As much as I hate to suggest it, a major aspect of fighting to protect our right to keep and bear arms is to (as the saying goes) "put your money where your mouth is." We can sit behind our keyboards and pontificate about the Second Amendment and the nature and origins of the RKBA, but (for the most part) when we post here we're preaching to the choir. And while we're busily reinforcing each other regarding how right we are and how wrong "they" are, "they" are hard at work crafting more anti-gun legislation to propose at all levels of government.
How do we combat that? With votes ... and with money. First, if you aren't involved in your state's most active and effective gun rights organization ... get involved. If you can't make it to meetings, support them with money. Support the NRA-ILA. Remember, the NRA itself is an educational non-profit organization. The NRA cannot engage in lobbying. The ILA is a legally separate organization that CAN engage in lobbying ... and does. The ILA is financially separate from the NRA, so be sure to direct some money to the ILA to continue the fight. I also like to support the Second Amendment Foundation, since they are also active and involved.
And then we get to the sense of John F. Kennedy's famous speech, in which he enjoined us to, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." I expressed this recently as borrowing from the environmentalists' playbook: "Think globally, act locally." It's impossible for the NRA-ILA, the SAF, or any other gun rights group to keep track of the myriad of local and county ordinances on the books and being proposed. WE have to do that. And sometimes the only way to fight these local laws is to step up the plate and open our own wallets.
A few years ago I became aware of a particularly onerous and absurdly written local ordinance in my own home town. The way it was written, even though I have a state-issued permit to carry, if I carried while walking out to my mailbox on the street curb, I was in violation of the law. My state's gun rights organization, of which I am a member, was engaged in a legal battle against the state on statewide legislation, so I didn't want to even ask them to siphon money away from that fight to take on my town. So I hired an attorney on my own dime to take it on. I financed a year's worth of negotiations ... which didn't generate any changes. In year two, my attorney was able to obtain some grant money from the NRA to enable us to continue the negotiations, and we did ultimately succeed in getting the town to revise the ordinance.
I wanted repeal, of course, but that simply wasn't going to happen. The changes we were able to generate resolved many of the worst problems with the ordinance. We didn't get everything I would have liked, but in retrospect I have to admit that the revised ordinance is much less bad (I don't like to say "better," just "less bad") than the original. I'm not asking for praise in saying that the revision wouldn't have happened if I hadn't taken on the fight. I just want to use my case to illustrate that the fight is on-going, and on many levels. Somebody has to be willing to step up and take on the smaller cases that are too minor for the NRA, the SAF, or any of the big players to go after. We can't sit behind our keyboards and expect that somebody else will do it.
If you know about it, and if you're in a position to do something about it ... then by all means DO something about it. Don't sit back and post on gun forums that "somebody ought'a do something." The anti-gun forces are coordinating all across the country. In the course of my local fight, we learned that there is an attorney "down state" who is consulting with towns all over the state on adopting anti-gun ordinances. That's their strategy. They realize they probably won't get what they want through federal legislation, so they are going after lower-level legislation to accomplish the same result. Instead of a nuclear bomb, they're taking a "death by a thousand cuts" approach.
If we can use that same approach, and start attacking these local and county ordinances, and the state laws, and if we do it well and we WIN ... that's how we'll force the anti-gun forces to slow down, back up, and reconsider their strategy. But we can never assume that if we won yesterday, we'll be safe tomorrow. The anti-gunners aren't going to go away. They'll just regroup and come back from a different angle. So we have to remain involved, and keep track of what they're up to so we can do our best to counter it. And each of us has to recognize that maybe today it's our turn to carry the water.
