2022 NRA Annual Meeting

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Meeting of Members – Resolutions, Part IV

June 6, 2022 by

The final two resolutions were submitted by Jeff Knox.

The first of these resolutions was ruled out of order by Charles Cotton. He said after consultation with the parliamentarian that under Robert’s Rules of Order you could not have a resolution condemning someone after another resolution praising him had been adopted. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know since I’m not an expert of Robert’s Rules of Order. Even if I was, I’m sure Cotton would have found a way not to consider the resolution.

Jeff’s resolution is as follows:

After this motion was quashed, Jeff rose and requested that his next resolution be withdrawn. Cotton seemed to be a bit confused by that but it was done.

Then Jeff made a motion to adjourn because spending any more time of this travesty would have been wasted time.

The whole meeting was orchestrated from beginning to end. The only purpose seemed to check off a box, confirm that Wayne is the NRA, that the members really don’t count for squat, and quash any dissent. Board members are told to speak against resolution that challenges the status quo and for a resolution like the “we love Wayne” one. One board member confirmed to me that he slipped out early just to avoid being asked (or told) to do that.

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Meeting Of Members – Resolutions, Part III

June 6, 2022 by 1 Comment

The next two resolutions to be considered included one that I authored on the condition of the NRA Headquarters Building and another that called for email notification of members when a meeting was canceled.

I had conversations with numerous people who told me about the poor condition of the NRA Headquarters Building. Doug Wicklund, former senior curator of the NRA Firearms Museum, sent me the picture below.

Courtesy of Doug Wicklund

He noted that there were numerous patches for water damage in the driveway overhang as well as staining from rust on the window frames of the building. Another person who had been on the 6th Floor said there was lots of water damage from the leaking roof. In era in which real estate tax valuations rarely go down, Fairfax County lowered the tax valuation of the building by over $1 million from 2020 to 2021.

It is an embarrassment that the public face of the NRA is in such poor condition. After my resolution was introduced, I spoke in favor of it as did a gentleman from southwest Louisiana who said you don’t play around with leaking roofs. Speaking against my resolution was NRA Board Member Ron Schmeits of Raton, NM. He said the board was working on it, that there was no need to “waste money” on an independent inspection, and well, you know getting parts these days is hard. Frankly, I put in the part about an independent, third party inspection because I don’t trust the board to do more than pay lip service.

Of the few people remaining at the meeting, the majority agreed with Schmeits and voted it down.

I unfortunately do not have a copy of the next resolution nor the name of the person who introduced it. Basically, it noted that the last minute cancelation of the 2021 NRA Annual Meeting in Houston caused members to lose money on reservations and airfare. The resolution called a better notification of members when a meeting was going to be canceled. It asked that all members be notified by email in case of a cancelation and not just by a note on the webpage. After minimal discussion, it was voted down.

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Meeting Of Members – Resolutions, Part I

June 6, 2022 by 5 Comments

I already wrote about the “we love Wayne” resolution that was passed at the 2022 NRA Meeting of Members. That was the first resolution considered and was intended to run out the clock. As far as the powers that be are concerned, no discussion of matters concerning the NRA and its operations is good discussion.

By my count, there were a total of 12 resolutions. The first was the “we love Wayne” resolution, eight that were ruled out of order, two were allowed to come to a vote, and one that Jeff Knox withdrew.

Robert Rhyne and Mitchell Martin introduced seven resolutions. They were resolutions two through eight. Each and every one of their resolutions was ruled by Charles Cotton to be “out of order” and were not considered. Mr. Rhyne was kind enough to send me copies of his resolutions and I will post them.

Mr. Rhyne is from Arkansas and appeared to me to be the solid, salt of the earth type of NRA member who just got fed up with the “Beltway Bandits”.

The first resolution called for settlement of the lawsuit brought by NY Attorney General Letitia James. The second said that after settlement, the NRA should be reincorporated in Texas.

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Screwing With The Protestors In Houston

June 2, 2022 by

When the Tonight Show was hosted by Jay Leno, he had a feature called “Jay Walking” where he would talk to people on the street and ask questions. Well, Brandon Herrera who is a “social media influencer” just updated that a bit in Houston during the NRA Annual Meeting. You see across the street from the George Brown Convention Center were a bunch of anti-gun protestors. As you know from an earlier post them, they were oh so polite.

