Directly from the NRA website: "While widely recognized today as a major political force and as America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights, the NRA has, since its inception, been the premier firearms education organization in the world." Most of the history of the NRA is to support training, safety, marksmanship, and hold matches and events. The focus on political lobbying is a recent development mostly happening after Charleton Heston resigned.

As a paying member, I certainly have the right (and obligation) to criticize the leadership if I am not getting the gun-related programs the NRA is supposed to be doing. Organizations are organizations of people, and this case citizen-members. I am not the only one who has been critical of NRA leadership. There have been many within the organization and governing board who have been openly critical and attempted to remove LaPierre.

If I want to have Obama removed from office, I have plenty of political organizations working to do that. Defeating Obama is not going to help make progress on gun rights....that needs to be done at the State and Local level. And, while they are distracted on the election, the primary purpose of the organization is not being sufficiently funded and managed: Training, safety, marksmanship, and a focus on States with unreasonable gun laws, etc.
CC

I've never claimed the NRA to be faultless. I can't think of any organization that is. That being said, the NRA's upper management is not gonna teach classes. I've taught NRA classes for many years. Classes that are focused on safety, marksmanship, personal protection, gun laws, and how to affect those gun laws. The NRA has a multitude of instructional devices at my disposal, but they will NOT come teach the class for me. They provide training syllabus, range drills, safety/marksmanship pamphlets, marksmanship manuals, DVD's, and many other tools, in shooting-related subjects for toddlers, to geriatrics.

But.... if the instructors in the field don't USE the material provided by the NRA, should the NRA be faulted for that? I think the fault lies with those who portray themselves to be instructors, and simply pass out literature, sign a card, and collect their fees. I know the old saying, "those who can't do, teach".... but there lots of good trainers out there, who "CAN do, AND TEACH".

Quit making sense now it's not good for those who want the NRA weakened.

The NRA focuses very adequetley, but not exclusively, on the things Cclax mentioned and I see no where in any NRA document that they will limit exclusively to any thing. Again he has the right to express his critisism I just thought he was trying to impose his will. When he said the NRA should do the things he want done and not the things he didn't as a memeber. I am not sure but if he is recruiting members for his lets get rid of Wayne campain, I say good luck here man.
I also agree with usmcj if you are not getting what you want it is not the leaderships fault it may be your local branch or even your fault for not stepping up and offering to use the tools available and to help others. I know my club uses the NRA to teach many classes on saftey, marksmanship, gunhandling and knowlege, and help get women into shooting and gun ownership. The NRA doesn't do it ,it supports and supplies tools to our club to make it happen. We do not wait for someone else to do it for us, we do it ourselves and use their guidelines and material. My pet peeve is when materials are available and timely and others still want someone else to give it to them too. It only takes a little effort to result in a lot of pride! I am not happy with everything the NRA does but I am not going to openly bash the orginization especially to or around others who would love nothing more then to see me unarmed. Like Mr. B Hussien Obama and his band of socialistic minions.

RCG

Who cares what others think? I belong to the NRA because, even with it's problems and weaknesses, it's still one of the few org's that help gun owners and the second ammendment. There is NO SUCH THING as a perfect anything! The NRA is no different. You take the best of what is available at the time. Regarding the sticker, I have been in many discussions with close minded folks who hate guns and the constitution and when rational debate fails I just tell them I feel sorry for them and to go pound sand.