[NineseveN]

There are always two sides to every story...which is true? In this case, regarding the prior history stuff, does it even matter?

For those playing the home game, the KFC mentioned below is not, as one might think, Kentucky Fried Chicken, it is (was) the Keystone Firearms Coalition (http://kfc-rkba.com/ and http://www.users.fast.net/~behanna/kfc.html for reference). And the Delphi technique, in case you're unaware, can be pretty much explained, here: http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html.

>Greg Murphy responds to Andy's replies:
>
>Andy, if you regard yourself as nothing but a commentator, what was KFC all
>about?

Your keyword in the above sentence is "was."

KFC was a good idea based on a failed premise -- that independent groups
would make at least some effort to cooperate on RKBA issues. It was
affiliated with GOA. It was an idea endorsed by practically everyone
who attended the meetings of groups that were held in Mifflintown, all
of whom then went home and then acted as if the job of the organization
was to support their autonomous initiatives. At least one county
organization had the combination of both honesty and arrogance to say up
front that they did just fine on their own and didn't need no stinkin'
coalition, thank you, but all other participants gave lip service to
cooperation that never materialized. Then when the people authorized
to speak for KFC (Bill Duff, but with me working with him) had the
temerity to so much as question the sincerity of a couple other groups'
pet legislators, those groups turned on not only KFC, but GOA, running
to the defense of legislators rather than fellow RKBA activists. They
didn't even have the political acumen to turn an honest disagreement
into a "good cop, bad cop" ploy; they sincerely preferred the legislators
who stroked them to having a working statewide coalition.

Within the past few years there was a half-hearted attempt to resuscitate
KFC, but that underscored one of the many things I've learned along
the way -- a functioning state RKBA group cannot be a part-time undertaking.

I have backed away from claiming to be a "group" when the group consists
of the proverbial "two-three guys and a fax machine." It is embarrassing
to talk to the press and posture political power when it doesn't exist.
Even if others get away with it for years (the press does tolerate what
makes a good story) I think eventually it is going to backfire. But I
digress.


>Did you or did you not write to Rep. Godshall (the leader of the squishy old
>guard) in an attempt to convey a message that the grass roots groups are
>ineffective? And did Rep. Godshall not fall into your trap and agree with
>you and then cc the entire Republican caucus that there is no grass roots?

Here's the sequence of events:

Jeff Knox wrote an editorial in an August edition of Shotgun News decrying
the NRA's lack of cooperation with Pennsylvania's "grass roots activists."

I sent it to my list, and pretty much on a whim of a moment, copied it
to every PA legislator. I did not send it exclusively to Rep. Godshall.

Rep. Godshall then replied to me that he had not heard from anyone but the
NRA for ten years. I presume that is what HE copied to either the entive
General Assembly, or the Republican Caucus, or whoever he did.

I think I replied only to Rep. Godshall, something admittedly dumb like
"Gee, that's not what they tell us," or something to that effect. I
don't even remember.

>Did you not forward this to your list where it was cross posted by your true
>believers elsewhere?

What I said above. I forwarded nothing that I perceived to be untrue.
Godshall said he never heard from anyone but the NRA. It is true that
is what he wrote. What a legislator said sure sounds like worthwile news
for the RKBA community. The counters (e.g., that it was because he was
"isolated") were up to those who disagreed.

>Rep. Godshall was probably telling the truth when he said that he only hears
>from the NRA. Schneider and Stolfer do not work with Godshall and other
>squishy so called pro-gun legislators who sometimes introduce gun control.
>They work with Metcalfe and other hard core leaders who are only attacked by
>the anti-gunners -- and by Andy.

But I would have expected Godshall to hear from people who had heard from
Schneider and Stolfer, and to at least have wondered why he wasn't hearing
the pure, choreographed NRA party line.