Brandon, who goes by TheAKGuy on Twitter, really screwed with them. He asked them to sign a petition supporting the Firearms Policy Coalition and asked them if a Federal background check should be required in gun stores. We all know that this is already Federal law and has been since the enactment of the Brady Act.

The people who are going to watch this video are gun people. They are not gun control people. They hate gun control. Thus, I found it funny that the ad that ran in the middle of this video when I watched it was from gun control group Sandy Hook Promise. I think they got taken as much as the protestors.

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More Thoughts On NRA Expo Attendance

June 2, 2022 by 1 Comment

An astute reader who was at the NRA Meeting in Houston sent me a set of pictures. They were all taken as the exhibition was closing on Sunday afternoon. The pictures are of leftover 2022 convention programs. This has me pondering about the real numbers for attendance at the exhibition.

As noted in an earlier post, the official total of attendees was 61,254. This was the lowest number of attendees since 2006.

Now look at this first photo. The label on the box says the box holds 90 programs and that it was box 147 of 417. Assuming that this was the only order of the programs, the NRA has 37,530 printed to give out.

Now look at the next set of pictures taken at the various entrances to the exhibition hall.

A very rough estimate has at least 32 unopened boxes of 90 each. That is 2,880 program. Let’s assume that number of loose programs not handed out is another 900. That adds up to about 10% of the ordered programs were not handed out and are now wasted. Rounding up, this leads me to assume that maybe 34,000 programs were handed out.

On the one hand you have the people who didn’t take a program. On the other hand you have those who picked up a program on more than one day. I was in the middle in that I picked up a program on the first day and used it for the whole three days.

My rough observation going in and out of the hall numerous times daily is that more than half the people took a program. That leads me again to be suspicious of the official number of attendees as the numbers are just not adding up. I could be wrong and I will cheerfully admit it.

It is not that I don’t trust the NRA but there are people who have a vested interest in fudging the numbers. Unfortunately, many of those people are in positions of authority.

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NRA Annual Meeting Attendance

May 30, 2022 by 1 Comment

Stephen Gutowski of The Reload has a tweet up with the official attendance.

With all due respect, I think the key word in Stephen’s tweet is “claims”. I have been to every NRA Annual Meeting that has had an exposition since Charlotte in 2010. This had the least people by far. Friday had really light attendance. It picked up on Saturday as one would expect and was so-so on Sunday. I never had trouble walking the aisles of the George Brown Convention Center on any day. I never got pulled along with the crowd nor blocked at intersections. Every vendor I asked about business said it was slow.

I have attended numerous SHOT Shows where the attendance is in the 60-70,000 range and they all seemed more crowded than this show.

As I said in the comments section in a reply to Old NFO, I saw a lot less of “new media” than in the past. There were a few podcasters, a handful of the professional gun press, and very few of the bloggers I’ve gotten to know over the years. There really were not that many of the mainstream media for that matter. I did have some fun conversations with Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the LA Times and Andrew Schneider of Houston Public Radio.

I did not get the chance to attend any of the seminars or workshops. There were some by historian Martin K. A. Morgan that I would have liked to hear. I believe he did ones on the weapons in the Battle of Hue as well as in the Russo-Ukranian war.

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NRA Back To Houston

September 29, 2021 by 3 Comments

The 2022 NRA Annual Meeting was scheduled to be in Louisville, Kentucky. Then Carolyn Meadows called an emergency meeting of the Executive Committee that met last Friday to discuss future Annual Meeting. From the rumors I heard, they went into executive session rather quickly.

It seems that the decision was made to dump Louisville and go to Houston where they had intended to go this year.

NRA To Hold 151st Annual Meeting
and Exhibits in Houston May 2022


FAIRFAX, Va. — The National Rifle Association announced today the location of its 2022
Annual Meeting and Exhibits will be held in Houston, Texas over Memorial Day weekend May
27-29, 2022.

The NRA had planned to host its 150th celebration in May 2021 in Houston – the site of NRA’s
largest convention on record. The NRA community was disappointed when high COVID rates in
Harris County led to the cancellation of this marquee event.

The Association anticipates no further changes to the locations of the NRA’s Annual Meetings
and Exhibits from 2023 through 2026.

Not that I have anything against Texas but I was looking forward to Louisville for two reasons. First, it would have been easily drivable for me. Second, I could combine it with a couple of days touring the Bourbon Trail which is what we did the last time it was in Louisville.

I guess the plus side for me is that the credit I got for my canceled flights won’t be wasted.