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The Most Surprising Speaker At The 2A Rally

November 6, 2019 by 9 Comments

If you had told me that a former president of the Brady Campaign was going to speak at the 2A Rally Saturday, I would have wondered what substances you had ingested.

Dan Gross, former president of the Brady Campaign, was an unannounced speaker at the 2A Rally. What he said took a lot of people by surprise including me. You can listen to his short speech below:

Since then he has done a few interviews. The first probably was with John Crump who writes for Ammoland. His full candid interview is here. One thing Gross said really stood out in my opinion.

I think there are people on the “gun control or gun safety” side that have too loud of voice that really believe that there’s no place for guns in our country. Those are the people that lead to a lot of exhaustion that leads me to where I am now.

While Gross believes in background checks, he said he had no problem with someone selling a firearm to a friend without such a check. He also said it was wrong to focus on an assault weapons ban.

Given the tweets from Brady today, I can see why Gross has moved on. What they are calling for in the way of “gun violence prevention” will really have no impact. It is the mag bans, the “assault weapon” (sic) bans, and other such “gun safety” (sic) proposals.

Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation also interviewed Gross for Liberty Park Press. As he notes in his piece on it, they had a 50-minute phone conversation. Gross stressed that there is a common ground and government doesn’t have to be involved.

Gross acknowledged his apprehensions about appearing at the rally and speaking to a crowd of Second Amendment activists. His fears dissipated when it became evident that people who attended are interested in the same things he’s interested in, which boil down to safer homes and safer families.


“We still disagree on some things I am sure,” he emphasized, “but we can’t let that get in the way of a real opportunity to accomplish some things.”

Some of those things are keeping firearms secured from young children and getting more training. I can agree with that.

Gross said that he and Rob Pincus have been working together for the past year on creating a Center for Gun Rights and Responsibilities. It will be interesting to see what comes of that.

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2019 GRPC Presentation

November 5, 2019 by

Thanks to Paul Lathrop of the Polite Society Podcast, I have a YouTube of my GRPC presentation. I posted the text of it earlier but this lets you hear it warts and all.

I am not a public speaker. I do much better one on one. However, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I think I did OK.

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Dan Boren Makes Eight

November 2, 2019 by 2 Comments

There are times in life when you say, “I’m tired of taking this shit.” Dan Boren had to be there when he resigned from the NRA and NRA Board of Directors yesterday.

Leadership portrait of Dan Boren Date taken: August 8, 2013 Photographer: Marcy Gray

Boren’s resignation makes the eighth director to resign from the NRA Board of Directors since the beginning of the year.

Tom King, president of the NY State Rifle and Pistol Association and a NRA Board member, reportedly had filed an ethics complaint against Boren. Taken with a grain of salt given he is a LaPierre loyalist, he told Newsweek:

“Mr. Boren resigned in the face of an ethics complaint, which I filed, that cites troubling communications and serious allegations linking him to suspected extortion against the NRA and billing fraud by the NRA’s former vendor, Ackerman McQueen,” NRA board member Tom King told Newsweek in a written statement. “Under these circumstances, this news is not surprising.”

That was just the latest in actions aimed at Boren. In the case aimed at avoiding paying Oliver North’s legal bills, the NRA contended that Boren had somehow conspired with Col. North in the supposed “coup attempt”.

Then, in the NRA’s Federal case against Ackerman McQueen, they named him a “non-party co-conspirator” along with Col. North.

Mr. Boren entered into an agreement, combination, and/or conspiracy with the Defendants for the purpose of carrying out the fraudulent behavior, the attempt to de-railing the resulting NRA investigation, and the attempt to extort Mr. LaPierre and the NRA alleged herein. In addition, there exists a small group comprising former vendors, professionals, and consultants of the NRA whose economic incentives, like AMc’s, were challenged by the NRA investigation and, like Mr. Boren, joined the agreement, combination, and/or conspiracy.

My sources told me after the NRA Annual Meeting, that in their opinion, Boren had hoped to act as an intermediary to try and salvage the multi-decades relationship between the NRA and AckMac. There was nothing unsavory about his actions.

Boren was named Oklahoma president and Chief Banking Officer of First United Bank on October 10th. From The Oklahoman:

Boren, 46, who has spent nearly seven years as president of corporate development for the Chickasaw Nation, will begin work in early January at First United. The bank is based in Durant and has locations in Oklahoma and Texas.


First United CEO Greg Massey said, “I am excited to have Dan join our team. His passion for serving Oklahoma aligns perfectly with our purpose at First United.”

Boren, a Blue Dog Democrat, served four terms in Congress representing a district in eastern Oklahoma from 2005 until 2013. According to The Oklahoman, he had been considering a run for governor of Oklahoma last year. They note he hasn’t ruled out running for office in the future.

Taken on the whole, I’d say the NRA really needed a man like Boren more than he needed them. As a Democrat, he gave them at least some semblance of being bi-partisan. As a Congressman, even though it is now former Congressman, he gave them a strong influence on Capitol Hill. When you add that to his role with a large Indian tribe and his new job in banking, he brought a lot to the table.

