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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWe spent three days listening to speakers and networking with like minded individuals. It was great hearing from the national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club state that she was a true liberal but also owned an AR-15 and that she would not let the government take her 2nd<\/sup> Amendment rights or her AR-15 away. The Liberal Gun Club by the way has over 10,000 members. Who would have thought that? Many of the speakers spoke of their community outreach. An African American trainer from Detroit told of his outreach to inner city women who he trained for free. Last year he trained over 800 new shooters. This year it will be more than 1,000. The LGBTQ community has several groups who are spreading firearms ownership and more importantly the necessity of supporting the right to keep and bear arms to those non-traditional gun owners. I made a great number of connections with these non-traditional groups and look forward to working with them. We have more allies than you can believe if we just open our eyes and reach out to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We spent a lot of time discussing gun rights related facts, how to take back the dialog and how to get our message across. There were lifetimes of experience in the gun rights struggle on tap. My biggest takeaway from the conference were that we have more allies than the media wants us to believe. <\/strong>This was not a gathering of \u201cOld White Guys.\u201d At least a third of the attendees were women and there were significant numbers of minority participants. All of these \u201cnon-traditional\u201d gun owners were just as passionate about their gun rights a am I. After all, gun rights are civil rights and gun control in America has its roots in racism and prejudice. <\/strong>Be very careful that you don\u2019t alienate these allies by being inconsiderate or prejudiced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The next takeaway was the importance of personal contact in spreading the word about gun ownership and gun rights. The easiest way to bring someone into the gun rights fold is to introduce him or her to the shooting sports. The best way to do that is to bring them to the range. Many of the speakers discussed outreach programs in which they introduced new people to firearms and shooting. This outreach can be as simple as taking a non-gun owning friend or acquaintance to the range or in the case of professional trainers, volunteering to provide free introductory classes on a quarterly or even monthly basis. Take care to make the experience safe and enjoyable and more often than not you will create a new gun owner or at the very least a person who no longer views guns as frightening and gun owners as dangerous. Many people do not exercise their 2nd<\/sup> Amendment rights because they are ignorant of firearms, firearms ownership laws or even how to legally purchase them. Be helpful and you may create a convert to our side, and as we all know, converts tend to be the most zealous in their causes. If you cannot get to the legislature for a rally or a hearing, take a new person shooting. <\/strong>It is just as important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many speakers addressed the importance of language. We all get our hackles up when we hear someone talk about \u201cassault weapons\u201d because we know that it is a made-up term that can be infinitely expanded to mean any firearm the government wants to ban. However, there are many other terms that are in use by the anti-rights crowd that need to be corrected. As an example, note that I used the term \u201canti-rights\u201d to describe what the media used to call the \u201canti-gun\u201d and now calls \u201cgun safety\u201d crowd. We are not \u201cpro-gun,\u201d we are \u201cpro-rights.\u201d Likewise, they are not \u201canti-gun\u201d (and for damned sure they are not for \u201cgun safety\u201d), they are \u201canti-rights.\u201d <\/strong>It may be a little thing, but isn\u2019t painting the opposition as \u201canti-rights\u201d a more powerful statement than simply calling them \u201canti-gun?\u201d Another example is the media referring to mass murders as \u201cshootings\u201d and mass murderers as \u201cshooters.\u201d Shooting is one of the most popular sports in the United States with a long tradition. Referring to mass murders as shootings and their perpetrators as shooters demeans the shooting sports and all its participants. Don\u2019t allow it<\/strong>. When you hear someone using a term that has prejudicial connotations, correct the speaker in a respectful manner. Hopefully, through doing so we can change the dialog to one more favorable (or at least neutral) for our side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There were also panel discussions concerning what is happening in legislative fights in the states. We in Louisiana are lucky because we have been able to stave off the dozens of anti-rights bills that are filed in the legislature each year. We need to keep up the fight; and state associations, like LSA, are at the forefront of the struggle. One thing that I wanted to mention that caught my eye. Connecticut\u2019s state association has over 30,000 members. LSA has barely over 1,000 members currently. We need to do better. If you are reading this but your current membership has lapsed, please renew<\/a>.<\/strong> Also, for everyone reading this, please tell your friends about LSA and encourage them to join. The legislative fight for us is in Baton Rouge and at our local council meetings and having a strong state association is a great advantage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the attorneys involved discussed recent court cases that have been handed down as well as those legal battles that were still being fought. You wouldn\u2019t have to be an attorney to find these discussions interesting. In fact, much of the recent advancement in protecting and even expanding the right to keep and bear arms has come in the judicial arena, not the legislative. Court cases such as Heller<\/em>, McDonald<\/em>, Ezell<\/em> and others have transformed the gun rights landscape. I cannot stress the impact of Heller\u2019s<\/em> holdings that the 2nd<\/sup> Amendment protects a fundamental, individual constitutional right and that those firearms in common use for lawful purposes are protected has had on our cause. These cases would not have come about but for the leadership and funding provided by the Second Amendment Foundation.<\/a> I cannot recommend that organization highly enough. Each of us should support it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 35th<\/sup> annual Gun Rights Policy Conference will be held on September 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> in Orlando, Florida. There is no cost for attendance and discounted hotel rooms are available. I will certainly be there along with other members of the LSA board. I highly encourage any of you who wants to get involved in the gun rights movement to attend. <\/strong>You will be glad you did. Whether you attend or not, please join LSA in Baton Rouge next spring when the legislature again has hearings on gun rights bills. And last but not least, whether you do any of the above or not, please take a new person shooting and ensure that he or she has a safe and enjoyable time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Daniel E. Zelenka, II Our good friend and LSA Life Member Tom Gresham has been telling me for several years that I needed to attend the Gun Rights Policy Conference. He was right. Words cannot express how right he was. Imagine for a minute [Read More]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":927,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/louisianashooting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Black-Guns-Matter-913x1024.jpg\")
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