Gun Owners of America membership renewal time...

GlockJock

NES Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
8,830
Likes
5,007
Location
The CommonPuke of LiberChusetts
Feedback: 12 / 0 / 0
"Gun Owners of America" annual membership renewal form arrived today.. Even though only a few bucks I often wonder (as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Siberia) just how "worth the few bucks" it is.. or if I should just send it to Comm2A (in addition to what I already send them each month).
The NRA basically (almost admittedly) abandoned MA as a "lost cause", yet despite the politics and their so-called "inside agendas", I have no problem writing checks out to them, basically cuz the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and if the NRA pisses off the Obamas/Hillarys/Bloomturds/O'Malleys/Moms Against/etc of the world than here's a few more bucks to help your cause...
But GOA? As the "Only No Compromise 2A Organization" etc, I wonder how many others here in this non-free state think they worth taking a few $ from Comm2A (or even GOAL)...
 
Their junk mail works great for helping me start my fire pit. I figure the more groups the better on the national stage.
 
I am a member of GOA and the NRA. I'm a lot more confident in my money going toward actually pushing good legislation with the GOA. The NRA has a long history of rolling over like a whipped pup and supporting bad legislation that is not in our best interests.
 
My choice, Life Member NRA, Yearly member Goal (life someday if I can get funds), Comm2a Coin Holder (Member).

FYI

From the goal membership page:
http://www.shop.goal.org/product.sc?productId=56

Please note, you can opt out of receiving any mail from GOAL, including our monthly newspaper (available online). If you wish to have a paperless membership, please note "paperless" in the comment section upon checkout.
 
Last edited:
Is there really any purpose to GOAL? Does anyone on bacon hill listen to gun lobbying?

Many gun owners forget about the handgun confiscation initiative that appeared on the 1976 statewide ballot in Massachusetts. Thanks to the efforts of the NRA, the handgun ban got voted down. If it wasn't for the NRA MA would be worse than even NY, MD, CT, CA and NJ. However, the anti-2A MA democrat majority legislature and politicians have subsequently openly resented and objected to "outside" NRA involvement.

The MA gun owner activists from that fight started GOAL so that all our pro-2A political activism is grassroots. GOAL is the official state association of the NRA.

Lets look at August 13, 2014 when Governor Patrick signed H.4376 into law. Now known as Chapter 284, the legislation represents the most sweeping changes to Massachusetts laws related to firearms in over a decade.

Going back to the genesis of this fight, Speaker DeLeo's H.4121, the bill we faced on May 27, 2014 was drastically different from what was passed. It literally went from being a gun control bill to being a crime control bill. Some of the many anti Second Amendment provisions that GOAL stopped included a renewed ban on modern sporting rifles and one gun a month legislation. There are no new magazine or gun bans passed in this legislation.

We were also able to pass many good provisions including a fix of the 90-day grace period in regard to license renewals, elimination of LTC B's, and legalization of pepper spray.

We were successful in stopping many negative and onerous articles and amendments.

The original bill would have criminalized private sales of firearms between licensed individuals.
This section was struck and private sales remain legal.
The original bill would have applied a "suitability" clause to the issuance of FID cards. This was modified so that the licensing authority now has to prove in court that the applicant is unsuitable. For the first time ever in MA, the burden of proof is upon the licensing authority.
The original bill would have made an FID applicant list a "reason" for applying. This was struck from the legislation.
The original bill would have given the licensing authority the ability to place restrictions on FID cards. This was struck from the legislation.
The original bill had very onerous language regarding confiscated/seized firearms. We were successful in getting that removed.
The original bill would have drastically increased penalties for improper firearms storage, we were successful in removing this language.
The original bill would have granted even more power to the MA Chiefs of Police and EOPSS to determine what unsuitability is. We were successful in removing this language
The original bill would have penalized licensees for not renewing early. We were able to remove this language.
The original bill would have given the MA Attorney General unprecedented power over which firearms can be purchased in MA. (EOPSS list). We were successful in removing this language.
The original bill would have given the Colonel of the State Police power to define the curriculum for firearms safety training programs and to determine suitability of trained instructors. We were successful in removing this language.
The original bill would have forced hunter's safety courses and firearms safety courses to include a module on suicide prevention. This was amended so that the state will now provide hand out materials for the teachers.
We were able to defeat a Senate amendment which would have added one gun a month legislation.
We were able to defeat a Senate amendment which would have added a renewed AWB ban

