Hillary Clinton (courtesy businessinsider.com)

In the editorial below, NRA instructor and member of the Los Padres “Friends of the NRA”committee Doug McDougall argues that the NRA was critical to Donald Trump’s election. True?

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Let’s face the facts. Without the NRA Hillary would be President and Schumer would be the leading the Senate. The Supreme Court would be backed with young gun grabbing justices. The record number of judges DJ Trump has had appointed would be all to the left center. Imagine the 9th Circuit Court being the norm for the country as a whole.

For the 40 million gun owners who identify as NRA members and all you who gave and supported the NRA. THANK YOU!

Without you (the extended family of gun owners and NRA supporters) Hillary would be in the White House today.

For the 40 million gun owners who identify as NRA members and all you who gave and supported the NRA. THANK YOU!

Let that sink in for a few seconds . . .

All you who ranted and raved that the NRA is the devil, that any compromise equates to surrender need to stop drinking the kool-aid. No one else has the political sway to do what the NRA can do. No one.

Do not make an enemy of the good because it lacks perfection.

So let me try to explain something to you. Remember the Assault Weapon Ban? Sure you do. If not for the NRA negotiating a sunset clause this bill would still be law today.

The same thing for insta-check, an NRA compromise that prevented a national 15-day waiting period.

It is easy to yell and scream, but Bill and Hillary Clinton had the votes to push through and pass these bills without any compromise to the NRA. These gun bans were Hillary’s baby, and she was willing to do anything to get them passed. Trade anything, swap anything, twist any arms. You have the sunsetting of the Assault Gun Ban, and no waiting periods thanks to the NRA.

Some would have had us fall on our sword. No compromise every. That path leads to the death of our rights. The NRA plays the long game.

So what did the NRA do to help President Trump? There is a reason white women voted in a majority for Trump.

There is a reason white women voted in a majority for Trump.

Different gun rights groups do different things better. The GOA is excellent at law suits but poor at most everything else. The NRA, great at mass campaigns and talking to America’s 120+ million gun owners.

At the end of the day support the NRA or lose your right to own a gun. Everyone helps but only one group has the gravitas to change a national election. Oh, and yes, I read all your comments, which is why I am responding. Don’t bash other gun groups. We need EVERY resource we can get to win this fight. The anti-gun left is not going away, and a house divided cannot stand.

We need to educate the next generation and recruit outside our comfort base. If not we’ll be defending our rights forever. Join me, support the FNRA, teach freedom and fight the left. Thank you for reading.

About Don McDougall:

Don McDougall is an NRA instructor and member of the Los Padres “Friends of the NRA”committee. If he’s not at the range you will find him setting the record straight with on gun issues and gun safety on AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

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120 COMMENTS

    • “For the 40 million gun owners who identify as NRA members”… The key word here is identify. You know, like the white NAACP leader who identified as black.

      Or, the NRA finally decided to completely lie about NRA membership, which is actually down due to the bump stock fiasco.

      This is just another propaganda piece from the NRA.

    • Don’t need 40 million members, what you need are members comitted to a single goal, the preservation of 2nd Amendment rights. The NRA was the one reliable organization with members who cared, organized and voted to oppose obozo throughout his 8 years. The NRA was the first batter up against Shillary, enough said. Where were you?

  2. No.

    At the end of the day, more people disliked Hillary than Trump. It came down to who was the worst candidate, not what they said or did or thought, or what others said or did or thought about them. Just my opinion at this moment.

      • I heard a while back that 40% of her votes came from just two states, NY and CA. Also heard that if you took out CA she lost the popular vote by 1.5 million votes. And everyone knows that California wants to secede.

        • I don’t know about the 40% coming from two states figure, but I do know that I looked into it at the time and yes, if you exclude California, Trump won the popular vote among the remaining 49 states.

          Some of California wants to secede. A perhaps more likely course is to have California split into two states (the right half of the state has already submitted this petition). They’re trying to follow the same course as when Virginia split into West Virginia. I very much hope they’re successful.

        • Meh, just looked it up. California gave Hillary 8.8 million votes; New York gave her 4.5 million, for a total of 13.3 million. Not even close to 40% of her 66 million total votes. More like 20%.

        • Well Tex, it appears as Dubya used to say, it seems that I ‘mis-remembered’. Still, over 13% of her vote came from just 2% of the states…

        • The remark addressed the voting totals, not the ratio of states. (Haven’t spent the time to research the 40% claim)

      • Not if you subtract all the Dementia Patients in nursing homes, illegal aliens who shouldn’t be voting, dead people and people voting more than once.

