Non-Firearm Political Talk Prohibited - Discuss Here

[308]

Actually this election was my first year blanket voting Republican...but after John Boehner was appointed speaker I've since gone back in my "every politician is corrupt" box again.

Have you ever seen "The Distinguished Gentleman" starring Eddie Murphy?

 

[Riot]

It's funny...but even now this thread drifted to politics...

 

[Gator Monroe]

Have you ever seen "The Distinguished Gentleman" starring Eddie Murphy?

Again with the 1980s ...

 

[308]

Again with the 1980s ...

There is a reason 99% of your post today have been soft deleted. I assume this and the quoted will be soon, perhaps it would be appropriate to pay attention.

 

[Gator Monroe]

There is a reason 99% of your post today have been soft deleted. I assume this and the quoted will be soon, perhaps it would be appropriate to pay attention.

14% get your friggin numbers correct

 

[Joe Link]

I'd like to start by thanking you who shared your thoughts and opinions. I've spent the weekend and yesterday deep in thought, contemplating these posts, our rules, and most importantly, my goals with the organization which I have dedicated the past seven years of my life to building.

If you glanced over that last part, please re-read it. Be honest now, picture yourself working an additional 20-40 hours per week, in addition to your full time job, for seven years, largely without any tangible compensation. Throughout those years many sacrifices and personal investments have been made for this community, not for popularity, not for financial gain, not even to give you guys somewhere to talk guns on the internet. I've done this because I have a very specific set of goals which I'm working to reach, goals very personal to me. I never took a partner in this, choosing to carry this workload myself, because these are my goals. I built Northwest Firearms because I believe this is my best means to achieve those personal goals.

Searching through my past posts provides more than enough information one needs to understand the reasons behind the decisions I make here. Unfortunately, people just don't seem to care. People don't want to take the time to understand the motive behind a decision which they disagree with. It's much easier to simply point out the ways in which someone is wrong and you are right, which is almost always done in a very disdainful, arrogant, and condescending manner. After this exhaustive lecture on the errors in their thinking or behavior, the person is then expected to either adopt the 'correct' way of thinking, or forever be labeled the enemy. Gun owners love to label people, just like our opposition. It absolutely astonishes me that there are people (in this thread, even) who think there's a chance this strategy could possibly succeed in converting a person to our cause. Yet it seems to be rule number one in the gun owner political playbook. The tongue-lashings will continue until thinking improves!

Honestly, I'm saddened by the fact that some of you either won't be able to see, or will refuse to admit, that pro-gun people like this are nearly as detrimental to our 2A rights as the people who vote against them. In what reality do you think you can act this way, with such conceit and disrespect, and manage to convince someone who is on the fence to vote your way? I absolutely believe if gun owners in general weren't so damn arrogant in the way they communicate with others, the size of our camp would be double. Nobody wants to associate with rude people, even if they believe the exact same thing.

"Screw that! These people need to be told how wrong they are! The constitution is not to be messed with!" I'm sure I'll get some responses along these lines, which simply reinforce exactly what I've said. Next comes the ego. "Well, they're clearly an idiot, now where did I put those labels??" Not only are you repelling potential allies with this sort of behavior, you're alienating people who already agree with you! Then comes the claim that they're some magnificent defender of 2A rights, most are just too dumb to see it. I understand the frustration, it's hard work having a civil conversation, but you're not helping us. Without basic communication skills, it's best that this type of gun owner just keep quiet and vote.

Listen to this and understand it, because the people fighting to take away our rights have absolutely mastered it. If you alienate people with how you say something, what you say does not matter. I'm tired of how the most vocal among us don't have the slightest clue on how to fight this battle. It doesn't matter if it's right. It doesn't matter if it's honest. It doesn't matter if it's part of the Constitution. Pick up a newspaper, turn on the news, take a look around. This is not 1950. This is the world you're living in now. National events which were much more visible than our cause have given American citizens multiple chances to stand up and defend themselves, but they've failed to do so each time. A good beating with the stick of truth is not going to 'wake them up'.

There is no short game in the fight for our rights. Nothing you could possibly do in a short amount of time could reverse the damage the mass media has done. They've brought a fire hose to your water pistol fight, and it runs 24/7. No, this is going to take time. One on one conversation time, with friends, family, and neighbors, people you already have rapport with. You're never going to change someones mind without first building rapport. Be grateful that we have facts are on our side. Real facts, often barely relevant when it comes to one-sided mass media, are extremely valuable in these one on one conversations. Build on this conversation with a trip to the range. Continue to tend to the relationship well into the future.

