Yes I think it is, and I think you're right about their slant.
Here is something else interesting I found there:
http://www.potomac-inc.org/nratanya.html
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>September 7, 1998
Tanya Metaksa
Executive Director
The National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030
Dear Ms. Metaksa:
I have concerns about your recent mailing regarding gun registration and taxation that will take effect on December 1. You state that "this is first time in American history that our government has attempted to impose National Gun Registration on the American people." This is not a true statement. The Militia Act of 1792, enacted by the same people who ratified the Second Amendment, required all gun owners to be "enrolled"--that is, registered--for militia duty. This is a historical circumstance that must be well known the National Rifle Association. Don Kates, a prominent Second Amendment lawyer, is author of three law review articles listed in Wayne LaPierre's Guns, Crime, and Freedom. In one of these articles (Michigan Law Review, 1983), Kates wrote:
...the concept of anonymity or privacy in gun ownership profoundly departs from the conditions under which the Founders envisioned the amendment operating. Under the militia laws (first colonial, then state and eventually federal), every household, and/or male reaching the age of majority, was required to maintain at least one firearm in good condition. To prove compliance these firearms had to be submitted for inspection periodically.... Since one can scarcely argue that the First Militia Act violated the amendments, it is difficult to see that it would be unconstitutional for Congress even today to require every member of the present militia to possess a firearm and regularly present it for inspection to assure that it is being maintained in good working order. Alternately, and fully consistent with these purposes, a national gun registration scheme could allow federal authorities to mobilize selectively those members of the unorganized militia who are already armed and presumably familiar with the handling of weapons. In sum, the historical background of the second amendment seems inconsistent with any notion of anonymity or privacy insofar as the mere fact of one's possessing a firearm is concerned.
It would be completely consistent with the intent of the Framers of the Constitution and historical practice if the Federal Government or state government or just the county sheriff were to requisition the membership lists of the National Rifle Association or other gun owner organizations in order to call out the militia or the posse comitatus.
The NRA's opposition to registration is not only in conflict with history but also in conflict with the recent proposal of Ron Stewart, president and CEO of Colt Manufacturing. Stewart proposed in an editorial in the American Firearms Industry magazine last December a national permitting system for gun ownership that would required mandatory training and testing. At least one gun manufacturer has responded to the very falsely based tactics of Handgun Control and the public health lobby to impose defectless liability on gun manufacturers with the intent to drive them out of business. I think Ron Stewart is on the right track. Registration including training and testing is not only the mechanism to remove liability from the gun manufacturers and place it on gun owners where I think it more appropriately belongs, but it also provides the mechanism to establish legal categories of gun ownership that can be used effectively to disarm the lawless. I provide for my self-defense as a gun owner under constitutional government by first disarming the lawless. Otherwise, if all citizens are armed for self-defense, as the NRA seems to want, and there are no rules and regulations to disarm the lawless then my insecurity becomes absolute. The armed predators will simply ambush their victims. I have not so much faith that the lawless are so stupid or timid that they will not resort to an extreme course. There is no inherent conflict between gun ownership for self-defense and legal standards established under constitutional government. It is not a question that gun laws do not work. A law that disarms the lawless is the first law that the 65 million gun owners in this country have to make work if they are to call themselves citizens and enjoy personal security as citizens.
The issues become what has changed in the past two hundred years that registration is a nightmare now when it was not in 1792 and what does the NRA really want that it has to misrepresent simple facts of history? What seems to be different is found in Charlton Heston's speech at the National Press Club in September, 1997. Heston describes a permanent pre-revolutionary situation derived from revolutionary events of 1775-76 not the constitution framing events of 1787-89. In the language of the Declaration of Independence when the people "altered or abolished" a government, they "institute new government." The new government derives its "just powers" from the "consent of the governed." The Constitution of the United States instituted new government. The permanent pre-revolutionary state that Charlton Heston seems to want places gun owners in a state of civic limbo. By keeping their guns outside of the law, gun owners refuse the consent to be governed and withhold themselves and their guns from any obligation to maintain the "just powers" of government. Without just powers government cannot secure rights or much of anything else including its own survival. At the same time, however, in Heston's conception gun owners do not declare a revolution to alter or abolish this government. The civic limbo the NRA seems to want to maintain creates the threat not only of armed lawless predators but also the threat of the private armies which we have seen in recent years. It is hard enough to be concerned with the threat of lawless individuals. I cannot defend myself against the threat of private armies. Private armies can acquire lists of gun owners the same as can the government. If there is no lawful authority to protect me from private armies whom do I call on when the private armies go door to door confiscating guns.
You make much of the possibility that registration will lead to confiscation. Let's be clear. To preserve this government and this Constitution, we need to confiscate guns from the lawless and the disloyal. Otherwise, private armies of unknown loyalty create the possibility of tyrannical usurpation. All a tyrant need do is issue a decree that all weapon owners are to join forces with the tyrant or surrender their weapons— and those found not cooperating will be summarily executed. An individual gun owner has no defenses in that circumstance except to take to the hills and join a revolutionary army. The revolutionary army then becomes the tyrant's target. A revolutionary struggle is a contest for power over who will confiscate the guns. Tyrants gain the power to confiscate guns because they have defeated a government that was too weak or corrupt or discredited to maintain its authority against private or revolutionary armies— whether Hitler's Storm Troopers or Mao's Red Army.
The NRA has an important mission to defeat bad legislation, misplaced legal strategies, and legally undefined bureaucratic intrusions. The tactics and the strategies of Handgun Control and the public health lobby will produce bad law and bad court decision. The FBI, the Clinton Administration and the Washington Post likewise have no conceptual foundations for what they want to accomplish and need to be held accountable for their true objectives. The burden of clarification falls on the NRA. The antidote to bad law and bad legal doctrine is good law and good legal doctrine, but to achieve good law and good legal doctrine the NRA has to explain what it really wants. It can start by explaining the "consent of the governed," the "just powers" of government, and the obligations of gun owners as citizens not as individuals armed outside of any law or lawful government. In the eighteenth century when there was a threat to the community the local political leadership commanded the men of the community to be armed, to undergo training and be available to secure the community against the threat. The militia gave the "just powers" of government an institutional structure that involved citizen participation. That was a very different concept of civic life from the NRA's individual freedom to be armed outside of the law.
These matters need to be explained. If the NRA cannot explain what it wants, it is sneaking in its own backdoor scheme just as are Handgun Control, the Clinton Administration and the FBI. Backdoor schemes of any sort do not deserve support. I await an explanation.
Yours truly,
An NRA member[/quote]