      • And thanks to our Constitution, which was designed to prevent the voters of large states swamping the interests of the smaller states, we aren’t having to deal with a woman who has repeatedly abused her previous office for personal gain. She has committed multiple serious felonies and yet remains unindicted due to the efforts of the deep state.

        • When you think about it, we already fought one civil war over some states resenting the political power of the larger states to dictate their affairs. Imagine as divided as we are today, how long the union would last if folks in South Dakota had to obey whatever commands their overlords in California and New York dictated to them.

        • “Long Live the Electoral College!”

          Y’all are aware that there’s a legislative end-run around the electoral college designed to effectively repeal it, right?

          It’s a compact between states that when any candidate gets 50% or more of the popular vote, the state is mandated to give all their electors to that candidate. It’s called “Fair Vote”, at fairvote.org. And the horrifying thing is: it’s already 60% of the way towards activation. 10 states and DC have already ratified it! RI, VT, MD, WA, IL, NY, NJ, DC, MA, CA, and HI. That’s 165 electoral votes where the states have forfeited their right to vote for themselves, and have instead legislatively bound themselves to cast their electoral ballots for whoever wins the popular vote. Once they get 270 electoral votes in their “compact”, then that’s it — game over, electoral college is effectively nullified, and the “popular vote” winner is guaranteed to be elected President.

        • Tex, you might notice that all those states are strong Dem party states. Bottom line is that conservatives (not to be confused with Republican) voters value the electoral college and liberal voters don’t. Therefore, the endgame can only be Republican candidates can benefit from this movement, while Democrats can’t. Furthermore, the political map is getting more and more clearly defined with the states that hold the most advantage due to the electoral college are becoming more and more Republican. These states are not about to give up their electoral (per voter) advantage. So at this point, the odds of a Republican wining the popular vote but losing the EC are about nil. But in the unlikely event that a Republican does win due this, you’ll see those Dem states quickly reverse their decision. So this movement is completely meaningless.

        • See above; Kaliforniastan has already come pretty close to nullifying the electoral college entirely.

          Of course, if California secedes, that would effectively kill their FairVote plan. Or if it splits in two states.

      • First off, it was actually less than 2 million. Secondly, the US does NOT operate on a popular vote system. We have the electoral college system specially to prevent from the Democrats of just using the lack of vote ID laws to get homeless people and illegals in to vote over and over again. See the multiple videos from Project Veritas of DNC operatives colluding to commit mass electoral fraud.

        • The final tally was 2.8 million. Clinton had 65,844,610 compared to Trump’s 62,979,636.

          And the US is very close to being a “popular vote” country. An organization called “Fair Vote” has put together a legislative compact that would force a group of states with 270 electoral votes to vote all their electors for the candidate who wins the popular vote.

          They’ve already passed the legislation in 10 states and in DC, totaling 165 electoral votes. They only need 105 more, and the electoral college will become effectively moot. And they’ve gotten the legislation passed in one house or the other of states like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and lots of others.

          There’s a pretty substantial danger of this actually happening.

      • Hillary only had 3 million more popular votes as a useless summation of 51 distinct elections. All Presidential campaigners know they are not gaming the system to win the popular vote; they are gaming 51 individual elections in order to game the electoral college.

        Actually, I lied when I said “All Presidential campaigners know …”. Hillary lost track of that. She wanted to win the useless overall popular vote, so she spent extra campaign resources in states she was guaranteed to win, at the expense of states where she was less likely to win. She was so assured of her own greatness that she lost track of the only election which counts, the electoral college.

        I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when her campaign staff tried to tell her so, both before and after the election night awakening.

      • So what? The election wasn’t fought for the popular vote and both candidates campaigned hard to win the required electoral votes. A popular vote campaign would have been completely different. This is like Team Trump wining a football game 10 -7 and someone suddenly deciding it’s total yardage the ball was moved that counts, not the score.

      • Back to the “horse shoes and hand grenades” argument. By the law of the land (Constitution) she lost, fair, square and all the way.

        Besides according to the MSM she was the “most qualified candidates in history” who was going to win in a landslide. Oh snap, she never won an election against a viable candidate, 2006 proved that.

    • Consider one more thing, y’all:
      Suppose for a moment the DNC had not handed the primary to Clinton and had given Sanders a fair chance. Suppose a significant number of Democrats decided that Sanders – while wrong about a lot of things- at least wasn’t a corrupt-to-the-core self-serving criminal and chose him instead to carry the Democrat ticket…
      If he had run instead of her – I firmly believe we would be discussing our frustration with what President Sanders did this week and for the past year.
      We collectively dodged a bullet in more ways than just Hillary.
      🤠

      • Except the DNC bankrupted itself getting Barry Hussein in the office twice. Bernie would have been at a significant spending disadvantage without the Clinton crime family money.

