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Reader finds fault with comments about the NRA

Letter to the Editor
Monday, July 9, 2018

Editor,

I am writing in response to the Opinion letter published on July 4th, to correct and inform the writer and your readers of proper facts that were incorrectly stated and distorted by the writer that submitted the comments.

As a background, I have been a member of the NRA for over 40 years and have participated in many NRA supported competitions in Pistol and Rifle. I still have my NRA rules and Classification booklet from the earlier time. I have mine and my sons NRA targets from Boy Scout camp .22 competitions from the 1950’s and the 1970’s.

I have been an active participant in Rifle and Shotgun competition for many years and I am active with the New Braunfels .22 Rifle Club (NB SchuetzenVerein) and the National Sporting Clays where I have been selected to be on the Texas State Team for the past two years. I am also active in the Texas Muzzleloading Rifle Assn. I attended the NRA convention in Dallas in May where there were over 88,000 people and members were in attendance.

The NRA has not abandoned its role in public education as they are very active in youth and adult education and sponsoring of safety and hunter education and Olympic activities.

They DO NOT and have not and do not PROMOTE individual guns such as 9mm and AR 15 type weapons not any other type of weapon or gun as the writer seems to believe. As a matter of interest AR 15, does not mean Automatic Rifle 15. It is named after the designer (ArmaLite designed a lightweight assault rifle for military use and designated it the ArmaLite Rifle-15, or AR-15 in 1956) This latest months (sic) American Rifleman had a four page article on the 1903 Springfield in WW1 and a couple of months earlier it had a technical article on the new pistol that the Military is adopting, as other articles such as this, these are not recommendations or promotions, but articles of general and informative content.

The NRA supports they (sic) right to have firearms under the second amendment and the right to defend yourself under that Amendment. By supporting the right to defend yourself, the right to carry is a public offshoot of that general support. Thirty years ago, that (sic) was not a need for concealed carry, but with the tremendous influx of illegals from the southern border it has become a tremendous safety concern and need for the general public safety, which most States legislatures now recognize.

Obviously, this write (sic) was not an NRA member, as he would recognize from the two monthly magazines NRA members receive, The American Hunter and The American Rifleman that the objective of the NRA is a support of citizens to have guns as needed for defense or Sporting purposes and not to promote any particular type of firearm.

The NRA supports stricter background checks and have made that well know. As we have observed recently the mass shootings have been done by persons with mental illness problems that they should not have possessed or have been able to buy a gun. The Sandy Hook shooter murdered his Mother to take her gun as an example before he went to the school. And the tragic Parkland shooting was another mentally ill person and the weeks of ignoring the danger by the FBI and the local Sheriffs department certainly contributed to the disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States

Hopefully, this add some facts and reality to the misinformation that was contained in the previous Opinion letter.

Leighton Stallones

San Marcos

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666