>You ask why Harry didn't sound an alert on HB 1744.
>
>Harry Schneider never beats drums or sounds alerts as long as he, and fellow
>coalition members, can keep bad legislation bottled up in committee. When it
>gets out of committee then they send alerts. Harry and Kim Stolfer have
>credibility because their alerts contain accurate reasons for opposing the
>legislation.

They are purely "access oriented" and that is a tactic I do not agree
with. They want to keep their maneuvers to themselves. As with the
NRA, I do not trust that I will always endorse their compromises, or
what they think may make legislation "good."

>The ACSL and the PSA are on record as opposing the original draft of HB
>1744. Just before the Judiciary Committee vote, Kim Stolfer sent an email
>to each individual member of the Judiciary Committee who is not listed as
>anti, informing them that the PSA and ACSL continue to oppose the original
>bill and have not had time to analyze the new amendments and thus encourage
>a NO vote. Judiciary Committee passed the legislation anyway, apparently
>with NRA agreement, but - legislators indicated that they are concerned if
>the ACSL and PSA are concerned, so they did not schedule a quick vote to
>give time for analysis and reasoned discussion.

"Juidiciary Committee passed the legislation anyway," but I'm glad to hear
they are "concerned."

>Schneider and Stolfer do not exclude anybody. You may recall that when
>Harry corrected your inaccurate analysis of legislation, he invited you and
>every other interested party to step forward and establish credibility in
>reading legislation and offering talking points and amendments.

I have little interest in offering amendments. I want to see gun control
bills killed. I want the benefits that would have been offered in those
amendments reintroduced as pure, pro-gun legislation with no non-germane
amendments. I want the legislators who support anti-gun bills identifiable,
and I want the legislators who fail to support pro-gun bills identifiable,
with no appeal available based on "good" and "bad" amendments.

I want those things to be tools that can be used by an organization with
the credibility that it really can influence votes, otherwise legislators
"concerns" are non-existent puffery.

>If Schneider and Stolfer and the leaders of the other Coalition groups step
>down, that will leave only the NRA. Is that what you want?

No. I want a credible statewide RKBA presence in PA. Schneider and Stolfer
indeed have tremendous capabilities, but in my opinion they err in believing
what they do is sufficient. I also dislike that "working behind the scenes"
as they do, they style themselves as having the authority to decide what
is good for all of Pennsylvania's gun owners, and what we all should want,
and how much is achievable. I also believe that their closeness to
legislators renders them somewhat deluded about their own importance,
and that occasionally results in them serving more as lobbyists for
legislators TO the grass roots, instead of vice-versa.

>Andy, are you offended that they can assemble the coalitions that KFC with
>your leadership could not? I seem to recall about eleven years ago, Act 17
>Godfather Bob Godshall denouncing the PSA and FOAC on the floor of the
>House, but somehow forget to mention you and KFC.

Could that possibly be because, as I mentioned above, PSA and FOAC had
attended the KFC meetings, yessed everyone to death, then went home
and in their importance forgot to mention KFC?

By the way: What coalition?

And also by the way: I never ran KFC, any more than you run PSA. I
just happen to live close to Bill Duff. I never had a title that
I can recall.

>Could it be that unlike the way you ran KFC, the PSA and FOAC and ACSL never
>hold secret Friday night meetings to determine the Saturday agenda?

You mean, had dinner with the early arrivals, and took a couple nips
while sitting on a bed in a $25 truck stop motel room?

Guilty as charged, I guess.

What were you guys doing in that car on the way over, anyway? I sure
hope you weren't TALKING or anything!

>Andy, come to think of it, now that I see that you are the gatekeeper on
>this secret Florida seminar you just announced, could it be that you have
>been working to undermine those who have been fighting gun control in
>Pennsylvania to fit an agenda? Is the passage of gun control necessary to
>destabilize things in Pennsylvania to pave the way for whatever secret
>agenda that you and your friends are hatching in the Florida seminar?