      • “Suppose for a moment the DNC had not handed the primary to Clinton and had given Sanders a fair chance.”

        Here’s what actually happened. The DNC, under the leadership of Debbie “The Poodle” Wasserman-Shultz was basically bankrupt. The HRC campaign used that emergency and, quite literally, took over the DNC, lock, stock and two smoking barrels in exchange for a massive cash injection directly from the HRC campaign [See Donna Brazile’s book]. The deal that was signed effectively gave HRC “herself” (in this case “the campaign”) complete control over the DNC in exchange for that cash injection. It was an offer the DNC basically couldn’t refuse.

        What HRC got out of that was control over DNC fundraising, advertising and a bunch of other stuff but what “she” really wanted, and got, was control over the analytics arm of the DNC. That was the Crown Jewel. The ability to fuck Sanders was just icing on the cake. The second thing, in order of importance to “her” that she got was the the fundraising abilities of the DNC. The DNC is the group that has “the lists”. In this case “she” didn’t care that much about the ability to raise funds because she had close to a ~$1 billion war chest in her campaign coffers. Using the DNC’s lists wasn’t about raising more money but rather it was an attempt to use that information to organize “get out the vote” drives in a targeted manner similar to the way the DNC microtargeted groups for Obama.

        Now, HRC and her campaign, being the leaches that they are, basically used all the cash they injected into the DNC in the election. That’s not really “unfair” but it’s not what the DNC expected to get out of the deal (of course they also expected her to win too).

        The result is that today HRC is not POTUS and the DNC has about $400K on hand going into the midterms. They have about $800K cash on hand and $400K in outstanding debts. That means that out of the ~$20 million or so that the HRC campaign gave the DNC they burned through about $19.6 million of it losing the election. I’m not sure, because I have not looked recently, what the DCCC’s books look like.

        Now, Sanders for his part did himself no favors. I don’t care for the guy’s politics and, quite frankly, I think he’s a bit batty but rare as it is in politics the guy is honest and a gentleman (though his wife may be as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks). As such he really wasn’t really willing to go after HRC with knives out in the beginning and that cost him dearly in the primary. If he had gone after her from the beginning the way he did in the final weeks of the campaign he may well of unseated “the queen”.

        • Don’t forget that one reason the DNC was broke was because Obama campaigned for his own fundraising, not the DNC, even during his last term. People gave Obama money, not the DNC, and I don’t know what he did with it, how much he still has, how much he cooked the books to launder it into his own coffers (did you see the houses, plural, he bought on his $400K/year salary?!?)

          Obama screwed the DNC in large part because Hillary was so shrill in the primary, and he never forgave her. What goes around, comes around.

  3. I am not sure that Hillary could’ve won. She lost to Donald J. Trump. He wasn’t the best choice, but way better than her. When it comes to the results of the last elections it comes down to Hillary’s past. She was a great advocate for children and minorities in her early career. A long the way her husband became president and they formed the Clinton Foundation. Which as far as we know is corrupt. I’ve read a lot about the corruption that happened in Haiti after the earth quakes. She was Sec State, which she bombed at. We all heard about the pay to play. I don’t think she would’ve been able to win against anyone. Definitely not against any other regular politician from the GOP. Then there is the ridiculous ideas the Democrats try and push. No body wants to further the welfare and open border, Islamic apologist state. The NRA might have donated money, but that’s just one part of the process. It’s important, but it comes down to educated voters. Educated voters make all the difference especially when you have emotional arguments from the left.

    • > I am not sure that Hillary could’ve won. […] Educated voters make all the difference especially when you have emotional arguments from the left.

      She won the popular vote by a wide margin. I’m not sure what the hell you’re talking about.

      • Winning the popular vote didn’t get her elected, and since she can’t pardon the folks who could be forced to testify against her, there as a significant likelihood she will finding herself charged with multiple felonies. The deep state effort to protect her is collapsing and some of those people could find themselves indicted for those efforts.

      • 2.09% is not a “wide margin” and the Governor was correct. If you took out her California margin and the addition of NYC, she lost the popular vote. As taught in Civics class (they used to have that), The Electoral College exists to prevent the large states from turning elections into “beauty contests”.

      • America does not and will never operate on a purely popular vote system. Especially now that it’s been revealed that the DNC commits mass electoral by busing around illegals and homeless around to vote illegally multiple times.

      • “She won the popular vote by a wide margin. I’m not sure what the hell you’re talking about.”

        That “wide margin” was 2-3 million votes, almost entirely in NYC and LA. Both cities are in states she won handily anyway.

        That’s the beauty of the Electoral College. We’re the United States of America, not the United States of New York City and Los Angeles.

