We Voted Early

The Complementary Spouse and I voted today around mid-morning. She estimated it took us just over a half hour from the time we got in line until we left. Our early voting location, the South Buncombe Public Library, had much longer lines on Thursday which was the first day of early voting. Indeed, it was out the door and around the parking lot. Today, since we went during what we called “church hours”, the end of the line was at the library door.

This year, instead of the more traditional sticker, Buncombe County held a contest for young artists to design the sticker. 12-year old Maya LeRoy, an Asheville middle school student, won the contest. Her entry was voted on by residents from a selection of 10 finalists.

While many traditionalists may prefer to vote on the actual Election Day, I have taken advantage of North Carolina’s in-person early voting for at least 15-20 years. It usually is a good way to avoid the lines. Moreover, in an age of terrorism, you are less vulnerable to attacks. Less than two weeks ago, the FBI arrested an Afghan national in Oklahoma City who had planned an election day terrorist attack in the name of ISIS. If it could have taken place in Oklahoma, it could take place anywhere. Given the number of illegal aliens of military age who have crossed our southern borders, it does make one wonder if this was merely the tip of an ice berg. If you have read Kurt Schlichter’s The Attack (#commission earned), while fiction, it certainly could be a possibility.

International Gin & Tonic Day

October 19th is International Gin and Tonic Day. It was created by Jayne Withers in honor of her grandmother Mary Edith Keyburn. Mrs. Keyburn lived to the ripe old age of 95 and enjoyed her gin and tonics. Indeed, her family smuggled a gin and tonic into the hospital in water bottle and served it to her in a tea cup. She sounds like she was my kind of older woman!

I plan to honor this day (and Mrs. Keyburn) with a gin and tonic made from one of the craft gins that I brought back from my two trips to South Africa this year mated with a tonic from Franklin and Sons. The British Empire will be well represented with a UK tonic and a South African gin. As an aside, distilling craft gins in South Africa is quite the industry with small distilleries scattered across the country.

We Made It By Petition

I received notification on Tuesday that I qualified for the 2025 NRA Board of Elections ballot by petition. It was thanks to you that I made it.

According to an affidavit filed with the New York court on Wednesday by NRA Secretary John Frazer:

. As of the execution of this affidavit, 14 candidates have qualified for the 2025 ballot by submitting the required number of valid signatures as of the October 8 deadline. (Two of those candidates were also nominated by the Nominating Committee.) Three additional potential candidates submitted petitions, but
did not submit enough valid signatures as of the deadline to qualify.

First, I have no idea who the second candidate to be double nominated is. If anyone knows, please put it in the comments. Second, as of now, thanks to storm-related delays, neither Paul Babaz nor Charles Brown qualified. It is my understanding that each had enough signatures but did not make the October 8th deadline thanks to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Judge Cohen may have other ideas about whether they will be on the ballot or not. The New York Attorney General’s Office amended proposal is requesting an extension to November 15th for those petition candidates who are residents of North Carolina or Florida. Unfortunately, that will not help either Paul or Charlie as they reside in Georgia and Ohio respectively.

One question that comes up is why I bothered to seek to run by petition when I was already on the ballot thanks to the Nominating Committee. My answer is quite simple. While I appreciated the nomination by the Nominating Committee surprising as it was, being nominated by petition reflects the will of hundreds of rank and file NRA voting members who took the time and effort to sign and mail my petition. To me, that is a great honor which also comes with great responsibility if elected. I will endeavor to be worthy of that support.

Supporting Operation Airdrop In Post-Helene Relief

A number of firearms and firearms related companies are coming together to support Operation Airdrop in their efforts to bring relief to Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Operation Airdrop is a Texas-based 501(c)3 non-profit that organizes general aviation assets after a natural disaster. Many of the companies involved are located here in North Carolina. They have organized a raffle that will donate 100% of the proceeds to Operation Airdrop.

