This is likely to be a long post
Here in Australia the buy back was a complete and utter failure , the government and the press say how it took so many hundreds of thousands of guns off the streets and made the country safe but this is crap , it didn't take one gun off the street , it took them from under beds and the back of the cupboard and the corner of the shed .
Even the governments own figures show that all it did was make around 750,000 semi-auto guns go underground , by banning them they just lost control of them , and then there is the fact that no one who shot regularly got out of the sport , mostly the people who gave up all their guns hadn't bothered to shoot them for years , yeah I know it still hurts giving up a prized firearm even if you haven't fired it for years , but here again things would have gone a lot better for us if every one of those firearm owners who were unhappy about the laws had just gone out and joined the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia . [ SSAA ]
Prior to the new gun laws the SSAA had around 35,000 members , after the laws come in we had 115,000 , but that wasn't enough to give us any real political power , it's been estimated that to give us any real power to effect the out come of any political threat to firearm ownership we need around 300,000 , but there was around 4 million + firearm owners in Australia , if every firearm owner had just up and joined the SSAA there is no bloody way we would have these gun laws now , as it is now the SSAA membership is 130,000+ and climbing but that still isn't enough ,
A interesting fact , in the time since the new gun laws come into effect and all those guns were destroyed over twice as many have been imported into the country
So if you in the USA want to keep your guns then become a member of the NRA , get your friends to join as well , even if you don't shoot often or haven't bothered to take your gun out in the last 10 years , join , even if you don't own a gun and are only thinking about it , join , you may not agree with every thing they do and you may think that some other group is more aggressive on some point or another but the fact is they are the biggest and have the most clout .
If the NRA does some thing you don't like don't get your back up and leave , complain and ask why , from my understanding the NRA is basically member driven like the SSAA , but if the members don't give feed back then the people at the top do what the like .
With the SSAA the local clubs appoint a person or persons to represent them at the state AGM [ usually Pres and Vice Pres ] , any problems at state level are sorted out there and any thing needed to be bought to the national body are discussed as well and then bought to the National AGM by the state Pres and Vice Pres ,but if a member has a problem he can bring it to his club President or direct to his state President or National president , all are accessible ,
If you want to keep your guns Join the NRA and get involved , get new shooters into the sport , train a junior what ever , just get involved
David