There's a lot more at:
http://goal.org/chapter-284.html

If you don't know what GOAL has been doing for MA gun owners, you haven't been paying attention. Unfortunately, that is typical of most MA citizens as well as gun owners.
 
GOAL does training and legislative alerts. If they didn't exist stuff would be rammed through the dead of night, without public hearings, or anyone knowing until it was too late.

They aren't great, but better than no representation.

GOA nationally doesn't have a lot of pull. But they do help pro 2A legislators understand issues and assist in writing legislation.
 
We were able to defeat a Senate amendment which would have added a renewed AWB ban

There's a lot more at:
http://goal.org/chapter-284.html

If you don't know what GOAL has been doing for MA gun owners, you haven't been paying attention. Unfortunately, that is typical of most MA citizens as well as gun owners.

I'm curious. So far as I know, while the Mass AWB law is a copy of the federal law, i didn't think/don't think it has a sunset provision like the federal law had.

So, what exactly would a renewed AWB law actually have entailed? Would flash hiders, bayonet lugs and folding/telescoping stocks be put on double secret probation, ala Animal House?

Sorry for the slight derailing of the thread.
 
I'm curious. So far as I know, while the Mass AWB law is a copy of the federal law, i didn't think/don't think it has a sunset provision like the federal law had.

So, what exactly would a renewed AWB law actually have entailed? Would flash hiders, bayonet lugs and folding/telescoping stocks be put on double secret probation, ala Animal House?

Sorry for the slight derailing of the thread.

An outright ban on semi automatic firearms
 
url]http://goal.org/chapter-284.html[/url]

If you don't know what GOAL has been doing for MA gun owners, you haven't been paying attention. Unfortunately, that is typical of most MA citizens as well as gun owners.

Thanks, I fall into that category. Had no idea about the history of the organization.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Last year's law ended a lot better for us than the proposed bill after all the "listening" tour was over. GOAL was responsible for getting a lot of bad stuff removed from said bill with an end result that was a lot less bad and added a few good things. I still think they could do better fixing a lot of small (less controversial) things than trying to get massive changes thru (and we don't have the legislative support for major changes), but I have to give them a lot of credit for last year's bill.
 
Many gun owners forget about the handgun confiscation initiative that appeared on the 1976 statewide ballot in Massachusetts.

Did the 1976 referendum call for confiscation or was it a freeze on the legal handguns in MA?
 
If you don't know what GOAL has been doing for MA gun owners, you haven't been paying attention. Unfortunately, that is typical of most MA citizens as well as gun owners.
I thought I knew what GOAL actually "did" (or didn't do) for gun owners, but your post in this thread (post #10) made me realize I didn't know jack sh*t about GOALs actual efforts and successes....a huge thank you for that and +1 (only cuz I can't give a +100). Great post, great info.
 
Unfortunately, there's no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to protecting Second Amendment rights. The NRA has, by no means, forsaken Massachusetts. Quite to the contrary, they've partnered with Comm2A on several projects. And they've been very good partners. The fact that you don't hear much about it is an indication that they're getting much better about understanding the environments in which they work.

GOA is an interesting organization. Their primary role seems to be nipping at the NRA's heels. When it seems like the NRA is softening, GOA gets their common members fired up and the NRA takes a harder line. The downside is that that the media likes Larry Pratt as a talking head for gun rights because he can come off as bat-shit crazy.

