WILD BILL
Is the NRA Starting to Get It?
By Bill Schneider, 2-15-07
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Last year, I posted a column critical of the National Rifle Association’s anti-habitat, anti-hunter policy, which is way different than anti-hunting policy. Other outdoor writers across the nation did the same. Now, I see a small sign that the most powerful lobby in America is starting to get it.
Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden (with contributions from Juliet Eilperin) recently interviewed several NRA executives and in reading their excellent article, it sure looks like group’s starting to hear the chorus from their four million members and hunters who refuse to join until priorities change.
If this is truly a slight turn away from the NRA’s ultra-conservative, anti-hunter politics, I welcome it, even though it’s not enough. But it could be a ruse, which could result in even more loss of wildlife habitat and public hunting.
In the article, the NRA executives talk about listening to hunters and their concern over national energy policies, saying they are not more concerned about what they call “access rights for hunters.” I’m not sure what they mean by that catch phrase, but it scares me.
Primary among concerns voiced by NRA members is the Bush Administration’s rapid-fire approach to oil and gas leasing on public lands. Ronald L. Schmits, NRA vice-president, told the Washington Post reporters, “We find that our members are having a harder time finding access to public lands. Gun rights are still number one, but there will be more time and effort spent on this issue as we move forward.”
Gun rights are not number one with hunters, though. In the article, the writers mention a Field & Stream survey where only 25 percent of hunters consider anti-gun efforts the major threat to hunting. Many more, 41 percent, consider loss of habitat the greatest threat.
Basically, the jest of the Washington Post article is that the NRA thinks oil and gas leasing hurts hunting access, and this is something I can’t understand. More fossil fuel drilling means more roads and more access for hunters in pickup trucks, right?
The last thing hunters who hunt public lands need is more roads. If that’s what the NRA is saying, they haven’t changed political colors in the slightest, but have taken on a new strategy totally in line with the Bush Administration anti-environmental policy. And the result, continued loss of quality public habitat, would be the same if not worse.
We do have situations where wealthy landowners have tried to close key access roads to our public land, but these situations are rare, and probably never related to fossil fuel development. And this is clearly not what concerns the NRA.
What the NRA should be saying is “stop fossil fuel leasing on key public hunting lands and limit motorized access to them.” Or better yet, give all of us potential members the message we really want to hear, something like, “The NRA supports the Clinton era roadless rule to protect our last wild hunting lands.”
But we are not hearing such talk. Instead, since 2000, the NRA has joined the Bush Administration in opposing the roadless rule, which keeps millions of acres of our best public hunting lands open to hunters. Not only would the roadless rule preserve our remaining wild habitat, but also access, and the right kind of access, by foot or horseback, which does no harm to fragile habitat and game herds.
State wildlife agencies, which have been traditionally staffed with conservative-leaners, were initially cautious of the roadless rule. But the Bush Administration’s assault on public lands changed that view. Now. wildlife agencies in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. Even Idaho, perhaps most conservative of them all, has given tacit support for roadless lands. Not the Nation of Wyoming, of course, which always stands alone, and would never support anything also supported by national environmental groups.
Wyoming notwithstanding, there is ample reasons for the NRA to say something hunters will really want to hear like, “Retaining the roadless rule would preserve access to our last and best public hunting lands.”
Nonetheless, the emerging NRA focus on “access” might be a step in the right direction, at least compared to the unaltered support for anything anti-environmental, but it still troubles me. The focus should be on the conservation of wildlife habitat. The NRA’s new competitor, a rival gun group called the American Hunters and Shooters Association, has no qualms about saying it out loud. At a press conference I attended last year, the new group said it, without hesitation or weasel words: “We support Wilderness to protect our hunting lands.” But it looks like we’re a long way from hearing such talk from the NRA.
The NRA didn’t explain to Harden and Eilperin what they meant by “access,” but I guessing it means motorized access, which means roads, which means the NRA still supports the biggest threat to wildlife and hunting, at least on public land in the West, poorly managed motorized use or as it’s often called, “wreckreation.”
So what to do about this? If you’re an NRA member or past member or perspective member, how about a friendly email to the Big Guns back in the Beltway to let them know they appreciate the baby step in the right direction, but please go all the way for hunters. Here’s the email address, membership@nrahq.org.
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Comments
-Californiamontanacan
Bill, I'm pulling you tail over the use of the term "policy." I think the real bottom feeders are the CARP.
Should I have stated it as Conservative instead of Democrat? The Montana Democrats, as much as I hold them in esteem, are not the typical liberal Democrat, nor are the the typical Republican. I believe they hold a very special place in the West for a reason. However, the Conservatives, especially the neoConservative branch, support both the NRA and expanding federal grazing rights. The two can't co-exist with the hunters. It's the same with logging. You can either be pro-hunting or pro-logging, but the two will usually come to blows when you try to mix them.
Don't forget about the heartland and the South, both of which have rich hunting traditions that will continue regardless of what happens 'out west'. So no, the NRA is not going 'vote themselves out of a job'. I just read recently that the majority of hunters are whitetail deer hunters, and the majority of hunting dollars spent are spent hunting whitetails. There are 1.7 MILLION deer in WI. Last year hunters kiled .5 million. They killed over 600k in 2000. And then there's the birders.... huge in the Mid West and South.
The fact is, as I said in another posting, an incredible amount of damage has been done to America, by the current administration, over the past six years. The thought of a continuation of this kind of ideologically twisted and functionally incompetent GOP rule is just horrrific. Another four years of this kind of mess will put us in a world of hurt.
With that said, I don't care what new tricks the NRA might have up its sleeve; we must recognize the leopard for what it is and always will be and stay focused on doing what is needed for America, which is to ensure a change in our political, social, and institutional leadership. By the way, I am a rancher and a hunter and value my guns; but, none of them are machine guns or cheap pistols built to fit teenaged hands.
