SAF & NAGR - Good v. WTF?

It is very rarely that I fire up a post where I'm actually on the war path. I usually prefer to walk quietly away from the keyboard until I recover my serenity. Today, I make an exception.

Every community has their heroes... and those who are described as "heroes, not so much."

In forty years of ceaseless pro-gun activism, Alan Gottlieb has never shied from doing what was necessary to protect Second Amendment rights. Whether in his role as Chair of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, as founder and Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation, as a board member of the Washington Arms Collectors or in the many other roles he has taken over the years both in service to gun rights and to the broader community.

That someone would attack Gottlieb for not being sufficiently "pure" is, at a minimum, offensive to me and damaging to the cause of firearms rights generally. I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Gottlieb both personally and professionally and can honestly say that while we may not always agree, he is both a genuinely decent person and one of the most avid (and talented) supporters of gun rights we have out there.

One would think that even the most doltish political neophyte could wrap their two functional neurons around the notion that attacking the leading lights of firearms rights was counterproductive to advancing the cause of firearms rights.

Yet, that is what Dudley Brown has done. SAF's initial response is on their  web page. My own take is that Brown and his pet organization NAGR have raised millions through a strategy of attacks on gun rights leaders and organizations for, as far as I can tell, little or no actual effect in advancing the cause of gun rights. Brown has, however, done an admirable job of serving as a loose cannon and at sowing division among members of the gun community.

If you've received tweets or Facebook posts on this, I apologize. Similarly, others may be furiously hitting "send" in an attempt to call those possessed of either ethics or sense to action.

I ask you to take action and use your influence to make it painfully clear that these sorts of attacks on the gun rights organizations doing actual and effective work to protect and restore firearms rights and the leaders of those organizations are simply not acceptable. I'm asking you to take those steps now.