        • And if you take out the Trump vote in Texas, Alabama…. The votes are the votes, when you have the electoral college, margin doesn’t matter. He lost the popular vote, she could have run up 10 million more votes in California, NY, MA, he’d have won.

      • She DID NOT win the popular vote, because there is no such thing. There are 51 individual popular votes. She lost sight of that distinction and lost the only vote that counts, the electoral college. There were 51 distinct campaigns, and she chose the wrong ones. She was playing the wrong game.

        The World Series is not settled by who got the most runs in all the games, but who won the most games. Same for the playoffs, the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Don Quijote Bowl — they all determine seasonal winners by the final game or series of games.

        Would you really want to change that?

  4. She only lost because enough of her base were disgusted by her obvious corruption and lies. Much of her base supporters either stayed home of held their nose and voted for Trump

    If she was a worthy candidate, she would have won in a landslide.

    • If you think the feminazi / vote vagina base stayed home, you weren’t seeing the same poll numbers as everyone else.

      • Hey, serge

        Totally off topic here but I’m curious how many mags you run on your plate carrier and generally what else you set it up with?

        Thanks.

        • Mags, 4-6 depending if I’m running an AK or AR and the expected course of fire.
          Secondaries
          1. IFAK – I like the Blue Force Gear micro trauma kit
          2. TQ
          3. Hydration on the back. (2-3 liter hydration bladder)

  5. She lost because she was a pompous, elitist narcissist who assumed the people in the rust belt who voted for Obama’s Hope and Change campaign would vote for her It’s my turn, damn it! campaign.

    And don’t forget, she got more popular votes than Trump, they were just on the wrong side of state borders to get her the electoral college votes to win.

    • I think this is closer to the “truth,” whatever that may be. The fact is that she did not campaign in middle America and did not appeal to nonunion blue collar workers, did not appeal at all to rust belt workers or to farmers. She ignored them , and it cost her. She simply assumed that she would carry the urban centers in those states, and was utterly shocked when she didn’t. I think the loss in Michigan was particularly telling.

      • Yeah, in reality, she lost by 76,000 votes. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and of those three, Pennsylvania was the vast majority. Her overriding ego had her running in Texas and Arizona, when a smart candidate would have been focusing on closing winnable states.

        But I can’t believe we got to the point that we were in an either/or, we had 20ish other choices and that was the final two? And, come on, 58% voter turnout for the election, and less than 25% for primaries, that’s just pathetic.

    • It’s not just the “rust belt”. That’s just silly MSM bullshit.

      HRC was predicted by polls (that were intentionally flawed, I covered the numbers on that at the time) to win Florida (29), South (9) and North Carolina (15) and, in some cases, Georgia (16). None of them are in the Rust Belt.

      Look at the actual Electoral College numbers. Trump 306 – Clinton 232 and think about that.

      Just flip Florida and you end up with an much, much closer election with Trump 277 – Clinton 261. Flip any other State on that list as well and Clinton wins. Flip any state, other than West Virginia (5), in the “rust belt” and likewise, HRC wins. Florida was the lynchpin here.

      If things came out the way the MSM and most political reports predicted Clinton would have won all those states and the election would have been Trump 237 to Clinton’s 301.

      Yeah, the election didn’t go HRC’s way (the predicted way) in Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) or Wisconsin (10) but the real zinger was, without a doubt, Florida. That’s what tipped the election because whoever won Florida could afford to lose any state in the Midwest and still win. In fact, in a lot of cases they could have lost two states in the Midwest and still won so long as they held Florida.

  6. I’m gonna say FALSE.

    I think the biggest reason Trump won was because Hillary was his opponent. Had the Democrats run most anyone else, especially a candidate who was a perceived moderate (if such can be found in today’s Democratic party), they would likely have won. Hillary represented that unique combination of being both personally and politically despised across a broad spectrum of voters.

    On the Trump side, I *do* think there were a couple of factors that led to him winning on election night. And none of them had anything to do with the NRA.

    #1 Selecting Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence’s presence on the ticket eased the fears of a lot of social conservatives reluctant to support Trump.

    #2 Kelly Ann Conway getting Trump on message during the last month or so of the campaign. Love her or hate her, Conway got Trump moving in the right direction. He started making some solidly GOP speeches on taxes, the economy, and so on. I really believe that brought a fair number of unsure Republican and Republican-leaning voters back into the fold on election day.

    All just IMHO, of course. Which may be worth everything you’re paying for it.

    • The Dems weren’t offering moderates last time around, it was Hillary or Bernie… and Bernie was a straight-up Socialist until he decided he wanted to be President.

