{"id":30592,"date":"2020-08-21T15:48:11","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T15:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=30592"},"modified":"2020-08-21T15:48:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T15:48:56","slug":"neal-knox-april-28-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=30592","title":{"rendered":"Neal Knox &#8211; &#8220;April 28, 1997&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:4482,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/amzn.to\\\/3l5Qv0S&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/Neal-Knox-Rights-Dispatches-through-ebook\\\/dp\\\/B07X64KJ59\\\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&amp;keywords=neal+knox&amp;qid=1597352284&amp;sr=8-2&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=nolaonguanmo-20&amp;linkId=42c8e39ba9c2ee0d9f1792c57a191d1f&amp;language=en_US&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:4483,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.nytimes.com\\\/1997\\\/02\\\/03\\\/opinion\\\/danger-at-the-nra.html?searchResultPosition=5&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><strong>Preface by Chris Knox<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This piece and the preceding one were written during the run-up to the 1997 NRA Board meeting that would replace Neal Knox with Charlton Heston as NRA First Vice-President. In order to assure Heston\u2019s election, which was not a sure thing (Heston won by a mere four votes), his backers had \u201cgone negative.\u201d The details of the 1997 fight appear later in this section, but in this piece and its preceding companion, Knox looks back needing to protect his name, he ran these two pieces in back-to-back issues of Shotgun News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>April 28, 1997<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><br>When the New York Times devotes an editorial to trashing me, I\u2019m honored.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em> On February 3, 1997 they huffed that \u201cMr. Knox has been a dark force in the N.R.A. since his days as the group\u2019s chief lobbyist. He was kicked out of that job in 1982 and expelled from the board in 1984 for \u2018extremism.\u2019\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>As reported in my last column,\u201cextremism\u201d had nothing to do with my firing\u2014not unless it is \u201cextremist\u201d to insist that Sen. Bob Dole and the other 54 co-sponsors of the McClure-Volkmer \u201cGun Decontrol Act\u201d bring it to a vote and pass it, as they had promised to do. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Similarly my removal from the Board in 1984 had nothing to do with \u201cextremism.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>But it was again tied to my all-out effort to pass the McClure-Volkmer bill, which would have cut the heart out of the Gun Control Act of 1968. I helped write the McClure bill in 1979, and began the ground-work\u2014by declaring war on BATF\u2019s GCA \u201968 enforcement tactics\u2014the week after I became ILA Executive Director in January 1978. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The week after I was fired, the Senate Judiciary finally approved the long-stalled McClure-Volkmer bill\u2014but only after adding the Kennedy-Dole amendment calling for a 7-day waiting period on handgun purchases (a concept Dole had been quietly pushing for a couple of years). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Instead of working to remove the Dole-Kennedy amendment, my successor at ILA, J. Warren Cassidy, happily quit supporting McClure-Volkmer.&nbsp;The Senators who didn\u2019t want to vote on it\u2014led by Dole\u2014were relieved. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>But NRA members wouldn\u2019t back off. They demanded that NRA and Congress move the bill. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In early 1983 Cassidy took two copies of the bill to Sen. Jim McClure, showing the amendments wanted by the \u201cReagan Administration\u201d&nbsp;(BATF and the Justice Department). Sen. McClure gave me one of his copies and asked me to give him a report of their effect. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>To my astonishment, the modifications weren\u2019t to the original version, but to the committee-passed version\u2014which had the Dole-Kennedy waiting period.&nbsp; <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Administration\/BATF amendments gutted the bill. For instance, the heart of GCA \u201968 was its prohibition of virtually all interstate transfers. The original M-V eliminated those prohibitions unless the laws of either state restricted such transfers.&nbsp; <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I was reared on both sides of the Red River dividing Texas and&nbsp;Oklahoma, and had family in each; neither state restricted my purchase of any type gun. &nbsp;But under GCA \u201968 my uncle couldn\u2019t give me a gun without both of us committing a Federal felony. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>One of the dozen BATF amendments to M-V would have retained the total prohibition on interstate handgun transfers and allowed long gun purchases only from dealers.&nbsp;At the 1983 members\u2019 meeting in Phoenix, Cassidy claimed he hadn\u2019t asked Sen. McClure to support those amendments\u2014but that\u2019s not what Sen. McClure told me. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Harlon did his best to get the Board not to seat me, saying, \u201cWe must excise this cancer.\u201d But he couldn\u2019t get the board to agree.&nbsp;That fall, Cassidy got Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to support the BATF&nbsp;amendments. Sen. McClure was furious.&nbsp;I prepared written testimony\u2014as a private citizen\u2014opposing the amendments and presented it to the Senate Judiciary, which wouldn\u2019t let me testify. And I lobbied friends on the Hill, some of whom I had known for 15 years, and probably none of whom knew I was on the NRA Board.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em> When I blasted Cassidy in Gun Week for supporting the amendments, he denied it, citing weasel-worded committee testimony. Only long after, when the hearing report came out, did I learn that Sen.&nbsp;Thurmond had demanded\u2014and got\u2014a clear written statement in support of the amendments.&nbsp;Late on the night before the January 1984 Board Meeting, I was informally told that there would be an effort to expel me for opposing the position taken by ILA. I received no official notice. The Board voted 45-24&nbsp;(just short of two-thirds; not the three-quarter vote claimed in a recently distributed letter from four past presidents, all of whom voted against me). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In opposing any amendments to McClure-Volkmer, I was lobbying in support of long-established Board policy.&nbsp; <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Board members asked me if I would promise not to do it again; I replied that I could not make such a promise because I couldn\u2019t know if NRA were going to at some future time act against the best interests of the members. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>If that be \u201cextremism,\u201d make the most of it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Used with permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3l5Qv0S\" class=\"rank-math-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Knox, Neal. Neal Knox &#8211; The Gun Rights War: Dispatches from the Front Lines 1966 through 2000 <\/a><\/strong>. MacFarlane Press. Kindle Edition. Location 5398 &#8211; 5432.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"323\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Neal-Knox-Gun-Rights-War-Cover-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-30593\" srcset=\"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Neal-Knox-Gun-Rights-War-Cover-1.jpg 323w, https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Neal-Knox-Gun-Rights-War-Cover-1-194x300.jpg 194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 323px) 100vw, 323px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The New York Times editorial that is referenced in this excerpt can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1997\/02\/03\/opinion\/danger-at-the-nra.html?searchResultPosition=5\" class=\"rank-math-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.  It referred to Neal Knox as a &#8220;dark force&#8221; who wanted to repeal the Brady Law as well as the Clinton assault weapons ban. It said he even wanted to legalize &#8220;fully automatic weapons.&#8221; The horror!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That editorial noted that Wayne LaPierre was facing a challenge from within due to &#8220;declining membership, financial problems and an abysmal public image&#8221;. Other than a declining membership, this could have almost been written in 2020. If they had said declining contributions, it would have been spot on.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Preface by Chris Knox This piece and the preceding one were written during the run-up to the 1997 NRA&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2122,4785,35,26],"class_list":["post-30592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chris-knox","tag-neal-knox","tag-new-york-times","tag-nra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30595,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30592\/revisions\/30595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}