Outside the 142nd edition of the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Houston, things were calm and peaceful. Inside, however, it was a booming expo and a series of meetings that were anything but conciliatory. In fact, the mood of attendees might best be described as encouraged by the recent defeats of the latest round of anti-gun legislation in Washington.
Executive Director Wayne LaPierre summed up the sentiments of the tens of thousands of attendees when he said "we will never give up our guns." NRA -Institute for Legislative Action director (and some say heir apparent to LaPierre) Chris Cox told members at the annual meeting "the only reason we still have our gun rights is because of the efforts of the NRA. And, the NRA is you."
Pretty heady stuff. But nothing encouraging much grassroots action was apparent in Houston. Whether it's because the 5 million-plus membership organization considers itself primarily a national organization or because the NRA is simply pulled in too-many directions in Washington, the major tone of the meetings was national, not local.
But the tone was tough when it came to dealing with the administration. Former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin spoke to the president's leadership style which, she said, was based on "the politics of emotion." That, she said, couldn't keep the country safer, describing it as "It's the opposite of leadership."
"It is," she told an enthusiastic crowd, "the manipulation of the people by the politicians for their own political ends. It's not just self-serving. It's destructive and it must stop."
In other areas, an exhibition that didn't have a ton of new products, but wall-to-wall members checking out the products they'd not seen, gave media members in attendance the opportunity to visit, catch up with each other, and talk shop.
My own project "MyTime2Stand" was one of those topics of conversation. I'd only been in the press room a few minutes when David Workman of The Examiner caught a glimpse of new t-shirts I was carrying and asked what I had.
After explaining, Workman snapped a some quick photos and we kept talking about political issues. He was working while we talked, but I didn't think much more about it (a prerequisite for working in a news room or media center is the ability to do two things at once. When I began getting messages on my phone, I realized what the always working Workman had been doing: writing about MyTime2Stand and posting it on The Examiner.com I'm not going to steal a photo from Workman, but I will share the link so what he wrote so you can see a part of shirts the guys at Tactical T-Shirts have created for the road trip. (http://www.examiner.com/article/as-nra-meet-opens-holder-tries-to-outdraw-kansas?cid=PROD-redesign-right-next)
Judging from the enthusiastic responses, it seems there's interest in anything that would motivate me to hit the road. As the exhibits rolled into Sunday, I found several media outlets were interested. In fact, Jim and John Scoutten of ShootingUSA offered me the opportunity to talk about the project in one of their podcasts from the floor of the exhibits. I'm not certain exactly what I said, but promised the Scouttens I'd offer you the chance to hear it for yourself at http://shootingusa.podbean.com/2013/05/05/2013-nra-show-8-time-2-stand/
During the course of the three day sessions, Jim Scoutten took it upon himself to ferret out the "hundreds of protesters" anti-gun groups had promised would be lined up outside the convention center to to let the NRA know its positions were opposed by 90 percent of America.
Scoutten searched, eventually turning up "about 35" protesters in a park across the street - several hundred yards away from the entrances. When he started talking with them, Scoutten had the experience encountered by most pro-gun groups when they start asking specific questions.
"I asked one protester what she was protesting," Scoutten said, "and she said she wanted to ban assault weapons."
"Asked her if she was talking about the kinds of guns that would shoot continuously with one pull of the trigger," Scoutten said, "She told me we absolutely needed laws that would outlaw those kinds of horrible weapons."
So what happened?
"When I explained to her that those guns -machine guns- had been banned since 1934," Scoutten grinned, "her argument pretty much dried up."
There was absolutely nothing exciting going on outside other than the comings-and-goings of the attendees in what turned out to be a beautiful spring weekend. It made for a pleasant city scene, but didn't do much for the television media collected along the street outside. By Sunday afternoon, a line of "live" new trucks had dwindled to a couple of news vans. On Saturday night, show attendees howled appreciatively as a lone reporter stood outside the convention center, seriously telling his viewers, "earlier today, tens of thousands of NRA members attended their annual meeting, listening to conservative speakers and looking at the latest in guns and accessories."
Now I remember why we used to call those sort of live reports "thumb suckers". Nothing was happening, because the show had been closed for nearly four hours, but local news producers are more interested with establishing their presence than realizing how foolish reporters look standing on empty streets "crowded by thousands of attendees only hours ago."
 Waiting for - something. Local news reporters found very little in the way of controversy to report at the meetings. But that didn't keep them from hanging around- just in case. Photo courtesy of Michael Faw. |
So what did the mainstream media latch onto? A couple of comments from incoming NRA President Jim Porter. The second generation NRA president (his father was president a generation ago) from Alabama labeled President Obama "the organizer-in-chief" and was critical of this remark that "voting is the best revenge."
As Porter observed, "I can't ever remember a president ever using that word against fellow Americans."
Porter's remark was quoted by several media outlets, including the Daily Caller and The Huffington Post. And, as David Workman observed in an Examiner column yesterday, "Porter's media critics may dislike it (his observations), but to NRA members, it is pure gospel."
As the 142nd Annual Meeting & Exhibits wrapped up, our guys were still out on the floor, chasing leads and looking for the products that we'll be telling you about in the next few days.
As always, we'll keep you posted. And tomorrow that posting will include some of the product highlights chosen by Tactical Wire editor Rich Grassi.
--Jim Shepherd
