A poster on Calguns was kind of enough to ask me to do a condensed version as he sort of got lost while trying to read my word salad.
So I post here what I did there. I have a penchant for demanding, and rendering long winded explanations.
Plain and simple of it. Organize RKBA supporters into contributing to a Trust for as little as $3 per person. The entirety of the Trust being focused on California. One-Sixth of each contribution is added to the trust for later disbursement back to the contributor after at least ten years of maturing (it's not meant to be a lot). The other five sixths are used to create in part a self-sustaining Trust that uses the money of said Trust to engage in lobbying and election efforts in California. Focusing at first on Sheriff candidate's campaigns to remove sitting sheriff's who do not reasonably issue CWP to law abiding individuals. Later on lawsuits to potentially win back rights for Californians, and then even more later, unseat anti-RKBA in the state legislature.
Some may consider what I have below, to be overly wordy and for that I apologize. I just wanted to take people into the depths of it a bit. But sometimes less is more. Please post some kind of response so I may learn to better appeal to your perceptions and wishes. I'm working on a more sophisticated framework but I fear most readers won't have the attention span for it, and I've barely touched on the actual language of the Trust.
Moderators, if this is Activism please move it there and you have my apologies.
Ok, so I posted this on Calguns (I ordered some stuff of the Amazon store for a friend of mine's kid's birthday in two weeks and I'd been playing with this idea for sometime and got a chance to float it about at the Shooting Club I go to). I wanted the folks at THR to take a look. Warning ahead of time, it is very California centric. I'm a Floridian and plan to die in Florida, Alaska, or Montana when it comes my time from ripe old age, or preferably in some unmentionable part of Las Vegas with a big smile on my face. But I see California as the best testing grounds for what I have in mind. If we can make it work there, we can make it work anywhere as they say.
Read on:
I'm always pondering the next evolution in Pro-RKBA activism. I'm a member of the NRA (just renewed) and I donate to various groups like the SAF, and I used the amazon store when I can for calguns (I have birthday shopping to do in March, plus I bought all my fu-fu bath and body works).
But I don't really see anything that makes me feel like there's a voice for the little people. And I mean little people (no not height challenged). I'm a lawyer in Florida and I do a fair amount of trust and estate planning. Not that long ago I started working with a client who wants to leave half of his liquid wealth to his kids (widower), and have the other half plus his property used to create a shelter for abused and neglected animals. Mind you we are talking over two million dollars here in liquid assets and the house (4 bed, three bath) is located on five acres of land not near any real concentration of neighbors. Plus he has some other assets which he also wants used.
So naturally the choice was to create a Trust as I saw it. A trust which would be responsible for creating a non-profit (the trustee would do it) that would lease the premises of the property for the use of rehabilitating, fostering, and housing neglected animals (pets and some wildlife). It was a major PITA figuring out all the laws and assundries to make it happen and work right for when it comes time.
A point I made very clear to the client was that two million dollars would only go so far and the brokerage accounts were great but again would only go so far. This saddened the client who had spent years rehabilitating abused and neglected horses as well as training shelter dogs for use in Old Folk's homes and children hospitals.
There would have to be staff because while we would want people to volunteer out of the goodness of their heart, that's always easier said than done. The staff would need to be paid even if the house was being used as their quarters as part of their payment. Then there would be vet bills, feeding, etc. etc. etc.. The client already has over a dozen dogs in various states of recovery, foster, and retirement (two ten year old pit mixes showed up one day as a drop off and the client knows no one will likely adopt them so he hopes they will spend the rest of their days quietly with him).
So one of the things I suggested, that he ended up liking (since he knows lots of fellow rich people who love to donate to animal rescues) was creating a method for additional people to buy into the trust. Simply where a contributor makes a certain amount, say $100, as a payment to the trust. Per the terms of the trust, $30 is immediately set aside for day-to-day operations of the shelter-nonprofit setup. $40 is put into the Trust's investment pool (to grow the corpus of the trust to help the Trust become more and more self-sustaining). And $30 is put into a second investment pool (where the money is invested for the eventual purpose of repaying back the contributor at some point in time not just for their initial contribution but as a long time beneficiary of the trust).
I'm explaining this quick, simple, and dirty and that's intentional. There is a lot that goes into this and I'm not giving away all the secrets but I want the concept out there for our purposes.
I'm a Floridian but I think we need to fight the Pro-RKBA in a multi-fold way. In the courtroom, at the ballot box, and then in the trenches. The in the trenches mentality is very much about the ballot box so please follow-me as I get to it.
Just because their are anti-gun politicians doesn't mean there are pro-gun politicians. As far as I can tell in cases such as Connecticut and California, there aren't many pro-RKBA politicians. In fact they almost don't exist.
But does mean we should sit on our hands? I don't think so. I think we the little people should join in on the lobbying fight. We can take it somewhere the NRA can't and shouldn't. We can lawfully fight dirty without besmirching the NRA or even the Calguns foundation.