  8. No. Not that it matters a whole lot. If Klinton had been “elected,” the revolution might be over with by this time…

    All politicians intend to control everyone and everything possible. Some do it worse than others. It is tiresome to have the NRA bragging that they made the difference. Such rot.

  9. It was somewhat of a perfect storm that led to Tump’s victory. The deck was heavily stacked against him with the Dems, MSM and even some Republicans in opposition. Very little doubt that the NRA played a key role, along with many other essential organizations and factors.

  10. completely false. there is NO WAY Hillary would ever be President. I mean jesus christ SHE LOST TO DONALD F’N TRUMP!!!!! she is the ONLY person he could beat. people LITERALLY came out of the woodwork to vote AGAINST her!

  11. The whole election was so ironic. Hillary would have beaten just about anybody except Donald Trump. On the other hand just about anybody else on the national stage could have beaten Donald.

    • Thankfully, Donald J. Trump has shown the world what a sh_t-hole America’s previously been using as a political “pipeline” for the U.S. Presidency selection. That FORMER pipeline runs through YALE, HARVARD, COLUMBIA, ETC., IVY LEAGUE BS MF “WE’RE YOUR BETTERS” SH_TSHOW.

      Sic Semper Temper-Tantrum-Anuses. F em all, and F all supporting whiners.

  12. NRA is truly great at raking in the bucks and paying huge salaries and benefits to the elites that have rule. NRA also supports those Chinese company’s that make the shitty bags hats and stickers to con you out of even more money. NO, NRA need change, massive change.
    Oh, and don’t get me started on that Show Show booth.

  13. Marco Rubio has a history of being Anti-Gun when he was in the Florida State Legislature. Yet the NRA supported him instead of better Pro Gun Republicans that challenged him in the primaries.

  14. Ever since the JFK/Nixon debate the most charismatic candidate has won. And ever since both parties have nominated the least charismatic candidate they could find.

  16. “Heller was wrongly decided.”

    Four words that determined the outcome of the election. And only one of them had to change. If she said “Heller was rightly decided,” she would have won the election.

  17. “If Not for the NRA Hillary Clinton Would be President. True?” – Question of the Day

    If Not for the NRA smoking something, they’d never be stupid enough to think that the statement “If Not for the NRA Hillary Clinton Would be President” is true.

    There fixed it for ya.

    The NRA is in-it-for-themselves. If there’s no problem, you won’t pay them to fix it.

    If they get too far ahead (of the problem) they ‘throw a few games’ (e.g., “Let’s re-look at the [already won (AND NOT BY THE NRA)] regulations on bump-stocks”).

  18. The NRA is like that rich kid at school who goes on how much of a bad ads he is, how there is only one him. Yet he loses damn near every fight he gets in. Instead he relies on his self made image of being a bad ass whilst never being one. This retarded “nobody else can do what the Nra does nonsense would obviously not be the case if those leaving members all joined Goa and left the Nra for scam artist leadership to keep scamming the fudds. The Nra has folded like a table, whilst trying to sabotage other 2a group’s lawsuits, only to take credit for the other group’s win. They are snake oil sales men.

  19. This country has never has a national presidential election. The rules regarding who can vote, when you vote and how you vote vary state by state. Our presidential elections are composed of fifty separate statewide elections that occur roughly simultaneously. It is entirely possible that the NRA made the difference in states Her Heinyness took for granted, resulting in Donald John Trump’s electoral success. I would like to think so. It makes me proud to be a card carrying member of the NRA.

  20. Geez all this sturm und drang…the NRA helped elect the Donald. The big dog in the fight as it were. They got the message out in Wisconsin,Michigan,Pennsylvania,Ohio ETC. Learn what realpolitik is…

  21. Nah.. President God King Emperor Trump won because Hilary is a terrible person, corrupted and evil, nominated only though political malfeasance, coercion and bribery, and the American people saw it, also DJT is charismatic, that helps.

    As to the NRA, maybe it could be a awesome organization, fighting for the preservation of liberty, but civil rights crusaders, they are not. The NRA is a bureaucratic organization that capitalizes on the fears of Americans for personal gain, typical of like governmental organizations (cough NASA cough ED cough DSCA etc.), displaying the perception of “Doing Something” all the while, accomplishing nothing, just wasting money.

    –“Let’s face the facts. Without the NRA Hillary would be President and Schumer would be the leading the Senate. The Supreme Court would be backed with young gun grabbing justices. The record number of judges DJ Trump has had appointed would be all to the left center. Imagine the 9th Circuit Court being the norm for the country as a whole.”–
    Let’s face the facts, if Hillary would have won, 100 million gun owners would have walked out of their houses to reconcile the miscarriage of the Republic, Civil War 2.0 would have sparked and the Nation would be divided. oohh..I can make shit up too.

