Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a gun rights organization in the United States with over 300,000 members. They make efforts to differentiate themselves from the larger National Rifle Association (NRA), and have publicly criticized the NRA on multiple occasions for what the GOA considers to be the selling out of the gun rights movement.
The organization has often been in opposition to the NRA in their respective endorsements and ratings of politicians and candidates. For instance, the GOA was outspoken in its opposition to John McCain's 2008 presidential bid, describing his gun-rights voting record as "abysmal, wretched, and pathetic" and rating him with an F- on Second Amendment issues since 2004 as opposed to the NRA's (through its PAC, the NRA-PVF) C+ rating of McCain. The GOA took issue with the NRA over the 2007 NICS Improvement Act.
They have been described by Congressman Ron Paul as "The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington." This quote from Paul has long been displayed front and center on the homepage of the Gun Owners of America website, and Paul was the only 2008 Presidential candidate to gain an A+ rating from Gun Owners of America.
Read more about Gun Owners Of America: History, Goals, Branches, Recent Campaigns, GOA Victories
Famous quotes containing the words gun, owners and/or america:
“There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily
thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out,
and the mass hardens,”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)