTSc
Great song.
That’s a fantastic question. Where are y’all?
Working with bro to create a (slightly) interactive chronological map that shows where I’ve traveled. Picking out a few photos for some of the destinations, but I’m gonna have to think about how much I really can/should whittle shit down. Goal is to be able to semi-easily add photos in batches so I can just add to it and make it more ‘complete.’
I plan on showing it to the nephews et al whenever we celebrate my bday in two weeks. Bro’s taking his wife and the oldest two to England and Paris in May, which is concerning, but it’ll be the kids’ first time out of the country. Dad’s remarkably set on driving them to the airport and seeing them off. He considers it a massive achievement, or something he’s proud of and wants to check off his 76yo Wish List.
To add to that fun, we should have that map showing all of my travels ’round the world. I’m quite excited to have it and Bro is remarkably good at this shit. It can be as detailed and inclusive(!) as I want; the only thing stopping me is how much I wanna put into it. (I don’t want to flood folk.)
Sounds awesome.
I have a spreadsheet somewhere where I just try to list my address on Jan. 1 of every year.
A lot of the 70s and 80s are sketchy and I moved around so many times in the 90s it’s impossible to remember where I was half the time.
I’m about ten miles SE of Lewiston Idaho.
I’m sure you can find my house on Google Maps by looking for my trucks.
I’ve got .docs with my notes, musings and some important records. That, plus saving my Facebook posts, updates and pics helped me keep track of those. Google’s Gemini was helpful in creating a chronological record of it all. I also took pictures of my passport pages for all the stamp info. (It was pretty good at that, but it really should be, but it’s my first time actively using any AI, really.)
I quite enjoy that I had to send my passport to the consulate for them to add more pages, cuz, uh. Well. I needed more pages. Hrm. I have a pretty big thought involving that, but no one’s really here, apparently. Hrm.
@3Door: (I checked. Nope. Not gonna go in for a deep dive. It was supposed to be obvious! You and all your … TRUCKS!)
I’m a late-adopter to tech. I let the kinks get worked out (teehee!) and get the 2nd or 3rd gen. Well. I did this with smartphones and didn’t get one until 2012, IIRC. I got to Korea in Dec. ’09. That woulda been hella useful over there, but I just didn’t. Price, mostly? I can still find ’em on a map, tho info or address is much harder.
I will say, tho. I’m glad I learned on my feet and wasn’t lost in a device like everyone is these days. (Me? Mostly included.) I really do wonder how different it woulda been if we had current tech back then. Well, forget that, frankly. Everyone would be Remote Learning and the gig wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
I’m sure in-person learning still goes on, but not near the numbers it used to attract, but I haven’t followed it. Koreans do *really* want to have white faces for other Koreans to see at English academies. ‘Authenticates’ shit. *shrug*
It’s so gross. I was riding the bus through campus today and every single person was staring at a device. I was guilty of doing a bit of glibbing but it’s UX sucks so I was mostly just listening to my music as I have been doing out and about for decades.
People really don’t know how to be People anymore.
“Adulting involves actual emotions in real, lightning-quick time and I can’t use emojis to express myself with an indeterminate delay between responses!!!@!! I can’t even even anymore.”
I’m Patient Zero in the Harry Potter generation, and this noble Slytherin is deeply disturbed by my fellows.
My travels via air, before grounding about seven years ago.
https://ibb.co/LzMDBd8Y
Stats: https://ibb.co/pjPBvS8h
221 lifetime flights
In Miles 235,805
In Kilometer 379,492
Earth Circumnavigation 9.47 x
Distance to the Moon 0.987 x
Distance to the Sun 0.0025 x
I was playing XCOM 2.
The inconsistant difficulty sucks. Goes from an ordinary mission which was fairly balanced, to a mission that looked easy but was an absolutely brutal slog, to a cakewalk in three consecutive missions.
Sort of.
https://youtu.be/NJ3aiM8K6D0?si=Fv-ZIFIyUGQtb5wL
Wayne LaPierre is the ultimate sellout. Fuck that guy. I would spit in his face (I wouldn’t, mama raised me right, but I would refuse to shake his hand) if I ever met him.
My money goes to Gun Owners of America and Minnesota Gun Owner’s Caucus.
I once wrote a letter to the editor to Steve Simon, from Duloot, now Minnesota Secretary of State, offering to take him shooting. He seemed afraid of the gunz. Never heard back from him. I think he might be a coward, afraid of gunz. Fuck that guy , too. He doesn’t want me to have gunz.
Rich men and women south south of Duloot thinking they know better than me how to live my life. Fuck OFF!
LaPierre used the NRA for his piggy and for far too long.
Life member here too. I thought the same when I saw the email (and said so in a comment here at the time). Out of sight, out of mind is exactly so. I joined because I felt while it was a shitty org, it was also the lightning rod and focus of the antigunners. The last thing I want is for them to see weakness and think they can steamroll more restrictions.