    -INSERT MONEY GRAPIC.JPG-
    -“Just look at all the money we took from our donors and gave to POLITICIANS!!..”- as President Trump would say… “That is a terrible deal”

    -“The NRA, great at mass campaigns and talking to America’s 120+ million gun owners.”
    The more the NRA “talks to gun owners” the more the gun owners get pissed about being asked for more and more money.

    -“At the end of the day support the NRA or lose your right to own a gun”
    That is hilarious.. truly. Thank you for letting me know that the NRA is the only bulwark against the government taking my guns away. lol.

    -“So what did the NRA do to help President Trump? There is a reason white women voted in a majority for Trump.”
    That is just insulting to the demographic.. I don’t white knight.. I just suspect that the NRA taking a position that they directed white women to vote for trump.. is a bad position and many a women would take issue with it.. first in line would be my wife.

    -“We need to educate the next generation and recruit outside our comfort base.”
    Yes. but the NRA isn’t doing it, it’s other organizations at the local level giving tools to parents.. The NRA education program is just a nod.. ineffective.. more just “doing something”

  22. “If Not for FED UP CONSERVATIVES, Hillary Clinton Would be President. True?”

    Yes, true.
    The NRA didn’t do even half as much as they’d like you to believe.

    They WERE instrumental in getting Harry Reid re-elected a few years ago, though.

  23. “Do not make an enemy of the good because it lacks perfection.”

    That’s fvking rich. Good? Perfection? They’re neutral at most generous. Decades of caving and straight up give-aways, balanced against the occasional battle, and even more occasional win.

    You should put down the kool-aid Don, the NRA is hardly as virtuous as your propaganda piece would lead the uninformed to believe. Taking credit for the Trump victory? How much does the NRA pay you to type drivel such as this?

    • “Do not make an enemy of the good because it lacks perfection.”

      I prefer Vince Lambardi’s take on this age old concept – ‘Strive for perfection, settle for excellence.’

  24. For all of you trying to bash the NRA for tooting their own horns, this is NOT the NRA making this claim… this is the claim of ONE NRA member.

  25. Y’all are insane.

    The NRA went all-in on Trump, early on, before pretty much anyone else signed up. He was still a “joke” candidate to many.

    The NRA spent big, bet big, and won big. And yes, Hillary would have been President if the NRA hadn’t jumped in and went all-in. His support helped “legitimize” him as a candidate.

    Y’all who hate the NRA — I seriously don’t get where you’re coming from. They’re not perfect. But they’re the most influential organization around. The USA isn’t perfect either, but it’s still the best country in the world.

  26. Anybody doubting the NRA’s effectiveness need only look at how much the gun grabbers hate it!

    That said it was just plain stupid for Hillary to make gun control one of her big issues .It may work win votes in some liberal states and localities but overall it costs candidates a lot more votes and support than it gets them!

      • Sure gun grabbers would think the GOA is worse because of the strength of their pro-gun positions. But you don’t hear them bitch about the GOA anywhere near as often as they do about the NRA! Remember ther are other gun grabbers out there more extreme than Hillary. But they did not have over a billion in campaign funds, millions of followers and national recognition. As a result they didn’t come close to becoming president like Hillary did and represented less of a threat to us than she did (and to a certain extent still does).

        For the record I support both the NRA and the GOA!

        • The left continously brings up the NRA because they know they’re a paper tiger that can be beaten or compromised with. If they really were afraid of them, they wouldn’t give them constant publicity…

  27. “Do not make an enemy of the good because it lacks perfection.”

    The problem is that it falsely assumes the NRA isn’t good lacking perfection. The NRA is a rabid animal that sometimes bites our enemies instead of us.

  28. Excellent article Robert.

    There is no doubt Trump won (and Bush in 2000) because of the NRA.

    If Hillary was pro 2A (hard to imaging, but try for a minute) plenty of gun owners would have stayed home and some democrat gun owners wouldn’t have voted Republican.

    Michigan was only in trumps column by 10k votes.
    Wisconsin was about 20k
    Pennsylvania was somewhere around 40k, don’t remember.

    That’s only less than 100k votes.

    Trump won by a wide EC margin but the individual states that got him there were nail biters.

    GOA or any other no-compromise group could not have done what the NRA did.

    Many people have valid complaints about the NRA but that why it’s good to have them complemented by other groups.

    No one group can be all things to all people.

  29. Every little bit counted. The big reason though, is that Clinton made serious strategic errors that cost her an easily winnable election. She spent more time in states that either she or Trump had locked up than she spent in swing states. She arrogantly assumed that some of the larger swing states were solidly hers, and thus spent no time in some large states that ended up going to Trump by the slimmest of margins.
    Trump didn’t win, Clinton lost.

