Oops. Forgot to cc this: How long do you think NRA management's "Winning" Team could continue suckering gun rights supporters into sending them $200 MILLION a year if they came out and frontally assaulted the right to keep and bear arms, rather than gradually undermining it while appearing to fight the good fight? I wish you were right. I wish it was just incompetence. Russ Howard www.keepandbeararms.com/howard

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I don't have the magazine in front of me, but if you'd like, I could scan the page and send you a JPEG or something like that of it. I don't think the NRA is as good a defender of the Second Amendment as it could be, and ditto with John Ashcroft, but at least they aren't trying to totally nuke our freedoms like Clinton, Janet Reno & Handgun Control Incorporated.

Jonathan Wienke

- -----Original Message----- From: Richard Stevens [mailto:dial911book@yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 7:51 AM To: Jonathan Wienke; freematt@coil.com Cc: George@Orwellian.Org; cypherpunks@cyberpass.net; Director@KeepAndBearArms.com; air.man@att.net; brian@citizensofamerica.org Subject: Mr. Wienke, help me out on this -- Re: FW: General Ashcroft make his move

- --- Jonathan Wienke wrote:

...

I get the NRA's American Rifleman magazine. The July issue also has an article about Ashcroft's letter, which does not quote the rather lengthy footnote. However, it does contain a legible image of BOTH pages of the letter, including the ENTIRE text of the footnote. This is hardly the action of an organization bent on distorting Ashcroft's view on the Second Amendment. Stupid editing on the part of the America's First Freedom team, perhaps, but not an organization-wide conspiracy.

Jonathan Wienke

Mr. Wienke,

I paged through the entire July 2001 issue of American Rifleman, and maybe I'm just blind as the proverbial bat, but I don't see the article to which you refer that quotes the entire Ashcroft letter. On what page is it?

The July 2001 issue of First Freedom is the one featuring the Ashcroft letter -- that I have received thus far.

On the point you raise: maybe it was merely a bad editorial decision for the one magazine. Fine, and we can forgive that. But, ask this question: in what kind of workplace environment could this kind of editing decision be made?

Remember that more than one editor had to approve the final copy. This is not just a typo. More than one person had to consciously decide to omit relevant material without telling the reader.

I have to wonder if other sorts of "editing decisions" that massage the facts and distort the truth are being made ... and we readers don't know it.

Maybe it was entirely innocent. Then NRA should promptly apologize, correct it and publish the full text in the following issue. Let's see if they do.

- --Richard Stevens

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