No, but I suppose I'll be blamed for it. The same way, I presume, that
an admittedly adolescent forward of a Jeff Knox column (favorable to
you guys, BTW) to the whole General Assembly has been cast as advancing
the whole gun-grabber agenda in PA, because, theoretically, now a few
legislators who never heard of you guys, realize they never heard of you,
when they didn't know that before.

>Will you perhaps resurrect your KFC with more secret meetings on Friday
>night and execute Delphi Technique actions on the gun groups who attend the
>official meetings on Saturday? Will it be that or will it be something
>new? Sounds like you aspire to be much more than a commentator again.

Heh. You're a card. Delphii techniques applied to groups who promise
a world of cooperation, then go off to do their Same-Old-Same-Old?

Guess that old Delphii needed a bit of polishing, wouldn't you say?

Or did you westerners plan how to use everyone else for your own
self-aggrandizement, in the car on the way home?

But anyway no, I expect (and pray) someone else will be taking on the
statewide role.

And for the record, I mean my comments about western subversion exactly
as sincerely as you meant your "Delphii charges," and for the same
motive.

>Maybe that's what you meant back in August when you wrote: "Pay me a salary,
>rent me an office, and buy me some mailing lists, and watch what would
>happen."

That was the figurative "me." In fact I'm retiring from earned-income making
at the end of December. And I've been too outspoken on too many other issues
to have a public single-issue role. My mistake, but oh, well. I will
happily help anyone else who does it though, even if it's only to clean
their office spitoons, as long as they shake things up here in PA.

>Andy, for three whole days last year the entire House debated dozens of gun
>control bills and each time they introduced one, Rep Daryl Metcalfe stood
>and read off the list of the entire coalition. The coalition stood united.
>NRA did nothing but join and be listed as number 4. All of the gun control
>proposals were defeated and you bashed Schneider, Stolfer and Metcalfe.
>
>What is your agenda?

Hmmm. Maybe that there not be a replay of 1995, when a gun rights leadership
convinced of its intellectual prowess and intrigue capabilities played coy
in the General Assembly until a major gun control bill got passed, and
THEN screamed bloody murder.

Which, by the way, is why everyone came to Mifflintown again, and pretended
to support a coalition.

>Andy, were you truly incapable of understanding the two short bills that
>your misinterpreted so badly, causing Schneider to correct you? Or where
>you so frustrated that gun control has not been passing, that you tried to
>create the false impression that it had?

>Andy, you ask: Where has the power of a grassroots PA organization been
>demonstrated?

>Answer: Committee of the Whole and the fact that exactly NONE of Rendell's
>flagship anti-gun proposals have passed, but Schneider and Stolfer have
>written and passed pro-gun legislation such as restoring the right of
>hunters to carry protection guns - something that was taken away long before
>they became involved.

I saw the power of the grass roots. I saw no power from a grass roots
ORGANIZATION. I think the best "leadership" the gun rights community
in PA got in the past year ironically came from the sponsor and cosponsors
of HB 760! All people had to do was read about the features of that
bill in the newspaper -- which they did -- and they were all over gun
control on their own initiative. No "leadership" was necessary. They
did it on their own.

The last analogous time I saw that happen was when the Republican Assault
Weapon Ban was passed by the PA House in the last minutes of the session
in 1993, and legislators received such a firestorm of spontaneous
protest from gun owners over the holidays that they had to reverse
themselves in a most embarrassing way in January of 1994. But as
always, there were gun rights leaders who claimed their intellect
and persuasion had been responsible for the reversal -- like the rooster
who thought the sun came up because of his crowing.

Then our intellectual leadership, who could read legislation, used
all of their guile and acumen to give us The Select Committee to
Study the Use of Automatic and Semiautomatic Weapons, which dodged
the assault weapons issue completely, and instead was used to craft
what would become Act 17 of 1995.

Good job, all you behind-the-scenes intriguers!