  30. Yesterday, Hillary spoke at some hoity toity college girl’s forum, and claimed she lost the election because of anti-female prejudice of OFWGs. Every time she blinks, she wakes up in a different world (or excuse).

  32. Ranchers have a saying where I live: don’t take credit for the rain or they’ll blame you for the drought.
    If I am going to give the NRA credit for Donald Trump, I’m sure as hell going to blame them for Barack Obama.

  33. I read nothing here but the title.
    I 101% believe that yes.
    Trump won in large part due to us the membership of the NRA.

  34. Who knows how many votes either party got, we were TOLD, but no one really knows. “The powers that be” chose Trump, why I don’t know. I don’t know who the ” powers that be’ are I think it’s the banks. Banks decide what countries to fight, what countries are poor and what rich, succeeds and fails. There was a time when this power feared a 2℅ working clAss in America, the banks worked hard at getting the farmers to expand their acreage, their production. They gave out cheap loans, then intentionally let the bottom fall on crop market prices, breaking the farmer, bailed them out with more loans. Why the farmers ?, it’s the one group whom could stop production and break this country in two years, ” the powers that be” could not tolerate that lack of control.Now the banks have the farmers controlled with foreclosure. They are in the process of eliminating the small farms, monopolizing it to large cooperation’s, many owned by foreign countries.Global economy is a bad thing.

    • Re edit– farmer to agriculture, I just didn’t want to type that much. ………….Oh by the way, watch the price of beef jump in the stores next month

  35. I think that’s the NRA enjoying the smart of it’s own farts (and I say this as an NRA member).

    Look, Trump won because #1 Hillary is a horrible, HORRIBLE candidate, and #2 generally speaking, Americans were sick and tired of leftist identity politics being shoved down its throat (especially in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc).

    Gun owners sure as hell did help Trump get elected, but this wasn’t because of the NRA. We would have done it anyways even without them.

    • Trump won a close election. The plain truth is there were a lot of horses pulling that wagon. As close as it was, he needed every horse he had to simply win by a nose. A few more thousand votes the other way in a couple states and Hillary would be picking the judges. Trump would have lost without the NRA. He would have lost without the rest of the horses also. It took every horse to win.

    • Clinton was the worst Democrat to run for President since LaRouche, and the worst candidate period since Duke. Only a Drew Peterson/Charles Manson ticket could have been worse.

      Of course in 2020, the Democrats might well run a Linda Sarsour/Harvey Weinstein ticket.

  36. NRA voters would have voted for Trump and against Clinton regardless of what the organization did.

    So, in this election the NRA had little impact.

  37. If the NRA was as powerful as you think it is then Barack Obama would never have gotten a second term. And while the NRA has done some good in the past, But its also screwed up a lot of things

    I can’t wait for your next article where you declare the Second Amendment doesn’t give us our right to bear arms, the NRA does!!! We all need to start tithing to the CHurch of Wayne LaPerrie!!!

    You are wrong with every assumption, on every level, And I am a life member who Proudly Voted for Adam Kraut.

  38. Jesus fuckin Christ, all of you, including the OP, let’s just all stand in a circle and shoot eachother how about. Instead of fighting and jerking eachother off we should all be getting together and working to keep congress in GOP hands. Even increase its majority, with real conservatives. It can be done. But if we sit around playing in our butts about the last election we won’t win the next one.

  39. The NRA played a substantial role. Trump probably would have lost without them. But he also would have lost without numerous other groups and segments of American society.

    If any of the others were not in Trump’s camp, he would have lost. All of them mattered as the margins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were relatively small.

  40. So, what do the NRA naysayers suggest we do for an alternative? I’ve seen a lot of complaints and a few good criticisms, but nothing to hang our civil rights on. Read the comments on this thread and ask yourself who would you select to stop the leftists. What would they do to organize our defense? And as you read the comments ask yourself who is writing them. What is their vested interest in undermining the NRA?

    • NRA cannot fit the need. GOA cannot fit the need. The effort is fragmented, with the same desire to survive as a single and separate entity, with an agenda to prosper, whatever it takes. Look at the anti-gun organizations. Do any of them have political agendas that are really different from each other? They all have one goal….removal of firearms from everyone but police, military, criminals and gangs. Now look at the pro-gun organizations. The agendas are in conflict. And there is no pro-gun organization with the singular goal of making the second amendment absolute, and unrestricted.

      The opposition is organized, and focused. We are not. The opposition has one view of gun control. The people of freedom have many. As should be expected.

