The Second Amendment Foundation just announced on its F*c*b**k page that it has subsumed the once-great Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. (Thank you, digidavid, for reporting the news.)
Carl-Bear has the first take. And a sadly true take it is.
I knew a couple of days ago that the JPFO board was in the process of signing and that it was just a matter of sending paperwork to SAF’s lawyers. That shoe has now dropped.
I’ll have more to say later, but for now thank you for everything you did to try to prevent this. Thank you for your petition signatures, your letters to the board, your offers of help, for jumping in and doing everything you could. Thank you for caring about JPFO — and for understanding far better than its board members ever did why JPFO mattered.
This deal was preordained. The JPFO board was never even going to look at any alternate proposals, let alone give them serious consideration. This began and ended as an act of supreme arrogance, authoritarianism, secrecy, and wholesale contempt for JPFO’s members, donors, corporate sponsors, and contractors. And of course, even deeper contempt for the legacy of Aaron Zelman and the importance of his uncompromising voice for gun rights.
I hope those responsible eventually choke on their own deeds.
I suggest sending this email to jpfo@jpfo.org (the webmaster and keeper of the mailing database)
====
I resign my life membership in JPFO.
Remove my name and information from your databases.
Do not contact me again.
Do NOT give, sell, rent, or otherwise communicate any of my personal information to the Second Amendment Foundation, Merril Associates, Merril Press/MMM, or any other organization associated with Alan Gottlieb.
I mean it. Leave me alone. I want nothing more to do with you.
Aaron Zelman and JPFO, RIP.
I had held out on joining any group for the simple reason of being on yet another list (membership or otherwise). I had just about decided to chance it and join JPFO when all this blew up. I remember someone (I think it was you Claire) mentioning something that the JPFO membership list would now pass to the SAF.
This is the kind of sh*t that keeps me from attaching myself to any group. After all the negative things I’ve heard about the SAF, I’d have been pissed to learn that I’m now a part of their membership mailing and calling lists.
-s — Good letter, thank you. I’m sorry that your life membership (and so many others) got betrayed. I sent something similar to JPFO HQ yesterday.
YAM — That is correct; SAF will be handed the JPFO mailing list. And if you’ve never had the “pleasure” of being on an SAF snailing list, believe me it’s a “pleasure” you’d rather live without. So yes, it’s a good thing you didn’t join.
Gottlieb’s operations don’t only churn out a huge volume of junk mail on their own behalf, but via a notoriously “cozy” relationship between Gottlieb’s nonprofits and Gottlieb’s for-profit direct mail operation, everyone on the SAF mailing list can expect barrages of junk mail for a variety of right-wing causes unrelated to gun rights.
It won’t matter if you’re opted out of junk mail. It won’t matter if you’ve asked them to stop-stop-stop-stop-stop. Somehow I ended up on Gottliebian mailing lists a few years ago (no idea how) and the only way I was finally able to get myself removed was to write letters to some of the clients for whom the mailings were done, telling THEM to tell Gottlieb to cut it out.
Yes, if you hate junk mail, I seriously recommend getting your name removed from JPFO lists before your personal information is sold off.
Well, crap. I guess I’ll have to block the e-mail address I used when I bought some JPFO merchandise.
What a disappointment for all those who pitched in on the rescue attempt.
Regarding the sad passing of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership:
1) “… ha Dayan Emet”, and
2) It is my sincere hope that Rabbi Dovid Bendory is not on board with the “Gross Abuse of a Corpse” now underway, and has therefore cut his ties with JPFO.
3) Shiva is the closest to an appropriate response, now.
Well, unsurprising, I suppose, but a downer nonetheless. Fixers gonna fix, and the faithful get a strong lesson in the cost of outsourcing control. Perhaps it can also serve as a good reminder that free people associate by choice.
For my part, I intend to keep hanging with those who “aim to misbehave”. (Really, they’re the only ones sane enough to be any fun. 🙂
Quite a depressing bit of news. I spread it to my readers (and thousands of Chinese spammers who make up most of my page views) as soon as I heard.
Don’t know how much effect my recent e-mail to JPFO will have. On the hope they will do the decent thing I’ve sent them the following (name omitted for privacy):
***I have just been informed that the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) have just acquired JPFO. Because of the way the SAF conducts business and other affairs, I need to ask that you remove my name, ——- ———, and e-mail from any and all list/s you have. I do not want any mailings or other info from JPFO or the SAF now or in the future, ever. All such contact will be refused and round filed immediately.
Please remove my information before the SAF gets all records and mailing lists.
Thank in advance for any real help given me in this regard.
