While I Was Gone…

I left for South Africa on the afternoon of Friday, August 23rd and only got back home to North Carolina around noon yesterday. As the Complementary Spouse was home alone (though well armed), I was reluctant to go public that I was out of the country. I had won an auction at the SCI Convention in February for a 7-day hunt at a ridiculously low price to go with a Delta “buddy pass” which had to be used by early September. Thus, my brother-in-law Larry and his son Alex joined me for a trip to Thabazimbi in Limpopo Province. I will have more on that trip in subsequent post but suffice to say it was pretty successful.

However, while I was gone, a lot of stuff happened and it is hard to blog about things when using just an iPad. Lets go over some of the things that have happened while I was gone.

Number 1: I was put on the ballot for the 2025 NRA Board of Directors election by the Nominating Committee. I did quickly post about this on August 28th. As I have said, this was not expected. Some have suggested with some justification that this may have been an attempt to shut down my news and criticism of the cabal and the NRA. I promise that if elected I will not stop exposing issues within the NRA while still being observant of my fiduciary duties. I should also note that I am NOT stopping my campaign to be on the ballot by petition. While it may seem redundant now that I am officially on the ballot, being placed on the ballot by petition to me is the Holy Grail as it comes from the members and not the insiders. My goal in running for the Board is to serve the members, the grass roots, and the cause of advancing our Second Amendment rights.

Number 2: NRA In Danger blog was taken down temporarily. I literally had 3-4 emails within an hour of it going down telling me about it. I had multiple back and forth emails with “NRALifer” over the issue after I was alerted to it. While the conspiracy theorist in me and many others pointed towards that lawyer we all love to hate, in the end it was some WordPress.com anti-spam algorithm that targeted the blog for supposed spamming. I hate to say it but in the old days of bulletin boards, listservs, and Usenet groups it was harder to suppress news and opinion. As social media has grown up, censorship has grown with it. I am an advocate for having and using private hosting services that are less likely to be censored than the corporate ones. For the record, I do not know who runs and writes the NRA In Danger blog.

Number 3: A blistering 8-page “Dear Board Member” letter went out on August 30th from NRA VPs Bill Bachenberg and Mark Vaughan. It took aim at the Special Litigation Committee, the original committee assignments, Brewer, and the cabal. More on this letter in another post.

Number 4: The cabal waited a few days and then issued their response officially (supposedly?) written by cabal member Don Saba. It accused Bachenberg and Vaughan of being “divisive” and “harmful” to the NRA as well as trying to coerce and browbeat the cabal. . The letter was full of innuendo about the reform elements cooperating with the NYAG’s office and how they had help from a “competing second amendment organization” to promote “discord, distrust, and confusion” on the Board and with gunowners. Of course, it is nonsense. I do remember well that Dr. Saba was one of the Directors who vehemently disagreed with my 2020 resolution on succession planning at the Annual Meeting in Tucson.

Number 5: I met and became friends with a member of the 2016 South African Olympic Team. Lindsay Hanekom is a field and track athlete who runs the 400m hurdles and was going to Atlanta for training. He, like Larry and I, got bumped from our flight to Atlanta on Monday night. Thanks to Lindsay, we were able to get a ride to a hotel near the airport with his friend Driaan.

Number 6: Our hunt with Tsala Safaris was mostly a success. While I didn’t get my cull zebra, I did get my trophy impala and blue wildebeest. I also saw giraffes, roan, zebra, golden wildebeest, sable, mongoose, nyala, kudu, waterbuck, eland, red hartebeest, warthogs, springbuck, gemsbuck, Cape buffalo, and probably others than I have forgotten to name. I still marvel at the ability of our trackers Sharma and Filomon to see animals amidst the tangle of the bushveld as they saw animals that even with binoculars I couldn’t see.

The backstrap from my impala was made into lunch a few days later when we had impala stroganoff. It was exceptionally good. For those that are into these things, that ram was taken with one shot at about 175 yards and his horns measure right at 24 inches.

Now it is time for me to try and shake off the jet lag and get to work helping the other petition candidates for the NRA Board. There are a total of 26 reform candidates running for the Board of Directors and only 11 are on the ballot courtesy of the Nominating Committee. Despite Judge Cohen’s suggestion that we have an open election with anyone who wished to run on the ballot, we are not there yet.