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The shooting range at OSU is a sanctuary for pro gun individuals and has trained uncountable amounts of new shooters since the 1940s. I had the pleasure of being a range officer and competing on the pistol team there for 4 years.

Next year it's planned to close down. The clubs are asking that the community sends emails to the OSU president in support of keeping the range open for future generations. This is incredibly important as it is one of the few pro-gun experiences for many in an otherwise anti gun establishment.

Please take the time to help out if you can. They have an email form that they would like you to download, fill out, and then send to them. You can find all the pertinent information here:
OSU Target Range Closing - We need your help
 
If they have a valid reason for closing it (funding was mentioned) it won't do much good for them to get a bunch of form letters if funding is also not identified. I've always found that form letters do not do much good and mean about as much as a petition with 10,000 names. You don't know how many are real and how sincere the person behind the form letter and signature is.

If you want to make an impact, it's much better if each person wrote a personal note and sent it. Yes, they can still be faked, but it's a lot more trouble to create hundreds of fake hand written notes than it is to sign a form that already says what the form creator wants it to say.

Just my opinion.

Mike
 
If they have a valid reason for closing it (funding was mentioned) it won't do much good for them to get a bunch of form letters if funding is also not identified. I've always found that form letters do not do much good and mean about as much as a petition with 10,000 names. You don't know how many are real and how sincere the person behind the form letter and signature is.

If you want to make an impact, it's much better if each person wrote a personal note and sent it. Yes, they can still be faked, but it's a lot more trouble to create hundreds of fake hand written notes than it is to sign a form that already says what the form creator wants it to say.

Just my opinion.

Mike

I agree, but I'm not running the show at the range and this is how the club presidents think it should be done. It's not a form letter, it is just a form you fill out that explains your relationship to the range, and has an area for you to write your letter.
 
Who cares what the president wants!

I don't mean this in a disrespectful way … I do what to grab attention to a couple of things though:

The methods the president is using will be wasted effort, as @Mike97124 has already alluded. Let me explain by a short story.

Years ago I was a student in a political science class when one of our congressional representitives gave a guest lecture. During the discussion period someone asked the effectiveness of postcards in the mind of a member of Congress. This was before the Internet, so politically motivated groups at that time would preprint postcards (yes the ones you stamp and mail) and ask persons to sign, stamp and mail the card. It had a predesigned message so was easy for folks to do. That was their downfall.

The Representitive stated the value to him regarding sensing constituants desires was about 1:25:5000. Meaning a single handwritten, stamped and mailed letter was equivalent to about 25 phone calls to his office to about 5,000 postcards. He stated something to the effect of, if you don't care enough about an issue to actually sit down and invest the time to write, stamp and then mail a letter he really didn't feel you cared much at all. A phone call, which takes more investment in time was many times more valuable than the postcard, but still far less valuable than a single handwritten letter.

I didn't believe him, so I called for and reached the chief staffer for my other Representative and both my state's Senators … guess what … I got pretty much the same response. This type of thing intrigues me so over the years, when the opportunity was at hand, I asked the same question of members of Congress, their staffers and the odd lobbyist or two I'd cross paths with. The message is pretty much the same, but with one change due to the Internet. Since electronic messaging is even easier (you don't even need to bother with a postcard stamp or to have some means of distributing the cards) the ratio is now about 1:25,000-50,000. In other words 25,000 electronic messages grabs the attention of elected officials to the same level of a single letter.

This is true across spectrums. Networks rate a letter to electronic communication at about a 1:12,000 ratio when it comes to deciding wheter to renew or cancel a show. Other domains see the same dynamic.

So a letter writing campaign is an incredibly effective tool. Especially if you couple it with digital resources. By this I mean for every letter written and mailed the sender emails a copy to the reciepiant stating "for your convenience here is an electronic copy of the physical letter I'm writing" and carbon copies that email to the local reporters that cover that beat. This has to be done in a pretty compact space of time, these can't just dribble and drip in … they need to hit with a wave over the period of a week or less. If this is done you bet you will get attention.

So, who cares that the president want to use a web form to get a message to the school, it's a wrong headed and quite frankly lazy method. Had the officers of the range been doing their job this would not be a problem. The chief role of an organization's leader is to connect with outside stakeholders and to maintain the messaging of the organization's value and currency in the current context. Unfortunately, most gun club presidents think their job it to micro manage the range and make sure policies are enacted that go with what they think it the proper way for the club to function. They rarely "look outside" unless something drastic forces them to do so, like a closure or lawsuit. They just want to make sure the range caters to their idea of a "proper facility".

This president should be on the phone calling every stakeholder of the range and personally asking for a response stated above. If the range has been properly run this is easy. You just bring up your records with the contact info for every user, past student, donor, sponsor, outside agency that has ever used the range. You do have these records right? If not why not? That's the job of senior leadership ... to have lists like this and to tend and cultivate the folks these lists represent.

So, good luck on the web based approach, but don't be surprised if there is little to no effect. This is far far too little far far too late. All is not lost however, only a handful of zeal-packed folks can do a lot of good, but it takes time. Look at the I-1639 repeal effort just a few months ago. Against all odds, a great number of folks stepped up and a huge number of petition signatures were gathered in a short time. Yes, it was not enough to meet the threshold to get on the ballot, but it was still thousands and thousands of signatures and there contact info is now available for the next run, which is currently in the works.

So, does the OSU range have a half-dozen of so folks that are willing to skip this weekends BBQ or match and man the phones? If you have a concise message you can make about 20 calls an hour and you can usually get 1 in 5 folks you talk with to comment to make a couple hours work of calls themselves. This is how a grass roots movement starts … yep old school … face-to-face and on the phone.

Okay rant off … I do wish the best for the range, every range is pretty much irreplaceable … especially in urban areas. The shooting sports are dying from age of participants and death by a thousand cuts, one range at a time.
 
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