Was the Second Amendment March a success?

April 20, Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner
Paul Valone



As an admittedly jaded 18-year gun rights activist, I regarded yesterday’s Second Amendment March (SAM) with a certain dread. While the efforts of Skip Coryell and the other organizers of the SAM could best be described as valiant, I regarded them as, at best, misguided: Even under the best of conditions, rallies represent huge outlays of resources yielding uncertain returns.

After organizing Washington gun rights rallies in 1994 and 1995, for example, Skip Corey of the long-defunct “Committee of 1776” delivered a speech to the next Gun Rights Policy Conference entitled, “If You Rally, Will They Come?” He stood to address his topic with essentially a single word: “No.”

Throw in the fact that Tea Party rallies (including one in Washington on Thursday) have people “rallied out,” the fact that Obama & Co. have thus far apparently been scared out of (at least overtly) pushing gun control, and the fact that the SAM was held on a working day (yes, I know it was Patriot’s Day), I feared the worst.

Were my fears confirmed? Not entirely. While the turnout of, by some estimates, 2,000 – 3,000 people was nothing to write home about, I was reminded how inspirational a rally can be for those who attend. And from a logistical perspective, it was obvious that the SAM organizers had their collective act together. From sound and stage to event security and press and VIP management, the event went smoothly. (Smoothly enough that Handgun Control’s Paul Helmke and the Violence Policy Center’s Josh Sugarmann, both of whom reportedly skulked by, won’t have anything to exploit).

INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGES

The SAM featured an array of inspiring speakers, including stalwarts such as GOA’s Larry Pratt, Sheriff Richard Mack, and victim-turned-concealed-carry-advocate-turned-legislator Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Also presenting were Tim Schmidt of the US Concealed Carry Association and Mark Walter of Armed American Radio. Especially rousing was the Reverend Kenn Blanchard, author of Black Man With a Gun, who observed: “Free men own guns; slaves do not.”

Perhaps the most educational was our own National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea, whose presentation likened the present day erosion of our freedoms to the “Intolerable Acts,” promulgated by the British, which precipitated the American Revolution. Ticking off the long list of British missteps inciting subjects to rebellion, David settled on the one which led inexorably to revolution: “…the damned fools sent out troops to confiscate arms.” (For David's account of the rally, click here.)

And the most heart-wrenching was that of Tennessee’s Nikki Goeser, whose loving husband was gunned down last year by a stalker, before her eyes, in the nightclub where they worked. Nikki is a concealed handgun permit-holder who was prevented from protecting herself and her husband by a prohibition on concealed carry in Tennessee restaurants. (Writer’s note: In North Carolina, we have twice been thwarted in passing a restaurant carry bill. Nikki has generously agreed to testify once we get one introduced again.)

ADVANTAGES & DRAWBACKS OF RALLIES

Nearly two decades of running political organizations in defense of the right to keep and bear arms have taught me that rallies are an inefficient means to defend freedom. They are useful, early in a movement, to galvanize support and to create the underpinnings for new organizations, as the Tea Party has done. But in terms of direct action – legislation passed or killed, gun control-loving politicians unseated or freedoms regained – at the end of the rally, nothing has changed. Worse, people go home content and complacent for having “done something.”

On the upside, drawing like-minded people together can create long-lasting change. By collecting names of attendees to our 1994 rally at the state capitol, we created Grass Roots North Carolina, which has grown to dominate gun issues in the state.

And demonstrations are certainly useful when narrowly focused on particular targets. Our group has manipulated media in a flashlight “Truth Vigil for Sarah Brady” when she came to raise money for gun control. We have upstaged the defunct “’Million’ Mom March” when it put a couple of hundred people on the capitol steps. (Sadly for them, they staged it on the same weekend as a huge gun show from which we bused hundreds of counter-demonstrators). And our Solidarity March enabled the NRA to hold its annual meeting in Charlotte unmolested by anti-gun protestors just a year after Columbine, when such protestors shut it down in Colorado.

GUN RIGHTS DEFENDER CHECKLIST

But in a year when elections will chart not only the course of gun rights, but determine whether our nation slides further into socialist totalitarianism, Second Amendment supporters, whether or not they attended the march, should ask themselves whether they have accomplished or will accomplish the following actions:

* Have you compiled gun-related voting records for state representatives and members of your state’s congressional delegation?

* Have you created a means of letting other people know which politicians supported the right to bear arms and which undermined it?

* Have you joined or created an organization or, better yet, a political action committee to go into elections and kick the sleazebags out of office?

Just joining the NRA isn’t going to cut it, folks. Even when they get it right (which they often don’t), you can wield more power over politicians by organizing locally. To that end – and because the 2010 elections are more important than perhaps any in our history – I will be running a series entitled “Guerilla tactics for gun rights warriors” in coming weeks, leading up to the legislative seminar I will be teaching on May 14, the weekend of the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Charlotte, NC.

Please don’t come to my seminar …

If you want to find out how to write a letter to your Congressman, don’t come. If you are looking for a cute, rosy presentation of “I’m Just a Bill,” don’t come.

But if you want to know how to kick the crap out of politicians; how the dynamics of power can be applied to create substantive change; how to manipulate the votes, money and power on which politicians feed; how to stop kowtowing to politicians and make them kowtow to you, then this is the seminar for you. Details are forthcoming in my “Guerilla tactics for gun rights warriors” series.

Like many of you, I came away from the Second Amendment March with a renewed sense of purpose. Good. Now get back to work: We have politicians to thrash and freedoms to regain.