>>>>
NRA Backs Both Sides of Aisle
Gun Lobby Seeks Republican Congress
But Endorses Some Democrats
By GARY FIELDS
October 12, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The National Rifle Association has a simple agenda in Washington: protecting gun ownership. But it faces a complex challenge this campaign season: supporting Republican control of Congress while staying loyal to Democratic candidates who supported the gun lobby.
"We will endorse regardless of party," says Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action. "However, gun owners are very concerned and do not want as speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been consistently vocal against their rights. They understand the significance of these elections."
That means the NRA, which sits on a campaign war chest of $20 million, is expecting to endorse as many as 60 Democrats in House and Senate elections, about the same number it endorsed in every national election since 2002 and three times the 20 or so Democrats it supported in races during the early 1990s. At the same time, the NRA wants to make sure Republicans keep control of Congress.
<<<<<
Back in 2006, the NRA saw its greatest opportunity with Republicans for advancing the NRA's interests. However, it will take opportunity where it finds it. Now that the D's control congress, look for the NRA to reflect that reality to serve its own interests. The have a big For Sale sign out to anyone who will promote gun rights causes.
BTW, without being able to own a GUN, most hunters will be unable to HUNT anyway. The NRA is RIGHT to protect gun rights first and foremost.
My only problem with the NRA is that they are not fighting hard enough to recind the anti-gun laws already on the books.
But if it were Craig, I would tell you that it has been the GOP historically ie in the past. Yes yes yes, with some exceptions of course. My gut tells me it will be that way in the future as well, also with some exceptions. Who cares.
But yes, the NRA is a whore who will jump into any bed for the right dollar amount.
And to Richard: Try walking. It's patriotic.
Ever hear of a pack frame??
They work real well.
I've seen 70 year old hunters use them also.
You need to hunt within your limitations you know.
I've only killed one elk in my life that I got out whole--meaning that I cut it's head and legs off and dragged it down on five inches of good dragging snow.
There have to be places left on this planet where people can hunt and pack in the old, tough, pay-attention-or get hurt-,
yes, it's a tough deal and isn't that wonderful-- way. And those places are being lost every hour of every day, across the world.
And the strange and sad fact is that alot of pretty good people don't care, and will argue that because somebody has to walk there, it's "elitist" whatever that means --while deanding the right to drive themselves in and destroy the experience of solitude and wildness and good hunting for the people who still put one foot in front of the other and climb up to where the game lives.
In my view, it all part of the descent into absolute laziness and rejection of anything that is not instantaneous and easy in our culture--
ATVs are a part of that. I'm not against them-and they should be enjoyed like hell, ripping it up, flying through the air, or just crawling along with a cargo of sightseers--on private lands, or even on the estimated 98% of the roaded land across America (I'm still in alabama, by the way, and the low mountains here are an ATV playground, liberally covered with everything from miles of glittering Bush Light cans to water bottles and Cheetoes bags to baby diapers (when's the last time a man on foot tossed any of those on your property?).
But it seems to me irresponsible-even a bit crazy--to argue that there should be more access to public land for ATVs.
For my two censt worth on the actual topic here--I'm a 100% supporter of gun rights, and not just the right to own hunting rifles or shotguns, I mean in the right for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves in the way they see fit--and I hope very strongly that the NRA will get back to its mission to protect those rights --its' a single issue--and leave the battle for conservation or anti-conservation in this case, to those organizations and individuals who have chosen that as their main issue (ie Blue Ribbon versus the Sierra Club). The mission of the NRA is too valuable for it to wade into those waters and have it diluted, or for the NRA to open itself up to the accusation that it has become a mere shill for a political party whose fortunes can easily crash.
Hal
Hal
I have never understood the "I can't hunt in Wilderness b/c I can't drive there" argument. If an elderly person can't hike into a place anymore, perhaps they should ask their grandchildren to help them, or simply be content in the fact that their grandchildren can hunt in a place free from ATVs just as they were able to many moons prior. There are currently plenty of roads for "hunters" to cruise if they choose not to actually walk. Last season, I parked my car, hiked in two miles, shot a lovely 6x6, quartered it, and with the help of my wife, packed it out by dark. It's unfortunate that someone who is 75 can't do this anymore, but they've had their chance; it's time to allow other generations the same opportunity.
Animals need wilderness, lest they be molested by every yahoo with an ATV. The NRA's use of "access" language is a very scary one. Wilderness allows access for everyone who can afford a pair of boots, which, last time I looked, is cheaper than an ATV--something I can't afford, nor would ever buy.
Craig, your lame argument regarding meat spoilage during hunting season is a stretch. Perhaps you should wait for it to get cold in the latter weeks of the season?
And your setting yourself up to be knocked off your soapbox commenting that women can't hunt in Wilderness b/c they are the potentially weaker sex. My wife would have a few words for you.
I agree with 99% of your comment. I take issue with the framing of the argument that polarizes people rather than looking for common sense compromises that end the battles. To me it's not a question of "either or" but "how", the realm of compromise in the land of possibility.
I doubt anybody is still following this exchange, but, if so-- I look for compromise in any conflict. But the fact is that there are just no more roadless areas being created, and I see no reason to compromise away the last of the last. To do so would not in fact be "compromise" it would be a surrender to extremism. There is a point where the demand to tame the last unroaded places of the earth becomes tyranny. I don't compromise with tyrants.
I know folks who see zero value in roadless lands. I also know folks who don't think women should be able to vote, and folks who think that fossils were put into the earth by the devil to mislead us all about the origins of the planet. I see no reason to "compromise" with those folks reagarding policy, although I fully support their right to hold those views.
Hal