The reasons we've been losing the long game for many years is largely due to our own actions. Not many are man enough to accept responsibility for it. A staggering number of people who might buy a gun or vote our way are run off by gun owners before they have a chance to even learn about the issue. We need people who do not fit the 'conventional gun owner' mold. We need all races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, and so on if we're going to start moving the ball in the other direction. This issue hasn't crossed the aisle in large part because some of us won't let it. I urge anyone serious about helping our cause, go pick up a copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Again, short of violence, people and their votes are our only hope. Guess what happens when you piss off everyone you're quick to deem wrong? You lose. Politics is a numbers game. While our opponents may be practice bribery or coercion to gain those numbers, that option isn't available to us if we're to remain honest. It's easy to discount the 'big tent' philosophy, and when they confiscate your guns at least you'll still have your high horse and your 'I was right' button. None of us like the idea of sharing our cause with someone who doesn't bristle at the thought of background checks. For the record, and to preempt the incoming accusations, anyone who thinks I'm not a supporter of the 2A as it was written is absolutely wrong. There is a gigantic difference between compromising your position on the 2A and merely working with people who can help your cause. I don't believe in compromise when it comes to our Second Amendment rights.

You don't have to agree with potential allies! That friend who supports background checks, but willing to vote against the AR15 ban on the ballot this year? Bite your tongue! We need to pick our battles. How many of you have any actual, hands-on political experience? You can't change our political system, and again, short of violence or fraud, you have no other option. We have to work within the limits of our reality. The utopian-istic hope that Thomas Jefferson is going to ride in and restore your rights is doing you a great disservice.

We need to be realistic; let's leave the 'it looks good on paper' stuff to the communists. I hate to break it to you guys, but this is a game of tug-o-war. You're being absolutely unrealistic if you think there is any way we can restore our rights by using this all or nothing model some subscribe to. Again, this does not mean we have to compromise our end goal! If you could reach a deal that would legalize SBR's but wouldn't pass if suppressors were included, you'd be an idiot not to drop suppressors from that bill! Once passed, you begin drafting your bill for suppressors. This reasoning couldn't possibly get any simpler, yet there are those out there who find this unacceptable. We're going to have to restore them exactly as they were taken from us, bit by bit.

There are also those who take offense to members who believe in background checks. "No way! Get outta here! Ban that guy!" Guess what? We do that and we've just eaten another one of our own. Are we better or worse off than we were before? That guy is now less-informed on the urgent matters he might have voted our way on. Your opinion just hurt our cause. We need all of the votes and support we can get for the issues at hand. Like above, here's another example. If you're fighting a bill on background checks and you show up demanding the repeal the NFA. You overshot your task at hand, and in doing so, you lost your message. Ask yourself, when was the last time a protest convinced you that you had it all wrong, and changed your opinion? The image we put forth and our perception to the average voter is no different. If you don't care about the way others perceive us, you're ignorance is doing us more harm than good.

"A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason. "

- Abraham Lincoln

The right way to go about this, if one really wants to help our cause, is to practice communicating tactfully with others. Who wants to have a conversation with a person who comes across as bitter, angry, or arrogant, even for 30 seconds? Shelf your ego and your need to feel important for the good of our cause. You cannot begin to change someone's opinion until you know the motive or rational behind it, and dismissing someone as stupid is just lazy on your part.

To be clear, I am not telling anyone to refrain from discussing firearm-related political topics here, and I'm a little unclear as to where people get that from. I also not telling you that you should waste your time trying to convert people who fall into the 'lost cause' category, that 'everyone deserves a chance', or any of that junk. What I am saying is that you should make absolutely certain that there is no hope for them to help our cause in any way before writing them off. Chances of you finding someone like that on here are extremely slim. People who have made it their life work to rally against us should be met with all we have. Those are our true enemies in this fight. Calling a spade a spade is important, but far too often it's done with very little knowledge about the person, and often in without maturity or tact.