Tickets are $20 each and give you two entries in the raffle. The grand prize is valued at over $11,000 while the second place prize is valued at over $8,000.

You can get your raffle ticket here.

This effort is being spearheaded by ZRO Delta which is located in Connelly Spring, NC. While I don’t want to get political, ZRO Delta, US Optics, and Unbranded AR are co-owned by Pat Harrigan who is the Republican nominee for Congress in the 10th District of NC. In the interest of full disclosure, I gave a small donation to his campaign back in the Spring.

The raffle closes at midnight on October 16th.

Michigan Goes Full Stasi

What do the former Soviet Union, Mao’s Red China, and the State of Michigan have in common? They all want to use children to inform the state on their parents and elders.

In a bill signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) yesterday, the State of Michigan does just that. Embedded within HB 5503 CR-1, a bill dealing with appropriations for public schools in Michigan, was this gem.

Sec. 97h reads:

Sec. 97h. (1) From the state school aid fund money appropriated in section 11, there is allocated an amount not to exceed $1,000,000.00 for 2024-2025 only to an intermediate district to partner with the department to create or partner with an existing program and support a tip line for students to anonymously report improperly stored firearms that are accessible to a minor.
(2) The department shall develop educational materials related to improperly stored firearms, and how to report improperly stored firearms, and distribute the educational materials to districts and intermediate districts.
(3) Notwithstanding section 17b, the department shall make payments under this section on a schedule
determined by the department.
(4) As used in this section, “improperly stored firearm” means a firearm that is not stored in accordance withthe requirements of section 9 of 1927 PA 372, MCL 28.429.

As the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owner’s notes, everyone supports proper storage of firearms but this is what one might expect to see in a totalitarian police state. Indeed they are correct. Whether it was the Young Pioneers in the USSR and DDR or the Red Guard in Mao’s China, all were urged to report on their parents.

A better solution than going full Stasi might have been to work with the NSSF’s Project Project ChildSafe® which has developed a comprehensive program dealing with firearms safety and which provides locks free of charge. Going further, imagine if that $1 million grant was used to provide tax credits to firearms owners who purchased safes, lockboxes, or other firearm storage devices. Both of these would be real solutions to improperly stored firearms rather than using kids as tools of a totalitarian police state.

H/T Tovis

For North Carolinians From GRNC-PVF

Grass Roots North Carolina-Political Victory Fund reminds all North Carolinians that today is the last day to regularly register to vote in the November General Election. Registration closes at 5pm this afternoon. However, if you miss this deadline, you can still register to vote if you take advantage of early voting up through November 2nd.

Other deadlines:

Oct. 11 (5 PM): Deadline for voter registration or to update registration (e.g. for an address change). Click here for details. To check your voter registration, click here. Note: If you are registered as “unaffiliated,” you may vote in either the Democrat or Republican primary election. [Important note: If you miss this deadline, you can still vote using one stop early voting.]  

Oct. 17: General Election one stop early voting begins. Click here for details. Click here to find your One Stop Early Voting place.

Oct. 29 (5 PM): Last day to submit an absentee ballot request form. Click here for information on voting by mail.

Nov. 2 (3 PM): In-person one stop early voting ends. This is last day you can both register and vote at same time.

Nov. 5 (6:30 AM – 7:30 PM): Election Day: Click here to find your polling place on Election Day. 

Nov. 5 (5 PM): Absentee ballot return deadline.

Reportedly, over 10 million hunters are not registered to vote. Presumably most are gun owners. Even if they aren’t, policies of the Biden-Harris administration have not been friendly to either gun owners or hunters. Whether it is closing land to hunting or banning lead ammunition on certain wildlife refuges, they have not had the interests of hunters at heart. If you are one of these unregistered voters, it is time to get off your ass and register to vote. And then vote like your guns and your hunting rights depend on them because they do.

The GRNC-PVF has also released their recommendations for the 2024 General Election. You can download the whole list here.

