OWAA versus NRA: Writer’s Group Board Blasts NRA President
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
In the six weeks since the board of directors of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA)—an organization that some insiders suggest privately has “turned green”—admonished National Rifle Association (NRA) President Kayne B. Robinson over remarks he made during an appearance at the OWAA annual meeting in Spokane, WA, on June 22, a philosophical battle has erupted within the ranks of the journalists’ group.
Robinson was critical of the apparent anti-hunting direction being taken by the Sierra Club, and its association with the OWAA. Some members of the board did not take kindly to that, and voted 11-4 to write the scolding letter.
But the OWAA board took the action without consulting its members, and many of them are offended. Some critics believe the board “over-reacted” and have circulated a rebuttal letter critical of the board’s action. That letter stated, “OWAA is a journalist’s organization, not a political organization.”
The dissent letter became a de facto petition castigating the board’s decision to criticize Robinson. The letter garnered the signatures of 15 past OWAA presidents and more than 110 other members, and will appear in the August issue of OWAA’s publication, Outdoors Unlimited.
The feud was reported by The Washington Post and other newspapers, which made much of the OWAA’s attack on Robinson, but never mentioned the members’ letter supporting Robinson’s right to express his opinion.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre suggested to Gun Week that there is “much more” to this than just a spat over Robinson’s remarks. He said the feud is “a huge story.”
“There are some people who would like to do nothing else than split the sportsman’s vote,” he said.
Robinson defended his remarks, telling Gun Week, “My role at the . . . conference was to describe an NRA program, and then since Sierra Club had chosen to attack NRA board members and had chosen to offer the proposition that hunters should vote for ‘F’-rated candidates that want to ban guns and hunting, I felt it necessary for me to mention that NRA wasn’t going to go along with that.”
Robinson was finishing his general remarks at the session—reported in the July 20 issue of Gun Week—when he addressed concerns he had about the Sierra Club. Gun Week obtained a transcript of those comments, in which Robinson stated, “I picked up a paper at one of the meetings we had here. It says ‘Natural Allies—The Sierra Club.’ I was saddened to see inside, attacks on the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus (CSC), attacks on NRA board members Don Young and Larry Craig, a congressman from Alaska and a senator from the state of Idaho . . . attacks on Conrad Burns and Richard Shelby, two senators that are . . . all of the four people I just mentioned are dedicated hunters and leading supporters of hunting and of hunting lands and the Second Amendment.”
The article to which Robinson alluded called Young “arguably the most vicious enemy of fish and wildlife in Congress. . . . ” It also accused the CSC of “consistently (voting) to destroy habitat.” The original text appeared in the Sierra Club’s magazine in September 1996 and was written by OWAA member Ted Williams.
“Of course it is the Sierra Club’s right (to be critical),” Robinson continued, “but I point out that virtually every elected official that they discussed favorably in their literature is dedicated to banning guns. It’s pretty hard to hunt without guns. The whole program that they announced sounds suspiciously like the one announced by the gun outfit, Americans for Gun Safety—they want to ban all guns. . . . Their program is to hoodwink hunters into voting for gun ban candidates. If you want to hear more about it, the May issue of America’s First Freedom has an article called ‘Hidden Agenda’ that discusses it in detail.
“I don’t think,” Robinson concluded, “we are going to be signing on to the Sierra Club’s Natural Allies Program. In any event, you are all doing the Lord’s work and we appreciate it.”
Both the Sierra Club and NRA are supporting members of the OWAA, which has changed its logo, eliminating a shotgun and fishing rod that had been there for years. OWAA has also appointed a committee to change the name of the organization.
Robinson’s comments came during a breakfast that the NRA sponsored. As one observer of the controversy noted, “Just like President Reagan, (the NRA) paid for that microphone.”
Scolding Letter
The OWAA board discussed Robinson’s remarks, and sent a letter to the NRA president, “expressing our disappointment in your harsh criticism of fellow OWAA supporting member Sierra Club.”