You might not agree with myself or Lincoln, and that's fine, but it doesn't matter. As I said above, Northwest Firearms is my project, my attempt, at trying something different. Something I haven't seen done before as it pertains to our 2A rights. Our rules are setup to shape this project and lead it down the path I want it to go. Your opinions of my chosen path or method or are just that. I may be wrong and watch this all go up in flames, or I may prove the naysayers wrong, who knows? The great thing is that there is nothing stopping you from going out and creating your own project, shaped around your own methods, goals, and beliefs. A while back one member who disagreed with me did just that, starting <broken link removed>. I wish him and his project nothing but the best, and the same to anyone who feels they cannot abide by the rules here. There are literally thousands of other forums out there without our political goals (and the rules I believe we need as we pursue them).

It's really no wonder that organizations with goals similar to mine don't have internet forums. I was naive in thinking that I could build a forum for organizing an army of firearm owners who were so dedicated to the cause that they wouldn't possibly do anything to make us look bad. Surely they must know how important our public image is, right? Heh, talk about a miscalculation. Sometimes I worry that I've done more harm than good, giving these people a public platform associated with the gun rights movement. Fact is, a large portion of the members here don't give a damn about our image or the repercussions of acting they way they do. It's no better (actually, probably worse) than those guys using forestry signs as targets in the woods. Image is everything in this fight. It's time those acting in a way unbecoming of our image either leash themselves or find the door.

I hold myself accountable for not making everything crystal clear from the beginning. I'm not the "my way or the highway" type of person, but often times I should have been. I was trying to avoid taking the position of 'this is my house', and trying to appease everyone, even if I didn't agree. Stupid is the only word to describe my putting of the opinions of 35,000 strangers above the personal goals which started this. It also fits to describe my sometimes losing sight of why I continue to work those additional 20-40 hours per week. I have always done whatever I could to make this place as open, honest, and transparent as possible for our members, but by weighing the opinions of a vocal few so heavily, I have been dishonest and unfair to myself. Now that this is clear, I have no other viable choice but to put an end to that.

I've had an open door policy here since day one. I've welcomed anyone and everyone to start a conversation with me if they don't like something, have an issue with a moderator, have a problem with the site, etc. I personally read and reply to every email sent via the Contact Us form. I do this myself because it's important for me to remain close to our members, I want to hear your opinions, and I absolutely welcome constructive criticism. I can count on one hand the number of members who have messaged me with complaints over the past year.

No matter how much I encourage these private conversations, people would rather air their grievances about the free food I'm serving with my other house-guests. It's much more exciting to assemble a group and make demands for all to witness (Occupy NWFA, anyone?). Again, our image be damned! Infighting is good, right? Frank has a better way to do this! You're an idiot, Joe!

From this point on, if you take issue with the way we run this site or the contents of this post, discuss it with me directly via email or private conversation.

Here's one of my favorites! Anyone who believes our rules, methods, policies, or decisions are infringing on your 1st Amendment right to free speech needs to re-read the constitution. The Bill of Rights is a list of limits on the US Government. Some are of the opinion that it should apply here too. While I respect that opinion, it isn't going to happen. Unlike our government, you can opt out of involvement with this site at any time.

On the opinion that firearms and non-firearm politics go hand in hand, I don't share that opinion. I do agree that there is too much of a variance on what gets deleted and what does not. This is a training issue on my part, as is the lack of enforcement of copy/paste and posting copyrighted articles. I'm going to take steps to correct it. If you see these variances and wait for a thread like this to bring it up, why not help out instead? If you believe something should be moderated, please help us by using the report button (it's under every post).

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the purpose of the Off Topic section. The Off Topic section is for non-firearm related content, such as which vehicle should I buy, how do I cook this steak, or where should I stay while I'm visiting Bend. Off Topic does not mean that whatever is posted there is exempt from the rules. For firearm-related topics that don't fit elsewhere, it's best to put them in General Firearm Discussion.

I do agree that there should be a place to relax and escape the burden of this image our members are asked uphold. Supporting Members will find the rules to their private section loosened a bit, with details being posted soon.

I'm going to end this novel with the same message I've been repeating since our launch in August of 2008. Northwest Firearms was started to bring people together under the common umbrella of gun ownership, in order to achieve the goals we've set forth, period. Divisions brought on by people, politics, religion, or whatever else go against the very reason this place exists. I truly appreciate those of you have prompted this 'reflection', leading me to remember exactly why I started this, why I work so hard here, and that I need to keep my eye on the ball.