>Andy, lets review. The Allegheny County Sportsmen's League wrote a two page
>bill that will force the State Police to provide people with the information
>they need to get their gun rights back. You misread the legislation and
>falsely claimed that this pro-gun legislation was anti-gun legislation.
>Harry Schneider pointed out your error and you claimed that: "the law
>doesn't matter".

It will when ordinary people start getting their weapons back. I think
the jury will remain out on that for awhile. Will a Real Gunnie with
a $20,000 collection get his rights back? Probably. Will a single
urban mother who owned a .25 ACP Raven get her rights back? We'll
see.

>In fact, you often say that the law doesn't matter. When asked then why do
>you even care about legislation, you responded that the law DOES matter but
>is sometimes disregarded as in the case of the registry.

Because, exactly as you did above, you ignored the context of my statement.

The two times in my life when I have taken local governments or their officers
to court, both times successfully, it was because they had blatantly ignored
and defied the law. Both times it was because arguably, for them to defy
the law in an anti-hunting or anti-gun spirit was politically popular.

Both times it cost a lot of money to obtain MY rights, but I could do it
because I had the street-political acumen to be able to raise the money
from interested organizations. But I emphasize "MY" rights because in
the first case, once I had established in court that the municipality
could not do what it did to ME, they shortly went back to doing it to
other people, and got away with it, because it was politically popular,
marginally profitable, and too expensive to challenge. Today you can
still find similar, totally illegal and contrary-to-state-law ordinances
on the books of local municipaliities, to be wheeled out at their
convenience. And it takes either a crank who is a fund-raising adept
or a rich man to challenge them; as I learned personally, citing the law
accurately in court will usually get you a command to shut up; it
take thousands of dollars to BUY your rights. THAT is what all
of your law-reading adepts ignore -- Reality Law.

>Well shucks Andy, Schneider and Stolfer know far more than you about the
>registry being illegal. It became illegal with Act 5, of 1997 - which they
>were insiders in passing and which came as a pleasant surprise to you -
>after the fact. The NRA didn't clean up Act 17 until the PSA and ACSL
>badgered the NRA and leadership to do so.

And yet for all they know, the PSP is still maintaining it. Go figure.

And was that before or after they claimed to have driven the NRA State Liaison
out of the state? I forget.

>Andy, you call yourself a commentator. Your comments remind me of what
>Robert E. Lee wrote about commentators:
>
>"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our
>most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by
>reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic
>defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late.
>
>"Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously
>superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing
>Editorials - after the fact." Robert E Lee 1863

Robert E. Lee lost the war, as I recall.

You asked more than once what my agenda is. Here is what it is, stated
as broadly as I can: TO MOVE THE GUN RIGHTS MOVEMENT TO THE RIGHT.

Everywhere, but especially here in Pennsylvania.

I don't see that happening in Pennsylvania. What I see is people who
damned the NRA for its intrigues and back-room maneuvering becoming a
a junior NRA; "Trust Us; we KNOW. . .We speak for you."

Within the past week I have received more than one email alert from
RKBA groups in other states about legislation pending in their states.
I have received nothing similar from Pennsylvania in recent memory.
I have received self-promoting alerts, "Come listen to us speak for
you from a podium in Harrisburg," but never an alert inviting us to
take action on our own -- even when the behind the scenes maneuvering
has failed.

To refine my "movement to the right" definition a bit more, I want to
see the emergence of confrontational political action in addition to
the endless NRAesque "access" politics we hear about all the time --
the behind the scenes intriguing that is boasted about so openly.

At present the extent of confrontation appears to be standing at
podiums and berating Philadelphia legislators from a safe distance.
I want to see some of our rural and suburban RKBA poseurs not only
squirm, but perhaps get knocked out of office.

I want something more than a "coalition" that represents maybe
a dozen principals who can reach and motivate maybe a few hundred
people. (And with apologies to many: A website won't do it.)

It can be done. I don't know that I can do it. I pray for the
emergence of people who can and will try. Meanwhile I will
continue to comment on things as I see them, not as others want
me to see them.


--Andy