-=Continued from previous post=- 
     Vizzard says NRA had maintained close ties with law
enforcement until 1977 when (at the Cincinnati annual meeting)
control of NRA "was seized in a well-planned coup led by its
militant, libertarian faction, led by Neal Knox and Harlan (sic)
Carter." 
     He describes Harlon as a "retired border patrol manager." 
In fact, he was a lifetime law enforcement officer, serving in
every rank of the U.S. Border Patrol until he became the head at
the age of 36, an incredible record.  Neither of us was anti-law
enforcement, except when law enforcement was trampling on
Constitutional rights.
     When I became NRA-ILA Director in 1978, I hammered BATF's
abuses under GCA '68, then rolled out the McClure-Volkmer bill,
which as Vizzard says, would have gutted the Gun Control Act.
After BATF became part of the Reagan Administration, "Neal Knox
was forced out as [ILA Director] for opposing" efforts to weaken
the bill.  
     "Two years later Knox lost his seat on the NRA Board when he
testified against an NRA-backed version of the bill.... An
unfailingly polite and gentlemanly individual, Knox represents
the extreme libertarian position on firearms,"  Vizzard wrote.
     "Inflexible resistance to compromise had temporarily cost
Knox and his extremist supporters key positions of influence in
the NRA and shifted the organization toward a more moderate
position."  
     If BATF considered me an extremist, I was doing my job.
     "Knox was replaced by Warren Cassidy....  ATF found that
some accommodation could be reached with the NRA leadership after
the Knox faction lost power."  Vizzard notes that former BATF
Director "Steve Higgins perceives ATF's ability to function in
the political environment as tied directly to the nature of NRA
leadership."
     Higgins is exactly right, which is why the upcoming NRA
elections are so important to every defender of the Second
Amendment.    
     The Nominating Committee, elected by the tiny majority which
unseated Albert Ross and me as NRA vice presidents, declined to
nominate 14 incumbent Directors.
     The "offenses" of the targeted 14 are that they (1) usually
agree with Knox, (2) advocate fuller disclosure of financial
dealings between Officers, Directors and NRA (a member-petitioned
Bylaw proposal on the March election ballot), (3) advocate more
truthful and realistic NRA grades for squishy politicians and (4)
advocate more aggressive challenges to BATF, Justice Department
and the Washington, D.C. political establishment.
     NRA is again at a crossroads.  How accommodating NRA is to
BATF and the Clinton Administration will depend on who you and
your fellow voting members choose as NRA Directors -- just as
former BATF Director Higgins told Vizzard.
======================================================================
                         Cloudy New Year
                          By NEAL KNOX
     WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 1, 1998) -- It's traditional on  New
Year's Day to review the last year and take an insightful look at
the one that coming.  But my crystal ball is clouded.  
     Congress drifted aimlessly all year, with the Republican
majority so thin, and so divided and distracted by personal
agendas, that if the new leadership knew where it wanted to go,
the followers are too divided to get there.  (Sounds like another
organization I know.)
     So President Clinton is setting the agenda, with help from
Handgun Control Inc. and its handmaidens, with a continuing attack
on firearms ownership from virtually every agency in the Federal
government.
     The major bright spot of the year was when the entire gun
movement joined forces to stomp Washington State's Initiative 676
by 71-29 percent.  That handgun licensing effort, thinly
disguised as "Gun Safety," marked the first all-out effort to
test the new tactic of "protecting children" rather than
"disarming criminals."
     The American Shooting Sports Council, which set up last
fall's White House Rose Garden ceremony announcing the
"voluntary" plans of several handgun makers to include trigger
locks with new guns, is working with the Clinton Administration
to develop a "politically neutral firearms safety message" for
public service ads.
     If truly "politically neutral," that's great.  But the anti-
gun crowd isn't interested in "safe" guns, they want no guns.  
"Safety" is only a ploy, and some in industry have swallowed the
bait.  
     Colt's Manufacturing President Ron Stewart, in a guest
editorial in the December American Firearms Industry magazine
said the industry should develop guns incapable of being fired by
anyone except the owner, which Colt has been trying to do with an
encoder ring.  
     (Last May Sarah Brady "encouraged" that effort by endorsing
a New Jersey bill prohibiting the sale of any handguns without
such capability after Jan. 1, 2000.)
     Stewart, while mouthing platitudes about the Second
Amendment, proposed violating it with "a comprehensive federal
firearms law, including the creation of a federal gun permit ...
that would necessitate each permit holder to undergo thorough
firearms training and pass and uniform examination."
     The anti-gunners started touting "safety" because the public
clearly wasn't buying the notion that crime can be reduced
through "gun control."  Further, the crime rates have been
dropping steadily throughout the 1990's, starting well before
"Brady" and the military-look gun ban -- thanks primarily to
keeping more bad actors in prison longer, where they couldn't
prey on the public.  
     There was much trumpeting at the end of 1997 that New York
City's murder rate is the lowest since 1967 -- the year before
passage of the Gun Control Act.  That law, which was supposed to
stop the nation's murder climb, most certainly didn't.
     Tripling the nation's prison population between 1975 and
1989 did.
     A new law that goes into effect today in California could
well put the lid on gun crimes in the state -- if it's enforced. 
The law calls for 10 years mandatory punishment for committing a
major crime with the aid of a gun, 20 years for firing it, and 25
years to life imprisonment killing someone.
     Each of the 156,000 convicts in California's 33 prisons is
receiving a brochure warning them about the law.  Criminals
outside the prisons will learn about it through radio and TV ads
on 300 stations.
     I admit to a distaste for laws that treat a murder with a
gun as worse than one with a club or knife, but mandatory
sentences for gun law violations work -- both in reducing crime
and reducing gun law proposals.
-=Continued in next post=-
...          ******** NOTE: THIS IS A FORWARDED MESSAGE ********
--- FMail 1.22
---------------