We can assemble contributors and donate to the competitors in districts where antis have long held reign. This unfortunately might mean contributing to an anti as well. But if one must suffer anti should one not suffer a new on one occassion instead of the same one time after time for the anti that remains in power, is the anti that grows in power. And the anti that grows in power is the anti we must fear most.
I seek to change that and I think using a Trust as part of a vehicle to do that can be done. Trusts create duties for the Trustees to abide by the Trust. To breach those duties is a breach of fiduciary duty and to breach that duty caries with it some still civil and sometimes criminal penalties. Now I like the NRA and seek to remain a member always (because they mess with the antis and sometimes win) but I don't feel like we own them, we the little people. And I think we should own something in the fight for the RKBA. This is part of how I would want to do it.
Follow me more here. The Trust would be setup to solely focus on California and it would have two primary goals and one secondary goal (more could be added later). The first primary goal would be to unseat Sheriff's in counties where getting issued a CWP is almost impossible. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the new guy will issue them but if the Trust group were to day contribute $500,000 to the competitor sheriff's campaign making it very clear why it is doing so. That newly elected sheriff is more likely going to realize that if he doesn't play ball somewhat, he can count on his competitor getting that $500,000 next election regardless of the competitor's politics.
But if the Sheriff does play ball, he can count on that $500,000 for his next election run, or that at least his competitor won't get it. And all the Sheriff would have to do would be to issue CWPs to lawful residents of his county. And the new Sheriff might just get a list of the Trust's beneficiaries and contributors, wink-wink nod-nod.
I would think focusing on one county first to make an effective splash would be the preferable. One that is easy as success that is easy is better than defeat that is hard. Just to get started.
The second primary goal would be to help fund court cases with good parties. I mean cleaner than a Nun's umentionables. Where a party is suing for their rights to be respected. This is a little harder and would want the beneficiaries to have voting block powers for the selection of cases (actually all selections but I'll get into that later). Law firms wanting to be hired would have to provide memorandum of what precedent cases (case law) they were seeking to cite, and the likely justification of their success. It sounds improbable but not impossible to me. Lawyers like money, I should know I am one and I very much like money (I'm not licensed in Ca. and likely never will be), so any firm worth its grit would have a heck of a motivation to provide clean and clear memorandums showing why its case should be funded.
Litigating a case can be very expensive and cost prohibitive, but also lucrative. Should an attorney win a judgment of attorney's fees it can be quite enriching. So in essence the Trust would be fronting the money for the litigation and possibly seeing its money returned (not always but there's a chance). Not a guarantee but something I think should be considered.
The secondary goal to me would be to influence state elections. Not the governorship at first, too bold in my opinion. But the state legislatures. The reason I consider it secondary is not because it is any less important or valuable. I just see it as more of an uphill battles.
All three goals would get publicity, heck just having a trust dedicated so would get publicity but the Sheriffs is where the most immediate changes can be seen in my opinion. Especially when it comes to getting CWPs. The legal cases are ones I think we need to fight no matter what but groups like SAF have that mostly in hand (we'd be like the third line in that situation but it's one where we need to bring everything we have). The legislature can be done in time, at first picking off those legislators most at risk of losing their seat so the publicity of our contribution to their disthronement can be seen with the greatest of likelihood.
I've been playing with this idea for quite some time, so bear with me. From there we need membership. The biggest issue to baring membership is of course cost. Few people want to lay out $35 for membership to the NRA, it sucks I know. So we make it simple. Membership would be based on a monthly fee of $3 (one less coffee at Starbucks, one less Big Mac clogging your arteries, one less piece of useless plastic filling your kids toy drawer that was made in China that possibly has a greater lead content than your gun collection). There are more options of course but memberships make things happen.
Here's the next kicker. Seventy five cents gets contributed to each primary goal, fifty cents to the secondary goal, and one dollar to the corpus of the Trust (to help create self-sustainability and ROI [return on investment). Once the coffers of the goals reach at least $250,000 each, then the lobbying and activism would commence. Bear in mind there would be at least $500,000 in the corpus at this time which would be handled in a Corporate Trust like fashion (I'll get into details in later posts) where half of the ROI would be put back into the corpus, a quarter would be broken up amongst the goals, and the remaining quarter set aside for the contributors (not a lot of money but think of the long term implications for a second). A contributor would have to either contribute at least $360 in total to have vote when it came to the trust, or would have to see their contribution mature for at least ten years.
And regardless of the amount contributed. The contributor would only have one vote but all the rights and powers of a Trust's beneficiary. So if some like Bloomberg tried to hijack it, he really couldn't despite his vast sums of wealth. He'd only get one vote. But someone who made a one time contribution of $3 could ten years after their contribution get a vote. See how it would help the little people.
This is just the rough mock up done quick and dirty for the sake of getting ideas. I was at my shooting club this weekend talking about it and some of my fellow Floridians liked the idea. Even if they only ever made just one $3 contribution, it would still count towards something, and their membership would never lapse, and if anything it would pass on to their heirs (so the number of members could grow on the spreadsheet every twenty years or so no matter what).
Can anyone tell me what they think of the idea before I get too much further into it. I don't want to overwhelm folks with info. This all gets very technical and complex very fast.
Thanks.