“As much as the Outdoor Writers Association of America values its long and close association with the National Rifle Association,” the letter continued, “OWAA’s board of directors views your concluding comments as inappropriate in light of the spirit of cooperation which is the hallmark of our annual conference.
“While the board supports your right to free speech,” the letter stated, “we consider our annual conference to be a place of community, cooperation and communication for our members. OWAA’s board of directors asks all members, regardless of their philosophical differences, to be civil to and respectful of all members at our conference.”
The letter was signed by OWAA President Marty Malin and Ted Upgren, chairman of the board. It was not a unanimous decision to send the letter, however. The board voted 11-4 to send the letter, and OWAA sources indicated that Malin voted against it and Upgren tried to discourage them from doing so. Upgren does not vote except to break a tie.
LaPierre’s Comments
“Is it the intention of a faction on the board of OWAA to choke off the oxygen of free speech,” LaPierre questioned.
Robinson recalled that, “there were a couple of hundred people at the breakfast. My impression is that since a lot of people lined up for a long time to congratulate me, the majority of them agreed with what I said.”
He then added, “In the final analysis I’m not in a popularity contest. We’re a civil rights organization. We’re going to protect hunters and the rights of gunowners and we don’t need anybody’s permission to do that.”
Even before the actual letter reached Robinson’s office at NRA’s headquarters in Fairfax, VA, a transcript was circulated on the Internet. It set off a firestorm among some OWAA members, including at least three past presidents of the organization. Gun Week learned that some members had resigned and former president Mark Sosin, who served in 1977, said, “It would not surprise me if we lost some good supporting members over this.”
Upgren told Gun Week that the board’s decision was “pretty much an internal matter.”
“The board reacted to what they felt were harsh criticisms (of the Sierra Club),” he explained.
To which LaPierre countered, “The thing that puzzles me about it is that if they were upset about what Robinson said, why weren’t they upset at the flyer circulated by the Sierra Club?”
Upgren described the board action as a matter of promoting courtesy on the part of one supporting member toward another. Upgren said when the board met, Robinson’s remarks were the only thing that was discussed.
“We felt we had to address it,” he said.
OWAA Letter Writer
OWAA Director Pat Wray, an Oregon-based outdoor writer, told Gun Week that he drafted the Robinson letter and insisted that it “simply addressed appropriate behavior in a meal setting.”
“The same action would have been taken had the Sierra Club verbally attacked the NRA in that same venue,” he contended.
At least one OWAA member has sent Wray an e-mail promising to vote against his re-election to the board, and also to vote against the other 10 directors who agreed to send the letter to Robinson.
Upgren insisted that OWAA is not trying to take sides against the NRA. He could not say whether the OWAA board would similarly vote to send a letter to any group that might criticize the NRA at a future convention.
“The last thing we’re doing,” he said, “is trying to pick a fight with the NRA on this issue.”
Upgren, who said he had been “in and out of the NRA at least a half-dozen times,” said OWAA has considerable respect for the gun rights association.
“NRA is pretty direct,” he said, “they tend to be in your face. People have a love-hate relationship with them. That’s what I have with them.”
As for the letter to Robinson, Upgren explained, “We hope all it does is what the board hoped it would do, is make Kayne aware that OWAA was disappointed in the way he broached his remarks. And that’s, as far as we’re concerned, as far as it goes.”
Sosin told Gun Week, “I read the remarks of Kayne Robinson several times, and I found nothing in there offensive.”
Dissent Letter
Two other past OWAA presidents, Betty Lou Fegely and Laura Lee Dovey, fired off a “Letter of Dissent” to the OWAA board and members in which they expressed “strong opposition” to the letter to Robinson. Their letter quickly garnered 128 signatures including 15 from past OWAA presidents, and amounted to a stinging rebuke of the OWAA board.
Fegely also has received dozens of e-mails supporting the dissent letter.