GOAL (or GOAL 2.0) fills a really important role. As Len mentioned above, DeLeo's gun control bill of 2014 would have been really ****ed up had GOAL not rallied the troops. While I don't expect to see legislative solutions anytime soon to the sad state of the Second Amendment in Massachusetts, we're also not going to see any serious new attempts to screw us. You can thank GOAL for this.

No one has mentioned the Second Amendment Foundation. SAF has been on the leading edge of the legal fight around the country. We would not be where we are today without their support of Heller, McDonald and many other cases. They were instrumental in the formation of Comm2A and were our mentors in many respects.

As for Comm2A, we fill a niche that is particularly important in Massachusetts and which no one else is filling. There are ad hoc, one-off 2A cases, but most of them are bad. Comm2A has a shockingly small membership base given what we've accomplished.


Did the 1976 referendum call for confiscation or was it a freeze on the legal handguns in MA?
Yes. There was no grandfathering provision. Against All Odds by Dave Kopel

It was proposed that authorities confiscate all handguns in the state, including BB guns. Gun owners would have six months to surrender their firearms, after which they would face a mandatory year in prison for owning a handgun.

The confiscation law seemed poised to pass. The most liberal state in the nation, Massachusetts—along with the District of Columbia—was the only place that had given its electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. (McGovern had run on a platform calling for a national ban on all handguns considered “unsuitable for sporting purposes.”)

Most of the Massachusetts media strongly supported a handgun ban. The Boston Globe, whose reach extends throughout the relatively small state, vehemently opposed handgun ownership. So did the television stations in Boston.
 
GOAL does a lot for MA where the NRA does very little, if anything.

I keep GOAL up to date and when they made such a great effort after that anti sign along I-90 in Boston being relocated to other sites in the state I sent them some extra. Just renewed my wife and I last month and have zero regrets.
The NRA is a joke but I stay mostly current just to piss of the liberals. I'm past due for about 2 months now. They admitted to me straight out one night in a phone call asking for money about MA. It was of course after I polity called the woman out on the issues with MA and she admitted the state was a waste of time. If they continue with raising the membership dues I'll most likely give them up and send more to GOAL.
I should re-up GOA. The cards they sent out made it easy to mail.
Comm2 gets a few bucks if I see the jar on the counter top at the LGS.

I'm also a member of SAM (Sportsman Alliance of Maine) due to the hunting, fishing, snowmobile and gun ownership stance they have at the state level.
 
Yes. There was no grandfathering provision. Against All Odds by Dave Kopel

I didn't know about this. Granted I was a kid, but I should've known about this history. Of course my hometown passed it in 1976.

I want to thank all the posters for this history lesson.

I belong to the NRA, GOAL, and Comm2a. I think I'm also going to look into SAF based upon one of the other posts.
 
... were instrumental in the formation of Comm2A and were our mentors in many respects.
As for Comm2A, we fill a niche that is particularly important in Massachusetts and which no one else is filling. There are ad hoc, one-off 2A cases, but most of them are bad. Comm2A has a shockingly small membership base given what we've accomplished

So... Sincerely question(s) : How do we remedy this, increase Comm2A membership /participation? And basically they, and GOAL, are the best place to focus donations, $upport etc (versus GOA/NRA etc).. I do the Amazon link, and everyone should, and I contribute to Comm2A and GOAL, but what else should/must we collectively do here in MA to frustrate, obfuscate and keep the KGB/Nitwits at bay?
 
So... Sincerely question(s) : How do we remedy this, increase Comm2A membership /participation? And basically they, and GOAL, are the best place to focus donations, $upport etc (versus GOA/NRA etc).. I do the Amazon link, and everyone should, and I contribute to Comm2A and GOAL, but what else should/must we collectively do here in MA to frustrate, obfuscate and keep the KGB/Nitwits at bay?

I'd vote for us to collectively get as many people who take safety seriously and who are willing to learn to shoot to the range.

The best advertisement is word of mouth.
 
