Using analogy along your same lines...I don't go to college, so why do I care? I care because it infringes on anothers' right to have defensive options. Care enough to acknowledge that it and parking lot possession take priority over my desire for open carry....but don't replace it. Is it so hard for you to have the same willingness to support those wishing for OC?
Ok, this explains a lot.
You are incorrectly equating the prioritization of goals with lack of support.
The TSRA supports OC and so do I. But at the moment neither I nor the TSRA is pushing OC legislation because there are higher priorities. The other goals are higher priority because at the moment they enjoy a much larger base of support and therefore it is much more likely that it will be possible to achieve something constructive by pushing those goals.
I support a lot of expansions of gun rights that I'm not actively working to push at the moment and I think it's obvious that the TSRA has to operate the same way. Unlimited resources and time would mean I could put all my effort behind everything I think is a good idea and still get things done. Practical considerations mean that I can only concentrate on one or two (or at best a few) things at once if I want anything to actually get done.
It's that way for anyone or any organization with limited resources--in other words it's that way for everyone and every organization. It's impossible for an organization to do everything at once--things have to be prioritized.
The path to legalized handgun carry in TX has come a LONG way since the initial CHL bill was initially proposed. It definitely took more than one try to get it passed and even then it was initially pretty restrictive. But nearly every legislative session since it passed there has been an expansion on the rights of CHL holders or a relaxation of the handgun laws in TX.
Before 1995 you couldn't carry a handgun in TX without fear of being arrested except in very limited situations. Now you can carry with a shall-issue CHL and if you're in your own vehicle you don't even need a CHL. This year it looks like campus carry will be legalized and employers won't be able to fire their employees for having a legal handgun in their locked vehicles.
The next legislative session after the CHL bill passed, there would have been zero popular support for a campus carry bill, but times change. Right now there's very little popular support for OC in TX but times will change as gun rights continue to be expanded.
EFFECTIVE strategy means you put your efforts behind a task that can be accomplished with the resources and support available to you.
The TSRA is VERY good at forming and implementing effective strategy. Just because they didn't push for campus carry the next legislative session after the CHL bill was passed, OBVIOUSLY didn't mean they didn't support it. It only meant that they realized it wouldn't be an effective use of their limited resources AT THAT TIME.
But someone could have made a comment back in 1997 that the TSRA wasn't supporting campus carry because "it's not on the personal agenda of key staff members." Events would have played out to prove that person wrong, but at the time he would probably have felt very justified in taking such a view.
As restrictions are gradually lifted, more people see the benefits and, more importantly, they see the lack of a downside to the loosening of gun control. As the laws relax and more people find it possible to carry guns for self-defense in more and more situations and circumstances, the support for further relaxation of TX gun laws will grow as it has over the last 2 decades. But it's a slow process. Some of these laws (e.g. employer parking lot bill) have been proposed every legislative session for the last 2 or 3 sessions without being passed. It has taken a lot of effort over the last 4-6 years (or over the past 20 years depending on how you look at it) to get where we are in terms of getting these bills close to passing and it couldn't have been done if the gun rights support base in TX were trying to divide its resources too thinly in an effort to try to push too many things at once.
Whether it's 5 or 50,000 - why should the number of folks wishing for it have bearing on whether something is worth fighting for? Higher priorities, perhaps - but not a basis for support/non support.
Again, you're mixing levels. Nobody is saying that it's not a worthy goal. It's not worth fighting for
at this time ONLY in the sense that it would be a waste of resources to push it
at this time given that there's no popular support for it
at this time.
The bottom line is that you MUST have popular support to pass legislation. If a measure doesn't have sufficient support among the voters to motivate legislators to action then it's a waste of time time and resources to push it when you could be pushing something else that has sufficient support that it can be passed.