In their letter, Fegely and Dovey wrote, “We acknowledge that Mr. Robinson’s comments may have offended some of the OWAA members in attendance, and that some members disagree with Mr. Robinson’s comments and beliefs and the position of the NRA. However, the OWAA is a journalist’s organization, not a political organization. Neither is the OWAA a group of mediators. We are a group of communicators who should embrace discussion, debate, differences of opinion and the rights of American’s, on every side of an issue, to speak their minds openly.
“Although many will debate this as a NRA vs. Sierra Club issue,” they continued, “or a guns and hunting vs. conservation issue, the salient question and debate centers on what OWAA is and if the decision of the board of directors, in fact, represents the majority of the OWAA membership and the best interests of the organization.
“We believe,” they stated, “the OWAA is a journalist’s organization, do not feel the decision fairly represents the feelings of the majority of the membership or the foundations upon which the OWAA was founded. Further, we believe the decision was based upon emotion and personal opinions, not with the best interests of the organization as the primary focus.”
Virtually echoing those comments, Sosin told Gun Week, “If I had to guess, I’m not sure that the vote of the board would represent the vote of the general membership if a vote of the general membership had been taken.”
OWAA ‘Diversified’
Fegely told Gun Week that, “we made a decision years ago to diversify and we’re doing that and we’re spreading out in order to get young people into the association, and keep this process of sharing ideas and (keeping) hunting and fishing and the shooting sports alive.”
OWAA was actually founded by outdoor writers of another era, the “hook-and-bullet” people who typically wrote about hunting, guns, fishing and tackle. In those days, an outdoor writer was someone who pulled a trigger or wet a line. Nowadays, the definition has expanded to include writers who may not fish, hunt or shoot a gun, but instead write about hiking, mountain bikes, bird watching, camping and outdoor cooking, rock climbing or any number of other so-called outdoor sports.
There is a concern among some members and OWAA supporters, who spoke to Gun Week on condition of anonymity, that the organization of “outdoors journalists” has taken a turn to the left and changed its colors from blaze orange and camo to a very soft green. The fact that the Sierra Club is an OWAA supporter causes some unease, as noted in at least one e-mail obtained by Gun Week which complained that at least one member of the Sierra Club board of directors, Paul Watson, is a radical environmentalist. Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Society. The vessel Sea Shepherd has been involved in ramming whaling vessels. He is now captain of the Farley Mowat, a Sea Shepherd vessel. An alleged attempt by Watson to help other environmentalists gain control of the Sierra Club board last year failed.
Watson allegedly wanted to turn the Sierra Club against hunting, using the club’s $95 million budget “to address these issues.”
Rep. Young told Gun Week that “in my 32 years (in Congress) they cannot show me where they voted for hunting on public land.”
He contended that pushing to close public land to hunting is part of a broader, more sinister scheme by environmentalists.
“Every acre not available to hunting, means one less hunter, one less gunowner and one less person to support the Second Amendment,” he asserted. “That’s what this is all about.”
Fegely is not concerned that OWAA will be split apart, or be taken over by environmentalists.
“I’m not an alarmist who sees the demise of this organization due to diversity,” she stated.
However, she is “absolutely offended” by the OWAA letter to Robinson.
“I’m offended that they took that stand,” she said, “speaking for the organization on something that should have been handled by a phone call. . . . I absolutely do not like what the board did and I am not afraid to speak out.”
Fegely could not predict what the membership will think when it reads the board’s letter and the rebuttal in the August Outdoors Unlimited. She acknowledged that the board’s action was far more alarming than changing the OWAA logo, and she predicted that the organization’s internal feud will continue to fester.
“I don’t think this is going to be anywhere near settled anytime soon,” she said. “It’s going to take weeks and months. . . . It will help tell us the direction of OWAA. Whatever it is, it’s going to be a defining moment. The logo discussion was on us for 20 years. . . . This to me was far more important and earth shattering than the logo change. This speaks far more to who we are than the logo does.”
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