WLP’s biggest mistake was walking back the jackbooted thugs letter. I think the outcome would have been different now without the stranglehold of the media snd establishment to set the narrative.
Also a life member of GOA, though I have my doubts about how much of that is grift for the Pratts. Likewise 2AF. Alan Gottlieb has been a squish in the past, particularly with WA gun restrictions. I still wonder if Heller was an attempt to torpedo the 2A as an individual right once and for all that went sideways.
And member of Oregon Firearms Federation. Another grift for Kevin Starrett (perhaps) and he’s uncompromising (a sin with the rump of state establishment republicans who bend over for the Democrats) on principles.
HAPPY TAX DAY!
Friendly reminder that you’re allowed to give the federal government more money than you owe if you really think they’re doing a great job and you want to chip in!
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/2044287595316666654
What about if I’m sane and think they’re doing a shitty job?
What about if I’m sane and think they’re doing a shitty job?
In the immortal words of Henry Hill: “Fuck you, pay me”.
https://youtu.be/bWnhtqDJwIU
Just needs to slap a Mr Fusion sticker on the intake.
Morning Glibs.
This Friday I will have been with the state eighteen years. 😭
I think my odds of finding a real job are gone.
Hey climate change enthusiasts! Record warmth forecasted round these parts today.
🌞🕶️🌎
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twG46K1wbLQ
🎶🎶
Another wildfire?
You had to know that was going to get this.
How would I have ever thought that? I’ve never heard of that.
Congratulations on not having lived through the 1970s.
I lived through the 70s and don’t remember that. Maybe I blocked it out.
Good morning, Sean, U, and Ted’S.!
Morning. How are things this morning?
OK. I worked from home yesterday but going back in today. Of course, I realized I had a routine med test scheduled on my way to work, so I’ll have to carry the backpack with my work laptop in with me.
How are you?
Cantankerous.
My mood wasn’t helped be the road work outside the parking entrance. Normally there are two lanes, with the right hand lane having smoothly nagled entrance and exit ramps connecting to the garage levels that you can take at a reasonable speed that isn’t going to bring traffic to a standstill. Now there’s one lane and the way the cones are set up on the right hand lane, you have a sharp right turn going in adn coming out of each garage level, meaning anyone going in will bring traffic to a hard stop, and anyone trying to exit is shit out of luck, since there will never be a gap to let you out.
Well, that’s annoying! I hope that you have luck getting out, since I gather your earlier shift has you leaving well before most of your co-workers.
Because that road is a bottleneck, it’s still busy when I get out. There’s usually some waiting on a normal day with two lanes.
😖
Your vote may or may not matter
Your paper must be so obscure that my adblocker doesn’t know how to handle it.
But yeah, vote or die mf’er!
It don’t matter. None of this matters.
Also doesn’t matter
Also doesn’t matter.
I thought only Trump was doing this!
https://briefly.co.za/people/239226-a-visa-citizenship-3-nigerian-men-deported-mzansi-social-media-posts/
lol Can we do that?
Has the UK started doing that to their own citizens yet?
No, they just stick them in jail.
Seems racist, they put Pik Botha back in charge over there?
No, but the ANC is doing it’s damndest to prove him right.
It appears I am a NRA Benefactor. I recall I got each level at discounts offered long ago. I haven’t paid attention to them in a long time.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Early morning travels again.
I dropped my NRA membership in the mid 90s. I agreed with Niel Knox more than with the compromising board and the path they were taking was clear.
Nice takedown.
Mornin’
GM 🙂
The General Manager is off this week, would the Department Manager suffice?
“I went from 6′ to 2’8″ when I was amputated below the belly button — I only cried about one thing
It’s a miracle that Schauers, now 24, didn’t die while crushed beneath that forklift for 30 minutes. He underwent a hemicorporectomy, a rare surgery that amputates the body below the waist.”
https://nypost.com/2026/04/15/health/teen-went-from-6-to-28-after-amputation-below-the-waist/
Yikes!
Yeah… I did not click when I saw that this morning.
Mornin’ all.
The California man who broke into a woman’s home and sucked her toes while she slept has been sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison.
https://x.com/creepydotorg/status/2043962669623853073
One of your fellow vampires?
Quentin Tarantino
LOL @ Tater
“In Denmark, there’s a tradition where, if you reach the age of 25 and aren’t yet married, you get tied to a chair and pelted with cinnamon.”
WTF, Denmark?
They just like to pretend to be rich enough to afford the Cinnamon for it. It’s probably Cassia
I might have to be, cuz who is married at such a tender age anymore?
ugh “it” might
Umm… a lot of people, actually. Because it’s not as young as you seem to regard it.
You don’t say.