Remembering an Old Friend
February 1, 2005

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

When I came into work on Jan. 17, the Gun Week answering machine contained a message recorded at 3:30 a.m. that morning from Stacey Knox informing us that her father and our friend, Neal, had passed away earlier that morning at home with his beloved wife Jay at his side and most of his children.

The call was stunning although not a surprise. The Tartaro family had been in touch with one or more members of the Knox family during most of the previous week, well aware that Neal’s long and courageous struggle with cancer had taken a sudden and finalizing turn. After examination in the hospital following a sudden change in his condition, Neal was sent home in hospice care, with little hope for many more days.

Having known and worked with Neal for over 30 years and having read some of his writings years before I first met him personally I was still stunned by the realization that we had lost not just a friend, but that the most determined fighter for the Second Amendment would mount a podium no more, nor pen words to confront the enemies of freedom nor inspire its grassroots legions.

Because of Neal’s unique role in the firearms community and his early leadership in establishing this unique newspaper, we immediately set to work at Gun Week to not only report his passing but to provide a humble memorial of sorts. My daughter Peggy and I began checking old photo archives and Dave Workman was immediately tasked with getting comments from people who had known and worked with Neal. Workman ended up doing yeoman work on the lengthy obituary.

Needless to say, we were helped immensely on details by the Knox family, and by Neal himself, who had written a farewell message.

Of course, there were a number of phone calls to and from some old friends that Neal and I had shared, most of them no longer young themselves and a few grappling with their own or their loved ones’ health problems. But each such conversation helped evoke old memories of Neal and other veterans in the battle for freedom, some of whom had fought the good fight and had passed ahead already.

Of course, many of them were with Neal and me at the historic 1977 NRA meeting in Cincinnati, when the grassroots NRA members restructured the NRA leadership, under the banner of an ad hoc group called the Federation for NRA. Many misunderstood that battle when it happened and ever since. But Neal and I and others, who were in the Federation leadership, including Francis Winters and David I. Caplan, understood full well that there were actually two separate battles going on at Cincinnati and years afterwards. The one was a turf war about power in the NRA; the other was an ideological war about the vigor of the NRA’s defense of the right to keep and bear arms.

The truth apparent to Neal and I and some others was that both sides won. The turf war was won by those who were most concerned about organizational power and position. The ideological war was won by Neal and his cohorts.

Neal and friends got into the fight in the first place because we—and many outside observers—saw the NRA leadership in the early ’70s drifting away from a vigorous leadership in the battle for firearms civil rights, in spite of the formation of the Institute for Legislative Action. Regardless of who sits on the NRA board now and who are its officers, the NRA is never again likely to drift, or even think of drifting off course in the fight to safeguard the Second Amendment. It has been transformed forever from a hobbyists’ club into a social force which causes The New York Times and others no end of anxiety.

Neal didn’t do all that alone, but his writing before Cincinnati and his personal leadership helped bring about the true Cincinnati reforms, and the new steadfastness in the NRA is a major part of his legacy. He was one of the guys who was up testifying before Congress and fighting the political battle for gun rights long before there even was an ILA.

Of course, Neal was controversial. Heck, I had my own differences with him over the years when we were working together on various projects at the state or federal level, and particularly when he was head of ILA or a member of the NRA board. But the differences never divided us and he shared his determination to help inform and empower the grassroots of America because he believed political power grew out of society’s ground. In helping to build a powerful ILA and NRA-PVF, Neal would remind people that politicians were helped most by two things: money and votes. He understood that the gun movement could never match the money power of huge corporate donations, but it could outpace every cause in the number of votes and campaign volunteers that would work to defend the Second Amendment.

I’m glad that I last saw Neal in person at the Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) at the end of September. He had been a supporter of the unifying grassroots concept behind the GRPCs from the moment Alan Gottlieb and I first proposed it in 1986. He was there for that one and for every one of the GRPCs that he could possibly attend. Early last year, while undergoing chemotherapy, he kept inquiring about the September conference and told me he wanted to attend and be on the agenda if his health would permit. In addition to his formal presentations during the conference, Neal liked to network with the grassroots activists from around the country. He sometimes would gather a few together in off hours to discuss how they could help one another.

Over the years, I have heard detractors claim that Neal was "not really a shooter." Of course that was bunkum. We didn’t often have an opportunity to shoot when we got together—whether at some desert location, show, or formal meeting—but we did shoot when we could and Neal was outstanding with every gun he held. When we had a pheasant shoot following the 1987 GRPC in Buffalo, Neal collected most of the pheasants that had been released. He didn’t miss a one.

And we often discussed different guns and new developments in the firearms field by phone or over a meal. On one occasion, when Alan and I were in the DC area for a meeting and Neal was still living in Maryland, we all played hooky for an afternoon at Neal’s club and he gave Alan and I some great pointers on improving our skeet shooting. Neal didn’t miss a bird, but even after his instruction, Alan and I still did miss some.

I am especially pleased that I had a chance to visit with Neal by phone during the recent holidays. Despite some reverses in his chemotherapy regimen, he was upbeat and forward looking, and as warm and friendly as when he and Jay had been guests in our Buffalo home years ago. As always, he expressed concerns about the future of the on-going battle for the right to keep and bear arms, a topic which I am sure is still with him—as it was always in life.