What did he get in return for what he gave the NRA? A pile of paranoid crap. I’m surprised he didn’t resign earlier. I sure as hell would have and done so with a clear conscience.

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Fountain Pen Day 2019

November 1, 2019 by 5 Comments

The first Friday in November is celebrated as Fountain Pen Day. It is a day to celebrate, embrace, promote, and share the use of fountain pens.

This year I’m going international. The two pens I have currently inked are from China and Pakistan respectively.

The former is a Kaco Edge made in Shanghai. It is a smooth writer, feels good in the hand, and remind me of a Lamy 2000. The only downside is that the clip is so tight that it is hard to fit in your shirt pocket. It is available on Amazon for $17.50 and does come with a converter.

The latter is a Dollar i717 demonstrator (clear) pen made in Pakistan. I picked up a dozen of them for about $15 on EBay. It is a piston filler that starts right away. Fountain pens often are hard to get the ink flowing if they’ve sat for a day or two. I have given away a number of these pens to fellow fountain pen geeks. You can read a review of it here.

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Jim’s Take On NRA v. AckMac

November 1, 2019 by 1 Comment

Jim Shepherd of The Outdoor Wires is one of the more astute observers of the firearms world. It doesn’t hurt that he helped Ted Turner found CNN. He, of course, doesn’t take credit for what CNN has become in the years since he left!

He devoted some of his column this morning to the Federal court battle between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen. Continuing the divorce theme, he said it would drive a divorce attorney to drink.

Jim’s take:

Actually, it’s more like the Borgia family chronicles than litigation between two groups of adults. Replace the “he said-she said” with “the defendant alleges” and you get the picture. Up is down, black is white, right is wrong, and inside is outside-depending on which document you’re reading.


Central to all this, as he apparently insists on being in virtually every matter, is Wayne LaPierre. The NRA characterizes him as the ceaselessly crusading reformer, out to save the National Rifle Association from the Oklahoma hordes determined to loot the treasury, burn the building and at least savage the five million members. Ackerman McQueen draws a somewhat different picture: that of a man obsessed with absolute control of everyone and everything around him except his spending habits. There, he’s more like a drunken sailor on a short shore leave.


It’s ugly, it’s personal, and it’s likely going to get worse before it resolves itself. No one on either side looks good in this situation, and that’s about as positive a face as anyone can put on it. It’s also about all I can tell you without either speculating or presenting gossip as fact.

Jim’s correct: it’s ugly, it’s personal, and none of the participants looks good.

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Who Is The Real Enemy?

October 30, 2019 by 6 Comments

When you are in a war you always have to keep the end objective in mind. Is it merely to win the battle or ultimately to win the war? That seems to be the issue right now for the National Rifle Association.

The question for the NRA is who is the real enemy. Is it Ackerman McQueen or anti-rights groups like Brady United Against Gun Violence? It seems that this focus has eluded the outside attorneys for the NRA in their efforts to win the Federal lawsuit against AckMc.

The reply by the NRA filed with the US District Court in Dallas has given the anti-rights forces such as Brady, Media Matters, and others plenty of ammunition.

For example from a Brady email sent out night:

In more bad news for the NRA, newly uncovered court filings show that NRA executives themselves thought NRATV was blatantly racist. Yet they continued to let it air.

The timing is convenient: It’s been unearthed that the NRA opposed its own racist content only now that it’s in court against its longtime PR firm, Ackerman McQueen. 

This proves what we have long known: that the NRA will peddle any lie in order to protect its own interest — which is to sell more guns, no matter what the cost. But we’re calling them out. We won’t let them pretend they didn’t condone outright racism. They knew what they were selling.

And there is this from Media Matters:

The National Rifle Associated admitted in a legal filing that its former media operation NRATV was viewed by NRA leadership as racist and that the project’s programming “often became viewed as a dystopian cultural rant.” That is true, but the messaging at NRATV was largely indistinguishable from the racist paranoid rantings of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.

Michael Collins of Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, may have thought including that inflammatory condemnation of NRATV in his court filings was wise. His goal after all is to savage AckMac so as to win this case.

I disagree.

Our blood enemies are those who would deprive us of our God-given rights to an armed self-defense. They will use anything and everything against us. Since much of their strategy involves using propaganda, the use of ill-chosen words that can come back to haunt us is self-defeating. We need to be smarter and we should demand that attorneys for Second Amendment organizations likewise be smarter.

The NRA and outside counsel Michael Collins should have remembered Napoleon’s advice – “when the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.” They have just given our blood enemies that “false movement”.

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AckMac’s Counter-claim Makes Interesting Reading

October 29, 2019 by 1 Comment

I don’t know which side is telling the truth in the divorce between the NRA and AckMac. It could be neither of them. It could be both sides depending upon their perception of the issues.

I will note that the AckMac description of the influence on Wayne LaPierre by William Brewer III does strongly correlate with what insiders have told me. Brewer was described to have isolated LaPierre from long time friends and associates and fed his paranoia.