—————————-
***************
For what it’s worth, I had a feeling this would happen. Hoping I was wrong. Evil usually keep things secret til the point of no return.
First, everyone always eventually chokes on their deeds; that’s how the mind works. As to how much others see of it, that’s another question, as is whether those others should care in the first place.
“If you always do good, then everything works out for the best, even the bad stuff.” That’s true, you know, and you sure done good Claire. Sorry how it turned out.
I was afraid something like this would happen when Aaron passed away. I had thought about becoming a LIfe Member, as I did at GOA, but having heard of some of the difficulties Aaron had with some of the folks he worked with, I held off. I’m sure glad I did.
As for SAF and Gottlieb: I heat my home with a woodstove, so I have a use for all of the trash SAG sends, since they’ve taken a page from the NRA’s playbook with their constant fund-raising activities. I made the mistake of becoming a member once, when Alan Gura was working on Heller, and I bought a cord less of firewood that winter.
When folks tell me that the NRA is the gorilla in the room, and that SAF will accomplish much more than JPFO could have on their own, I simply shake my head and tune them out. NRA has done more to sell out the Second Amendment – beginning back in the 1930’s, and ever since – and has turned into a money-making scam that only knows how to compromise our rights away.
It appears to me that SAF – having taken fund-raising lessons from the NRA – might go the same route. Well, what money I would have gladly continued to give to JPFO will go to GOA, while the mailings from SAF will help to keep me warm.
Another junk mail response for those without wood stoves is to send back the business reply envelopes. I’ve read of others packing them full. Over full. Wrapping bricks even.
The junk-mailing sender, now the recipient contracts with the USPS to pay return postage. It’s expensive compared to the cheap presorted, bulk rate they pay to mail the junk out. Every ounce costs even more.
I did it for a couple years to the NRA. It became a practice of me reaffirming my stance to myself. It was satisfying. Almost meditative. Then the mailings stopped. Ymmv.
CB — I wish. Unfortunately (at least in my recent experience) SAF/Merrill mailings these days arrive without postpaid return envelopes, probably for that very reason.
Yes, it was sweet to be able to repay junk mailers in kind.
Dang. Super dang!
So on we go with the faith and trust that everything is for the best. Maybe not on our timeframes, but always for the best.
The best response to unwanted junk mail, provided it offers to provide you anything in return for money, is a Post Office form 1500 mailed in. Assuming the USPS doesn’t ignore it (which unfortunately they do from time to time) the sender gets a warning to stop mailing. If they persist, upon a second complaint, they receive a court order to stop. After that, if they continue mailing, they can get fines and jail.
Every shred of that junk mail, and even email, means contributors are either complicit with the program or have been duped. Seems to me that trying to reach out and educate those duped donors is far more important.
Cut off the money.
The best thing, I think, is now simply to turn your backs and move on. There are plenty of other venues for getting the word out about how bad gun control is. Anyway guys we are winning – gun control is dead.
@ Paul Bonneau yeah…. tell the boys in New york that gun control is dead…
http://gunssavelives.net/blog/ny-authorities-confiscate-gun-dealers-records-may-lead-to-gun-confiscations-under-safe-act/
Oh, the ruling class still maintains its gun-control wet dream, but when I said it was dead I meant what really matters, the minds of the people. That has been trending our way for decades now. It’s one thing to pass laws, another thing getting them obeyed. In fact if you think about it, the current mess in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey are perfect training camps for people in the practice of disobedience; not a bad result.
The “JPFO Press Release” is up. Of course, they say, “But before making final decisions on this action …”, be sure to read what Ayoob wrote. No links to the dissent.
Hi Jed,
I was ‘lucky’ enough to get Massad Ayoob’s maunderings in an email. I think that nothing highlights the cultural difference between the SAF and JPFO than their idea that anything that Ayoob could write would be persuasive to citizens who value their liberty.
Aaron Zelman introduced me to CCOPS and FullBORE. Concerned Citizens Opposed to Police States and Full Bill Of Rights Enforcement. Unlike some 2nd Amendment organizations and long before most of the Johnny-Come-Latelies got on board with the idea that maybe the Founders had a reason for a Bill of Rights that included more than the 2nd Amendment, Aaron Zelman was a champion of the entire document.
To get the flavor of Ayoob’s commitment to the 4th Amendment, particularly the part about “The right of the people to be secure in their persons…” here is his blog post on the anal rape committed under color of law on the person of David Eckert in Deming, NM.
And here is a cogent analysis of Ayoob’s police apologetics. I would like to use a more pungent term in place of the world “apologetics” but civility dissuades me.
http://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/the-politics-of-police-rape-the-david-eckert-case-update-2/
In my opinion, Ayoob lacks the moral standing on issues of individual rights to even be allowed to shine the shoes of Aaron Zelman. So I guess it is fitting that he act as the Judas Goat leading Aaron’s legacy into the maw of the SAF.