Many gun owners forget about the handgun confiscation initiative that appeared on the 1976 statewide ballot in Massachusetts. Thanks to the efforts of the NRA, the handgun ban got voted down. If it wasn't for the NRA MA would be worse than even NY, MD, CT, CA and NJ. However, the anti-2A MA democrat majority legislature and politicians have subsequently openly resented and objected to "outside" NRA involvement.

The MA gun owner activists from that fight started GOAL so that all our pro-2A political activism is grassroots. GOAL is the official state association of the NRA.

I don't know how much NRA did wrt the 1976 bill to ban handguns in MA.

However you have your history a bit reversed wrt GOAL. GOAL was formed in 1974, well before the 1976 referendum, so they were active and in the action for the 2 years before the vote failed to ban handguns in MA. I just got my FID and LTC months before the vote and thus don't know what really went on with GOAL during those 2 years other than some comments I've heard over the years by the people who were there.


GOAL does a lot for MA where the NRA does very little, if anything.

I keep GOAL up to date and when they made such a great effort after that anti sign along I-90 in Boston being relocated to other sites in the state I sent them some extra. Just renewed my wife and I last month and have zero regrets.
The NRA is a joke but I stay mostly current just to piss of the liberals. I'm past due for about 2 months now. They admitted to me straight out one night in a phone call asking for money about MA. It was of course after I polity called the woman out on the issues with MA and she admitted the state was a waste of time. If they continue with raising the membership dues I'll most likely give them up and send more to GOAL.
I should re-up GOA. The cards they sent out made it easy to mail.
Comm2 gets a few bucks if I see the jar on the counter top at the LGS.

I'm also a member of SAM (Sportsman Alliance of Maine) due to the hunting, fishing, snowmobile and gun ownership stance they have at the state level.

IMNSHO only donating to Comm2A when you see a jar out is a bad thing. Comm2A needs a steady stream (monthly) of donations so that they can be assured of funding to appeal cases that the start as it is useless to start a case and abandon it due to lack of funds. That would set a very bad precedent and set the 2A efforts behind by decades.

GOAL is hamstrung by having a very "unfriendly" legislature, so the best we can expect from them is a "holding action" . . . the ability to kill off further attempts to attack us. But they don't have the required number of political friends to get laws changed in our favor pro-actively.

Both orgs are very important to the cause, but Comm2A will lead to more law changes and more rapidly than GOAL.


So... Sincerely question(s) : How do we remedy this, increase Comm2A membership /participation? And basically they, and GOAL, are the best place to focus donations, $upport etc (versus GOA/NRA etc).. I do the Amazon link, and everyone should, and I contribute to Comm2A and GOAL, but what else should/must we collectively do here in MA to frustrate, obfuscate and keep the KGB/Nitwits at bay?

See my comment above. I'd add SAF to those two for the national attack against bad gun laws in Fed Court (SAF is to the US as Comm2A is to MA).


I'd vote for us to collectively get as many people who take safety seriously and who are willing to learn to shoot to the range.

The best advertisement is word of mouth.

This too.
 
I agree. Turn as many neutrals to somewhat positive or positive and turn a few antis neutral. That's the real fight that every person can make an incredible grass roots difference. If every active gun owner takes one new person shooting per quarter and half of them get LTCs things will start to go our way in the future. But if we sit back on our heels things will certainly get worse.

Everyone should at least be using the Amazon comm2a shopping link. It's free to the buyer and supports comm2a even if you don't have the cash for larger donations.
 
I don't know how much NRA did wrt the 1976 bill to ban handguns in MA.

However you have your history a bit reversed wrt GOAL. GOAL was formed in 1974, well before the 1976 referendum, so they were active and in the action for the 2 years before the vote failed to ban handguns in MA. I just got my FID and LTC months before the vote and thus don't know what really went on with GOAL during those 2 years other than some comments I've heard over the years by the people who were there.


In the early 1970s, Massachusetts gun owners were numerous, but they were disorganized, disillusioned and defeatist. That began to change in 1974, when the NRA helped organize a joint sportsmen’s committee, which soon became the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL). With gun owners cooperating and contributing, GOAL was able to hire a full-time executive director, and then a secretary. To have two people working full-time on gun rights issues made a big difference, starting in the state legislature.