That said, the narrative in Ackerman McQueen’s reply and counter-claim filed on October 1st makes for interesting reading. Of particular interest are pages 19 through 42. The rest is mostly legalese. I have embedded it below. If you click on the heading, you can also download it to read later.

Ackerman McQueen Texas Coun… by Stephen Gutowski on Scribd

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The Divorce Gets Uglier

October 29, 2019 by

The divorce between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen is ugly and is getting uglier. The NRA’s reply to Ackerman McQueen’s reply and counter-claim was filed with the US District Court on Friday. There were a number of news stories yesterday that excerpted parts of the reply with regard to NRATV and its characterization by the NRA as “distasteful” and “racist“.

The reply brought attention to an episode of NRATV featuring Dana Loesch in which she portrayed Thomas the Tank Engine in a KKK hooded robe.

From page 3 of the reply:

As AMc’s bills grew ever larger, NRATV’s messaging strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist. One particularly damaging segment featured children’s cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods. Unfortunately, attempts by the NRA to “rein in” AMc and its messaging were met with responses from AMc that ranged from evasive to hostile. At the same time, when NRA executives sought performance metrics for NRATV, AMc contrived a pretext to demand that each interlocutor be sidelined or fired. Simultaneously, in closed-door meetings with Mr. LaPierre (which AMc insisted remain “confidential”), the agency presented fabricated and inflated sponsorship and viewership claims. The simple request for the number of “unique visitors” to the site was not answered, despite multiple attempts by Mr. LaPierre and other NRA executives. In fact, AMc’s representations to the NRA leadership regarding the viewership for the digital platform it created, presented, and administered were, by 2017, intentionally (and wildly) misleading. Tellingly, when NRATV finally shut down in June 2019, no one missed it: not a single sponsor or viewer even called, confirming what at least some NRA executives suspected—the site had limited visibility and was failing the accomplish any of its goals.

Ackerman McQueen fired back today on the “distasteful” and “racist” claims in the NRA’s court filing. Like yesterday’s press release, the gloves are off and AckMac is taking no prisoners.

Ackerman McQueen recognized and handled the offensive imagery on the show, “Relentless”, in a proper fashion, like any media company would. We identified those responsible and put new processes and oversight in place. NRA executives acknowledged the corrective action taken by Ackerman McQueen, were satisfied with the response and a couple months later, renewed NRATV for 2019.

However, if the NRA wants to conduct a public conversation about distasteful and racist, they should consider their systematic behavior. This is the same executive leadership team and Board of Directors that refused to address the Philandro Castile tragedy. This the executive leadership team that put their heads in the sand every time a board member said something the could be perceived as distasteful or racist. This is the same executive team and Board of Directors that ignored, and didn’t even watch, the impactful programming that the NOIR team produced, telling important stories on minority issues. There are countless more examples, decisions and comments that plague the organization and will be a part of AMc’s defense.

As AMc said in its latest filing, Wayne LaPierre defrauded Ackerman McQueen. When AMc representatives discovered what he, his executive team as well as the Board of Directors were really doing, and AMc refused to have any part of it, the cabal that is left at the NRA retaliated. Now they want to blame anyone else for the people they actually are.

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NRA Statement On AckMac Suit

October 29, 2019 by 1 Comment

As I said earlier, the NRA filed an amended complaint in their lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen on Friday. This lawsuit is before the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Official Picture from Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors

Michael Collins, a partner in Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors and the NRA’s attorney in the case, released this statement regarding the amended complaint. It was released, I believe, on Friday.

“The NRA believes Ackerman McQueen breached its fiduciary duties, engaged in fraudulent billing, and failed to maintain adequate books and records – all in an effort to enrich itself at the expense of the NRA and its members, ” says Michael J. Collins, partner at Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors and counsel to the NRA. “The allegations reveal a pattern of corruption that included NRATV, a failed media enterprise the agency proposed, managed and sustained through misleading accounts of viewership and promised commercial viability. In the end, the NRA believes NRATV became all ‘smoke and mirrors’ – a vehicle touted by Ackerman for the sole purpose of continuing the flow of millions of dollars of fees which the agency needed to sustain itself.”

Collins continued, “At the same time, when questions began to arise about Ackerman’s billing practices and whether it was taking advantage of the considerable discretion it possessed in such matters, the agency stonewalled the inquiry and embarked upon a scorched-earth campaign against all of its perceived adversaries. Ultimately, this included the CEO of the Association, executives, and outside professionals charged with obtaining answers to legitimate concerns about the agency’s practices. The NRA and its members are determined to ferret out what now appears to have been a considerable amount of corruption.”

Again, thanks to Stephen Gutowski of the Free Beacon for posting the statement from Michael Collins.

Amanda Suffecool of Eye on the Target Radio made a comment about this case tonight as we were recording the Polite Society Podcast which I thought was insightful. Watching the NRA/Wayne LaPierre and AckMac go after one another is like watching a bitter divorce in action. You have both parents fighting over the marital assets, you have both parents fighting for custody of the kids (the NRA members), and both parents are slinging mud for all they are worth. In the end no one wins and the kids are the victims.