Below is the text of a message I left with the NRA-ILA at their webpage.  If you are an NRA member, whether or not you agree with me, please take a moment to give the NRA’s leadership your opinion on how they should handle the present situation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It was with some concern that I learned of the National Rifle Association’s decision to endorse Donald Trump for the 2016 presidential election.  Mr. Trump may not be a rock-ribbed supporter of gun rights, but this year seems to have a dearth of those. Considering his opposition in the other major party, I took it as the NRA making the best choice it could between two bad alternatives.

However, today I learned that Mr. Trump plans to meet with the NRA’s leadership to discuss ways in which someone on the government’s terrorism watch lists could be denied their constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.  I will not comment on what Mr. Trump’s motives are for doing this, but I will point out that this more closely aligns him with Mrs. Clinton and President Obama than it does with this proud gun owner.

In response to this, as a life member of the NRA, I have only one thing to ask you, the leaders of the NRA:

Please, tell him no.

Things are much better than they were as recently as ten years ago.  To allow the government, no matter who is in the White House and Congress, to wield the power to strip a citizen of their rights because their name appears on a secret list, with no due process protections, would be a huge step backward for gun rights, if not all civil rights.

Mr. Trump is asking you to work with him to find a way to curtail our rights.  He needed us during the primaries, and now that he has sewn up the nomination, wishes to put the NRA’s members on the bargaining table.

I ask that senior NRA leadership clearly and publicly refuse to cooperate with efforts to curtail our rights in this manner.  I urge you to make it clear that the NRA will not only fight such efforts in the Congress, but at the ballot box as well.  And if Mr. Trump insists on reneging on his pledge to stand and fight with us, then I urge you to withdraw the NRA’s endorsement of him.  If there is no other suitable candidate to support, I believe we should make no endorsement for president this year.  Instead, we should pour our energies to making sure that Congress is a bulwark in the defense of our rights.

Please, for the sake of our rights, do not mince words with Mr. Trump.  Tell him no.

Thank you for your time,

Tom Rogneby
Louisville, KY