By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Capping off a record attendance at the 142nd annual National Rifle Association members’ meeting and exhibits in Houston, TX, the NRA Board of Directors named Alabama attorney James Porter as its new president, and elevated director Frank Brownell to the office of second vice president.
The NRA told TGM that attendance hit 86,228 over the three-day event in May, which saw a handful of anti-gun protesters trying to get camera time on the local evening news.
Porter’s father was NRA president a generation ago, and he comes to the post after spending years on the board of directors.
Almost immediately when it became apparent Porter would succeed outgoing President David Keene, media reports began attacking the affable Alabaman for referring to the Civil War as “the war of northern aggression,” and for his criticism of the Obama administration.
During a speech at the members’ meeting, Porter referred to President Barack Obama as being “AWOL” on virtually every important issue except for gun control. He criticized the president for the economy and other problems. Porter has labeled Obama “the community organizer-in-chief,” and criticized the president’s remark last year that “voting is the best revenge.”
“I can’t remember a president ever publicly using that word against fellow Americans,” he said during Saturday’s members’ meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
The convention was a success in many ways, not the least of which was in raising money. Sources say the NRA/ILA auction raised $850,000 and the NRA Foundation banquet raised $517,000, both figures setting new records. NRA Store sales were up more than 60 percent above last year, which reflects the heavier exhibit hall traffic and a membership that has now reached five million.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre delivered a fiery speech to the members’ meeting in which he recalled how the press had called him “paranoid” a year before when he predicted that if Obama was re-elected, he would unleash a massive gun control effort.
“Obama vehemently denied his anti-gun agenda,” LaPierre recalled, “mocked us, they even passed out fliers saying he would protect our rights — and a lot of Americans were deceived into believing him.”
But in the wake of the December 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, the frontal attack on gun rights has emerged as the NRA’s most difficult challenge.
LaPierre noted that, “It didn’t take long for the real Barack Obama to show himself.”
It was a rousing address to an audience that came to celebrate an NRA victory in Congress two weeks ago, and hear about battles looming on the horizon.
“Even before he was sworn into office,” LaPierre said of the president, “before his inauguration, the president launched his all-out siege against our rights. From gun bans to magazine bans to convoluted schemes tantamount to national registration of every gun owner in the country.”
Within hours of confirming his re-election, Obama announced that he was rekindling the effort to pass a small arms treaty at the United Nations.
But it was on the carnage in Chicago that LaPierre zeroed his verbal crosshairs, asserting that the “only 90 the president won’t talk about is Chicago.”
“The president won’t talk about Chicago but he should, because in the entire United States, Chicago ranks 90th out of 90 jurisdictions in federal firearms prosecutions,” he stated. “Dead last. But when I brought that up on Meet the Press, the media ignored it.
“The president doesn’t talk about that 90,” he continued. “And the national news media, their cameras perched like vultures in the back of this hall, they haven’t mustered the courage to walk into the White House briefing room and ask about Chicago’s 90th ranking that is getting people killed day and night — a shooting every 6.3 hours.”
The Bloomberg factor
Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, followed LaPierre to the podium, insisting that the NRA wants to prevent such tragedies while anti-gunners only wish to exploit them. Cox challenged the administration and Capitol Hill anti-gunners to “prove it” when they claim to only want to stop criminals by “(leaving) our freedom alone.”
Cox encouraged the audience to tell anti-gunners, including billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that “your freedom is not negotiable.” He criticized the SAFE Act passed in New York and other magazine limit proposals by observing that “one bullet in the gun of a criminal is one too many (while) ten rounds in the gun of a mother…might not be enough.”
Bloomberg poses a major threat to gun rights because he has pledged to use his massive fortune to further his gun control agenda.
Coincidental with the NRA meeting, President Obama traveled to Mexico and during his visit there, he blamed gun violence in Mexico on American gun laws. As word of that spread through the convention hall, NRA members became more convinced that the president has pulled out all the stops to penalize them for owning firearms.
The president told an audience at Mexico’s Anthropology Museum, that while he took an oath to uphold the Constitution, “I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States,” President Obama said during a speech at Mexico’s Anthropology Museum. “I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.”
Celebrity parade
NRA members were treated to a parade of celebrities, including Glenn Beck, Judge Janine Pirro,
host of Fox News’ Justice with Judge Janine, rocker and NRA Director Ted Nugent and many others.
But the real parade consisted of NRA members and guests who jammed the convention center. NRA came to Houston fresh from a victory over gun control proposals on Capitol Hill. Texas has more than 500,000 citizens licensed to carry concealed.
The state is actively recruiting firearms-related companies to move their operations out of less-friendly environs, and less than a week after NRA left, President Obama traveled to the Lone Star State to talk about jobs and the economy because apparently Texas – with a Republican governor and GOP-controlled legislature – is doing it right.
As NRA president, Porter will have his work cut out despite the Capitol Hill rout the association handed Obama and the Democrats in Congress. More battles over gun rights are on the horizon, and the 2014 mid-term elections could provide NRA the opportunity to repeat its victory from 1994 when gun owners descended on the polls and took Congress away from then-President Bill Clinton following the 1993 Brady Law passage of 1993 and the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in September 1994.
