I'm a member, but I'm growing increasingly dissatisfied with the NRA's membership registration system and, more important, their lack of really effective, aggressive recruitment of new members. 70 million or whatever gun owners and 3 million members? That's pathetic. It can take months for them to get a membership card mailed out; it ought to be 48 hours. AAA, AARP, et al. can do it, why not NRA? I bought quite a few guns this year, and I didn't get an NRA application with any of them. First-year memberships could be at cost or even free, to get people in and broaden the base. You can't do it by just preaching to the choir at gun shows, there has to be some halfway creative outreach. If it's going on, I haven't noticed it. I think it's high time NRA hired some people who know how to aggressively recruit members, and also some people who know how to set up and run a member services system to handle the results -- they sure couldn't deal with a big increase the way things are being run now. And current members should not be blamed for these problems; the membership works hard and contributes constantly. This is a problem of poor vision and poor performance in Arlington. We should stop making excuses for them and start turning up the heat. We're in a gun-rights crisis, and NRA needs to do much, much better. If anyone doubts it's possible, just take a look at the AARP.
