OK, Why Didn’t I Know This Before?
One of the seminars yesterday was about “State associations.” One of the attendees, David Pehrson, started the Pennsylvania Firearms Owner’s Association, essentially a huge gunboard, and possibly the opening shot in how activism will be done in the future. The other attendees were from the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association. The CRPA has associated with Calguns.net to take advantage of their web-savvy. California, of course, has a lot of bad legislation that they have to deal with, and thus the CRPA has a full-time lobbyist on staff.
In Arizona, things are a bit different. This is a very gun-friendly state, overall, and even our Democrats are generally gunnies. This is changing, however, as more and more people flee California. But why didn’t I know that the ASRPA existed?
Well, for one thing it only has about 1,700 members, and they tend toward the geriatric end of the scale. We don’t have a lot of anti-gun bills to fight here in Arizona, but I can see it coming. The concentration of the ASRPA is and has been toward competition shooting, but it’s becoming obvious that what we’re going to have to do, and soon, is work on new shooter recruitment and retention. So today I joined the ASRPA, and there’s a new banner on the left sidebar over there with a link to their web page. If you’re an Arizona resident and interested at all in hunting, shooting, and the right to arms, I strongly recommend that you join the ASRPA.
Arizona is a very gun-friendly state. As Sebastian (a resident of a suburb of Philadelphia) said this morning, “I’ve never seen so many people open-carry, and nobody cares!” We want to keep it that way.