Day 2 NRA Board Committee Meetings - various

Inside out thinking, stovepipes and silos oh my!

Rather than making you read a “how I spent my summer” style update, let me cut to the chase.

Each committee, while they claim to talk to the other committees, only seems to be focused on what they can do. There are no apparent cross-committee initiatives. Outreach, Grassroots, and Education and Training all deal with the public, but when asked what the NRA is doing to reach out to all of the new gun owners Joe DeBergalis, the NRA head of operations, said that the NRA responds when requested. He said that the state associations and local clubs should be the primary contact for new gun owners.

With arguably millions of new gun owners and the NRA membership being flat at about 4.8 million members, this is a massive miss of the cultural shift. The NRA needs a strategy that engages and incentivizes NRA members and particularly instructors that are members of the communities we want to reach to go out and share the messageof firearms freedom and safety.

I gave the example of the Rockland Foundation in late 2019 engaging with Darius “Street Preacher” Foster, a local pastor and firearms instructor and underwriting creating instructors in the Baltimore/DC area and funding 1,500 students to take a free NRA Home Firearm Safety class from December 2019 through March 2020 (Covid got in the way…). The instructor development program continues and has created over 60 NRA-certified instructors in the Baltimore/DC area serving many thousand new and existing gun owners and creating a positive image of the NRA by instructors that are part of the community where they see that the NRA instructors are “like you.” The NRA needs bold active strategies like what Rick Ector is doing (more details below) and like the Rockland Foundation model, not just marketing-oriented and passive approaches.

It is well past time for the NRA to shift from a defensive mindset to an offensive mindset. We need new blood on the board that protects our members’ rights by advancing them, not just defending them.

I ask for your support when the ballot for the NRA Board election comes in the next issue of your NRA magazine. Please vote ONLY for Frank C Tait. Jeff Knox has a great article on bullet voting.

I am the only candidate on the ballot from a petition of the members and committed to being a true independent director providing accountability and transparency to NRA members.

I also ask that you share this message and ask your fellow NRA members to support my candidacy by only voting for board candidates that are committed to reforming the NRA.

For those that want the details - wrapping up day 1,

I attended the By-Laws and Resolutions committee meeting, but there was no business so the meeting only took a couple of minutes.

I also attended the Insurance Review Subcommittee meeting. Bill Miller chaired and Ron Schmeits was the other board member. In the brief time before the Executive session, I saw that this is a well-run group with insurance industry experienced board members asking the tough questions about the insurance programs (life accident, health, etc.) offered to NRA members.

Sandy Froman ran the Grassroots committee with Linda Walker, Don Saba, Joel Friedman, and John Cushman in person and Carrie Lightfoot on the phone. Amanda Suffercool and Rick Ector also attended. Sandy runs an open meeting and the stories from the committee members about engaging volunteers and making positive impacts on elections to get gun rights supporting candidates elected were very encouraging.

For day 2, I started with the Federal Affairs Subcommittee again led by Sandy Froman, and with Graham Hill. As there was not a quorum, the meeting only had an update from Jason Ouimet from ILA with a summary of 2021 and an update on 2022. Nothing new here that hasn’t already been reported in the various NRA publications.

Education and Training chaired by Willes Lee with Walt Walters and Janet Nyce. Willes Lee noted that the NRA is reducing the number of members on the committees. As a Training Counselor, this had some solid data.

• New gun owners have a focus on self-defense, not sport shooting

• Current headcount of coaches and instructors:

  • Coaches 4,963

  • RSO 74,896

  • Instructors 110,164

  • TC’s 2,199

  • Staff. 6

• New Forum has 1,871 users

• With higher standards in the new TC workshop - the pass rate has increased to 90%

• New 8 Hour BIT and new book target for Q3’22

• New Assistant Coach credential for Shotgun coaches after taking an online class

• Not going to update reloading or muzzleloading material

• New Rifle book out next week - same format as the new pistol book

• Website projects delayed due to staff shortages in the IT team

• Course growth average 13% per year - 63% growth in 2020 - most in Home Firearm Safety (returned to the normal pattern in 21 (I know where 1,500 of those students came from - Darius Foster in Baltimore)

  • Most growth in Pistol (no scale provided - just bar charts)

  • Self Defense and RSO next highest

  • Slight increase in Rifle

  • Flat Shotgun and reloading

• Working on short webinars/videos for things like Revolver handling

Outreach was also chaired by Willes Lee with Antonio Hernandez, Ken Blackwell and Rick Figureoa. Amanda Suffercool, Lucretia Hughes, Chris Cheng, and Rick Ector also attended. The NRA put a great media presentation for Rick’s Women’s training day in Detroit where in 2021 his team trained 1,936 women and his team has over the years trained over 4,000 women. They also highlighted the outreach to the Hispanic community with Rick Figureoa’s event that was held in Houston even though the NRAAM was canceled. A key point is that rather than saying “We are like you” we need to help the new gun owners recognize that they are part of a community of like-minded people.

As a side note - Wayne LaPierre came up to me and shook my hand. This was the first time he acknowledged me in the 3 years I’ve been running for the board.

I was able to attend parts of the Legislative Policy Committee (I had some day job interruptions). This committee summarized the Federal, State & Local, and International subcommittee meetings. Most of this has already been published in the NRA publications. Key highlights:

• Pushing for Constitutional Carry in GA, AL, IN, and OH

• Working to stop red flag laws, expanded background checks, and mandatory storage laws

• NRA is losing visibility in the LEO community as national matches have not been held since the start of COVID

• Lead ammo will be banned in the EU by the end of 2023. The NRA is working with NSSF and SAAMI to combat this.

I planned on attending the Audit committee meeting but was advised by David Coy that they would immediately go into executive session.

I planned on attending the Legal Affairs committee meeting but was advised by Sandy Froman that they would immediately go into executive session.

Day 3 updates tomorrow…