  41. If it weren’t for HILLARY CLINTON, Hillary Clinton would be President.

    As the old saying goes, “How could Hitler have won WWII?”

    By being ANYONE but “Adolf Hitler”.

    Clinton beat HERSELF, her ONLY significant POSITIVE contribution in the whole of her public life.

  42. The NRA chose to support a New York liberal with a history of supporting Democrats that has no understanding of firearms issues other than his political insider ability to obtain a concealed carry permit in New York City… and then the NRA decided to campaign to have an unelected federal agency be able to ban accessories based on nothing but the fear that the peasants can’t handle the freedom… What a great organization…

  44. If you look at three “battleground” states where Trump won by razor-thin margins (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), it’s hard to draw any conclusion other than the NRA and its members put Trump over the top.

  46. Yeah, NO.

    Hillary lost because SHE’S HILLARY. She’s no only obviously criminal, she’s completely unlikeable, which is a reality even the talking heads on MSNBC acknowledged . And then she told the Appalachian coal miners that she planned to put all of them out of work, but not to worry because she would enroll them all in jobs training programs for jobs that don’t exist there, and we all knew that we were next.

    Guns were NOT a decisive issue in this last election – they never are in presidential elections. The decisive issue in 2016 was IMMIGRATION, specifically minimizing it so that working class natives could actually find a job again, especially in a field like construction. As long as Trump promised to build the wall and deport illegals he was going to win. As an issue guns were tied together with the promise to fill Scalia’s seat with another Scalia.

    And in the upcoming mid-terms? #The Storm. The Nunes memos and upcoming followups may or may not be the precursor to what seems like half the Democratic party being indicted, but damn if it doesn’t torpedo what was left of their chances when they have no viable platform and no rising stars. If things keep going the way they are and indictments actually happen, they will be rolled out most likely starting in late summer, early autumn. And the DNC will be obliterated.

  47. I voted for Trump not because I thought he was so great, but, because I so deeply despised H. Clinton, and I have met a lot of people who did the same. The NRA’s early endorsement of Trump was not a factor for me, but I think it may have swayed others. Mostly, I think, many people were so disgusted with Barak Obama’s failed Presidency, his Globalism and the several just plain moronic deals he made with foreign governments that they couldn’t tolerate another Democrat in the White house. Bluntly put, White, Middle Class, Christian America “woke up” and said “Enough!” It helped a lot that H. Clinton was such a rotten, piss-poor, deluded Candidate for the Dems and that the Dems essentially screwed Bernie Sanders and alienated the Bernie-Bros. Meanwhile Trump actually earned some support with Blacks and Hispanics and other folks realized that Trump could beat Clinton via the Electoral College and decided to throw their votes to Trump rather than wasting them on “conscience candidates” who hadn’t an ice cube’s chance in Hell of winning Dog Catcher, let alone POTUS.
    I think the NRA’s money helped Trump, but wouldn’t overstate their influence on the Electorate because so many factors were at play. Nowadays I am hearing the same people who voted as I did saying they still don’t actually like Trump, but they like what he’s done and is trying to do. Those folks also regard Congress as a major impediment to the “MAGA” movement and are looking for America-loving, Middle Class Supporting, Christian, Veterans Supporting, Drain the Swamp Candidates to vote for in November 2018.
    The NRA is singing the same old songs and dancing the same old “you gotta give us your money or they’re gonna take your gunz” gun grabber boogeyman dance and it is becoming tiresome. My membership is paid-up until 2023 and they’re not likely to get another penny out of me until/unless those old song and dance routines change to a more pro-Second Amendment aggressive stance. I don’t want a “bump-fire stock”, but it angers me mightily that the NRA tolerates outlawing them.

  48. The NRA had nothing to do with my decision. The fact is that Hillary presents herself as a lying, dishonest, disingenuous gun hating FLAME. The other factor, although the main influence was my extreme dislike for Hildabeast, was the lame-stream medias relentless anti-Trump rhetoric. The more something is shoved down my throat, the more I’m going to spit it out and resist. The lame-stream media screwed up, but the democrats screwed up also by caving into Clinton. Clearly the Clinton’s had power and that power enabled Hilary to be the Democrats candidate, even as deeply flawed as she was, The democrats didn’t want her, but they couldn’t get rid of her and she thought she could win.
    Running again Hillary? Oh please do. Oprah running? Oh please do.

  49. The NRA does more good than harm. They do have a very significant amount of political influence, and a modestly impressive war chest of campaign funds.

    But it might be a stretch to say they were responsible for Trump’s win.

  51. “No one else has the political sway to do what the NRA can do. No one.” Uh, in the context of this past election, most large organizations/interest groups do. That’s how close elections work.

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