I would note that in both my State Senate and State House districts the Republican challengers to the zero-star Democrat incumbents didn’t bother to return GRNC’s survey. How damn stupid can you be not to take advantage of something that differentiates you from your opponent and might give you a point or two more votes. The GOP is not known as the Stupid Party without reason.

Likewise, in two Council of State races, the Republican didn’t bother to return the GRNC survey. In the case of Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey (R-NC), he faces vehemently anti-gun State Sen. Natasha Marcus (D-Mecklenburg). I have written about Marcus in the past. She proudly proclaims her membership in Moms Demand Action and has tried to distort the racist history of the origins of the pistol purchase permit. You can imagine what she might do to gun owners if given the power of the Insurance Commissioner’s office.

Missing From Both Final Judgment Proposals

Both the NRA and the New York Attorney General’s Office submitted their proposed terms for the final judgment in People of New York v. National Rifle Association of America et al on October 4th. Having read both proposals, neither propose reforms intended to keep the rank and file NRA member informed.

Item 9 in the NYAG’s proposed final judgment says the NRA will set up a secure online portal that will “enable digital dissemination of Board, committee, and corporate documents to Board members, and shall enable convenient encrypted communications with Board members.”

Likewise, the NRA’s proposal for a final judgment states, “The Secretary’s Office shall use best efforts to implement, by January 2025, a secure portal that will enable digital dissemination of Board, committee, and corporate documents to Board members, and shall enable convenient encrypted communication with Board members.”

Nowhere in either document is any mention of providing information on a timely basis to the members of the NRA. Whether this is an oversight or intentional, I don’t know.

At the very least, here is what I would propose and what should be included in the final judgment. If you have other items that you would suggest be publicly available, make note of it in the comments.

  • Current bylaws must be published on the NRA website and available to all members. Do you know hard it is to get an up-to-date copy of the bylaws otherwise?
  • A minimum 5 years worth of Form 990 and CHAR500 posted on the NRA’s public website. Many other non-profits make these available on their websites.
  • Board meeting agenda and minutes posted on the public website including for past meetings of the board. If small towns can do it, so can the NRA.

If those in charge are so worried about the gun prohibitionists or reporters from The Trace having access to this information, make it so it can be accessed only by NRA members. This is what they do with regard to candidate ratings by the NRA-PVF.

The time for keeping the membership in the dark is over. If the Board and the executives are serious about a NRA 2.0, this is one change they could easily make.

Ryan Cleckner’s Essay In Imprimis

Imprimis is a monthly publication of Hillsdale College that presents digests of speeches given at seminars and other events sponsored by the college. Like Hillsdale College itself, it usually has a conservative or libertarian bent.

A speech given by Ryan Cleckner, an attorney formerly with NSSF, on federal law enforcement agencies was this month’s topic. Entitled, “Our Out-of-Control Federal Law Enforcement Agencies”, it focused primarily on abuses, many deadly, by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

The speech begins with the killing of Bryan Malinowski by the ATF in Little Rock, Arkansas and concludes with a reference to the ATF’s attempt to illegally construct an electronic database of firearms and owners. Interspersed with these are stories about the FBI’s use of dawn raids on a non-violent pro-life activist and Trump confidant Roger Stone among others.

From the speech:

I served in the military as a Special Operations sniper and Sniper Team leader in 1st Ranger Battalion. I could have gone on to become a sharpshooter on a police SWAT team or even joined the FBI or one of the other three-letter federal agencies that were widely considered, in the past, to be the cream of the crop in terms of law enforcement. Sadly, they are no longer thought of in the same way.