Together, GOAL and NRA began a grassroots education campaign against Question 5. It started with county-level meetings throughout the state in August. Voter registration information was distributed in English and Spanish. The meetings were attended by 18,000 people, and from them came nearly 2,000 volunteers. The meetings also raised money for billboards, fliers and other advertising.

The final poll, a few days before, had showed Question 5 with a 10-point lead. Everyone anticipated it would pass. Everyone was wrong.

Handgun confiscation was crushed by a vote of 69 percent to 31 percent. Of the approximately 500 towns in Massachusetts, only about a dozen (including Cambridge, Brookline, Newton and Amherst) voted for the ban. Even Boston rejected the ban by a wide margin.

Full story at:
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/A1F/Against-all-odds.html
 
wow---lot of history in a few posts-----very informative for me, and hopefully for a lot of other mass gun owners. as my profile says, " old guy new to the sport", but after finding nes, i quickly joined goal, then later found out about comm 2a. i maintain both of those memberships along with the nra. seems to me my money is best spent on the locals, ymmv
 
In the early 1970s, Massachusetts gun owners were numerous, but they were disorganized, disillusioned and defeatist. That began to change in 1974, when the NRA helped organize a joint sportsmen’s committee, which soon became the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL). With gun owners cooperating and contributing, GOAL was able to hire a full-time executive director, and then a secretary. To have two people working full-time on gun rights issues made a big difference, starting in the state legislature.

Together, GOAL and NRA began a grassroots education campaign against Question 5. It started with county-level meetings throughout the state in August. Voter registration information was distributed in English and Spanish. The meetings were attended by 18,000 people, and from them came nearly 2,000 volunteers. The meetings also raised money for billboards, fliers and other advertising.

The final poll, a few days before, had showed Question 5 with a 10-point lead. Everyone anticipated it would pass. Everyone was wrong.

Handgun confiscation was crushed by a vote of 69 percent to 31 percent. Of the approximately 500 towns in Massachusetts, only about a dozen (including Cambridge, Brookline, Newton and Amherst) voted for the ban. Even Boston rejected the ban by a wide margin.

Full story at:
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/A1F/Against-all-odds.html
Wow.. stunning story in that link. Makes me honestly wonder what would happen if that same question were to make it to the ballot TODAY what the percentages would be statewide, how many towns today would vote for a ban/confiscation etc etc.. (there weren't mass shootings/school massacres etc etc in those days) . Different world now and I'm guessing the wingnuts down here would salivate at a ballot initiative to confiscate... I also wonder how many police departments would actually come out publicly on our side...? (maybe many since a confiscation ban would affect them too, off duty, if the same question were put forth..)

Great stuff in this thread. I learned a LOT here and I'm sure others did as well.
[emoji106]
 
Another major public concern was the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that would be needed to compensate gun owners for the seizure of at least 800,000 handguns. Even Dukakis admitted that there was no money in the state budget to do so.
Buckley retorted that the proposal said that the compensation price would be “determined by the Commissioner of Public Safety.” So, continued Buckley, gun owners should receive “not one cent.” Nor would they receive anything for their now-worthless ammunition, holsters, reloading tools and so on.
Yet advocates continued to describe the handgun confiscation plan as a “buyback”—even though the government had never owned the guns in the first place, and even though taking someone’s property against his or her will and without paying for it is usually called “stealing” rather than “buying.”
Buckley’s rationale for paying nothing was simple: “We’ve got a right to get poison out of society.” He denounced the Springfield, Mass., handgun manufacturer Smith & Wesson as “merchants of death.”

History repeats itself.
 
Its simple

Its simple. You need to support both GOAL and Comm2A.

It is a ridiculously small amount to pay to enjoy our Right in these F'd up Commie States. These folks tirelessly do all the hard work to fight the BS that most of us don't have the time or knowledge to pursue. Day, after day, after day, after day.
 
Back
Top Bottom