PS. For those who think I refine too much on a single post, please take some time and read the contempt that drips from his blogs and comments for those who think that police should be held responsible for their bad acts and that maybe, as professionals, they should be held to at least the same standard of bad conduct as the citizenry at large.
Drug use or possession is no more a good reason for cop abuse than a short skirt is a good excuse for rape.
Claire, let me extend my condolences to you on the fallout from the JPFO/SAF debacle. I know you cared deeply about Zelman and JPFO’s mission, so I have nothing but sympathy for what you and the JPFO membership are going through right now with what appears to be a Rand Paul-esque betrayal.
What can be done, if anything, “to move forward?” Do you think the (former) JPFO membership should transfer over to the GOA, or do you think the time for any sort of lobbying is past? Also, do you think that any sort of educational efforts should be decentralized to the point where only individuals are advocating self-defense (i.e. Larken Rose or Chris Cantwell) because any sort of “activist organizations” are susceptible to being subverted?
@c andrew
I looked at that Eckert case analysis you posted. I left a comment there:
———-
While this analysis is masterful, it unfortunately yields to the state in the first instance, if you think about it.
What has prohibition of substances to do with liberty? Exactly nothing.
What do police forces have to do with liberty? Not only nothing, but they are the primary tool of every tyranny that has ever existed.
And for those who go along with using dogs for searches, please google the phrase “Clever Hans”. Seriously? Our liberty is subsidiary to a dog’s opinion?
It’s not that Eckert is a disreputable person. It’s that everybody else in this case, from governor all the way down to the cops and their dog, are far more disreputable than Eckert might be.
@Paul Bonneau,
I agree that a great deal of the problem with our police forces is found in the perverse incentives of the drug war. And that those perverse forces have made the petty corruption for which many police forces were justly condemned seem insignificant.
I look back at to the founding of the London Metropolitan Police force under the auspices of Robert Peel. He was careful to avoid the military trappings – including military ranks – that the other nations like France and Prussia used because he did not want them to be like the politically oppressive forces that they were. And, arguably, the restive Londoners of the time probably wouldn’t have stood still for it.
My grandfather was a deputy sheriff in Montana. And I knew a number of police officers growing up who were honorable people. I find it difficult to extend that description to any cop today because they are at least silently complicit in the abuses committed by their fellow officers when they’re not rationalizing away that behavior with “Officer Safety” and “Stop Resisting” and the latest “He’s going for my gun” mantras that pervade their excusatory monologues today.
Police institutions today are corrupt. They have their own means of silencing those who would speak the truth; I know a cop who turned his own captain in for rupturing the spleen of a Drunk and Disorderly who had vomited on the captain’s shoes. His “brother” officers wouldn’t show up on backup calls, they screwed with his equipment, and, finally, tried to engineer a “domestic violence hostage taking” which failed in its intent because he had another officer from another force visiting his home at the time. I guess they weren’t sure that he’d back their play. So far as I know, none of the offending officers, including the captain, were ever brought to book for their actions.
So the cop apologists can prate all they want about the necessity of ex-honor-ating (deliberate misspelling to capture the essence of what they do) their brutal fellow officers, but if we “civilians” turned a blind eye to the same things that these cops do, we’d be charged with obstruction and being an accessory after the fact.
They have no honor. And once the public grasps that and initiates the political changes necessary to bring the abusers to justice and change the corrupt institution itself, police forces may once again claim to be the environs of honorable men.
c andrew: Sad as it is, I agree nearly completely with your comments and find them both to be insightful analyses. Thanks for doing that.
@c andrew
I agree with your statement, except that it doesn’t go quite far enough: Peel was wrong.
We can only guess at his motivations, whether he had good intentions (like Horace Mann with his government schooling) or whether he was just dishonest and cynical. Anyway, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.
The problem is that, behind it all, is the assumption that some state functionary may scrutinize and control what we do – even if it is done for the “common good”. It is the negation of minding one’s own business, as it is a cop’s job to mind somebody else’s business. Another problem is that it relieves the ordinary individual from providing his own protection; that is that it fosters irresponsibility. It also weakens community which was another nexus of protection prior to establishment of police (e.g. neighborhood watch and vigilance committees). Another problem is that it enhances the ability of legislatures to pass more and more laws that are “mala prohibita”, because now there is a mechanism for enforcing them. Finally it enables tyranny because police forces are usually a tyrant’s primary tool for oppression (unless it is the army).