The flip side of the increasingly thuggish character of these agencies is their diminished effectiveness in fulfilling their core missions, to the point that the American public cannot help but notice. Consider the recent assassination attempt—very nearly successful—on President Trump. The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI are being anything but transparent about their investigations and seem to be going out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for Congress and the public to learn what happened. But the most obvious fact about it, which cannot be covered up, is that the Secret Service allowed a 20-year-old shooter to access the most ideal location for a sniper, even after he had been spotted acting suspiciously and using a laser rangefinder and had been watched for almost 30 minutes. This alone is enough to know the Secret Service that day was more Keystone Cop than cream of the crop.

This speech by Mr. Cleckner is well worth your time reading as are virtually all of the essays and speeches published in Imprimis. If you want to subscribe to Imprimis, it is free.

Delivered!

My package containing 236 petition sheets with 547 signatures was delivered to the NRA’s Office of the Secretary this morning. It cost me $92.22 but it was worth it.

When dealing with the powers that be, it always pays to have proof!

I know I have more petitions coming in as UPS has notified me of at least two packages that are delayed by the storm. I plan to send those in to Fairfax because why not. They can turn their nose up at them and not count them but they will know that even more voting members are demanding change.

Rocky Marshall Responds To Barr’s Falsehood

Earlier today, NRA President Bob Barr sent an email out to the Board of Directors with “a litigation update.” It details what the Special Litigation Committee agrees with in the NYAG’s proposed judgment and what it disagrees with. Towards the end of the email Barr accuses Director Rocky Marshall of submitting an affidavit ” in support of the NYAG’s demands for additional relief against the NRA.” You can read the whole email here where it has been reposted on Facebook.

Rocky did not take this lying down and has responded at length. He has requested that his response be published in its entirety along with his affidavit and a joint letter submitted by Rocky and Buz Mills to the New York court in August. I am happy to provide Rocky a public forum to set the record straight. As Tom Gresham of Gun Talk Radio has often said, “A lie left unchallenged becomes the truth.”

Here is Rocky’s letter in its entirety:

October 6, 2024
To: Bob Barr
From: Rocky Marshall
CC: NRA Board of Directors and all NRA Members
Not Privileged and Not Confidential – Share with as many NRA members as possible


NRA President Bob Barr:
In your email addressed to the NRA Board of Directors (dated October 6, 2024), includes a retaliation statement towards me directly. Because of this attack, I am compelled to respond to the NRA Board of Directors and also to all NRA members in a public forum.


In your email, you comment that I provided an affidavit “in support of the NYAG’s request for additional relief”. This is untrue, blatantly false, and is a feeble small minded political attack. The affidavit that I signed was not a statement of support but instead was a true account of the resolution to dissolve the Special Litigation Committee (SLC) and the subsequent outcome of the vote (See attached affidavit).


For the record, the NRA Directors who supported Wayne LaPierre and now support maintaining the Brewer law firm into perpetuity, misused the parliamentarian rules and recorded the vote as having not passed with a super majority. As it turns out, according to the New York AG’s charitable division, NY law says a majority of the board governs unless the bylaws says otherwise, NRA’s bylaws adopt Robert’s Rules, but only as to deliberations, not voting, so for voting the NY statute applies and a simple majority is enough. In other words, the majority of the Board voted to end the SLC and by default terminate the employment of the Bill Brewer law firm. I join with the majority of the Board and echo this simple but monumental refrain: “Bill Brewer You’re Fired!”


NRA Members:
President Barr (unfortunately) is a central member of the NRA Directors identified in the NYAG’s statement as: “Many of the same NRA directors who failed in their duty to oversee the NRA during an era of “ill-considered,” “wasteful,” and “disastrous” efforts to “avoid accountability” continue to serve on the Board today. Id. at 2253:9-13.” President Barr and the members of the SLC continue to take action that is adverse and detrimental to the stability and future of the NRA. The SLC is operating beyond its authority and every member of the SLC should immediately resign for the good of the order.


President Barr also identifies issues that are described as “areas of disagreement” with the NYAG’s proposal. I completely disagree with President Barr and the Brewer Law firm position that is being promoted which does not represent the majority of the NRA Directors.


Forms of Relief:
Board Size Referendum – This idea is the result of the court being informed by NRA members and other expert witnesses that the NRA Board size is too large. This is an arbitrary solution to a perceived problem. I believe that an optimal Board size can be determined after reviewing the work that is currently being performed at the Board level. In total, there are 44 committees that perform a wide variety of oversight and also managerial tasks. This is worth reviewing, but is not a quick fix to a suggested solution.


In a letter to Judge Cohen on August 14, 2024, Buz Mills and I drafted a similar idea (attachment)
Item# 10 We propose that the appropriate size of the NRA Board of Directors be determined in reviewing best practices of similar boards with significant numbers of committees. We suggest that this item be delegated to the new leadership of NRA 2.0 to investigate and propose a solution to the NYAG’s charitable division that can be mutually agreed upon.


Director Nomination: This idea is a good attempt at removing the punitive bias and retaliation that has existed with the NRA nominating Committee historically and thru the current election cycle. Enlarging
the number of candidates for the Board would provide NRA members more options to choose among qualified candidates as opposed to hand selected candidates by the old guard. I fully support this idea and will work to implement with the NRA Directors during this election cycle.


In a letter to Judge Cohen on August 14, 2024, Buzz Mills and I drafted a similar idea: Item #2 The NRA 2.0 Leadership has recruited candidates to be considered in the next election cycle and we request that all eligible candidates be automatically included on the next election ballot which will be voted on by members in January 2025. The Nominating Committee should be directed to approve every candidate who meets the basic qualifications: Life Member or above for at least five years. Any current Directors running for reelection should be excluded from the ballot if the Director has poor attendance in the previous year of service.

Committee Membership: Removing directors that served on key committees during the critical years whereby fiduciary oversight was absent is a just and appropriate result due to negligence. I fully support this idea and confident that the NRA will have excellent committees in place in the coming weeks.

In a letter to Judge Cohen on August 14, 2024, Buzz Mills and I drafted a similar idea: Item #6 All individuals identified in phase 1 trial as in support of, enabling, facilitating the misuse of funds of the NRA, and all identified “cabal” members be banned from holding any office, chair or vice chair or tier 1 committee member for 3 years.

Committees of the Board: This is an idea proposed by the NYAG and I do not believe will improve the functioning of the committees. The downside to this idea is that potentially a committee (such as the SLC) could operate independently of the Board. As long as good Directors are in place, the committees should be able to operate in accordance with the goals and the direction provided by the entire Board. However, if the committee is operating adverse to the Board then the consequences can be significant.

Compliance Consultant: This idea identified by the NYAG is to provide additional external oversight. I disagree with the NYAG’s position because we have abundant oversight in place. I testified during the trial that we do not have a process problem but instead have a people problem. All of the corruption that occurred was due to the individuals managing the NRA and the NRA Directors that were complicit. We have proper controls in place thanks to Doug Hamlin, Sonya Rawlings, and Bob Mensinger and all transactions are being audited and verified.

Internal Control Audit : This is also an idea proposed by the NYAG to assure that all processes, transactions are being managed correctly. This is not a big issue and the NRA can easily adopt.


NRA members, we are making great strides with all of the changes that been implemented and today the NRA Board of Directors has a majority of good Directors that will shape the future of the NRA for decades to come. As you can sense by this letter, we have issues to resolve and will correct the problems of the past in order to return the NRA back to you – the members. NRA 2.0 is here and we need your support.


Sincerely,


Rocky Marshall
NRA Board Director 2021, 2024-present

The first attachment referred to by Rocky is his affidavit. I have read it multiple times and it is, in my opinion, a straightforward recital of the vote regarding the attempted dissolution of the Special Litigation Committee. I reported on that almost two weeks ago in an annotated post. The annotations indicated who is up for re-election and how they were nominated.

The other document that Rocky refers to in his letter is the joint letter that he and Buz Mills sent to Judge Cohen.