XL, my view of the volunteer/government thing is a bit different. I see people having to pay for the protection as a way to force people to take responsibility. The whole basis of public education is that everyone, from the parents and kids, the businessman who wants an employee who can read, add and subtract, the unmarried or childless who go to the nursing home and want someone to know what a 3ml syringe is, etc, profits from having an educated population. The volunteerism is nice, but somebody has to manage the people who are going to be armed guards. We don't need to open the doors of our schools to a bunch of armed Jerry Sandusky types. We will need a national database of licensed and trained personnel, and the database needs to work better than the one the Immigration Service uses. What LaPierre proposes is good, and I like his logic: we're willing to furnish protection for politicians and many others. Why leave the kids as sitting ducks in a "Gun Free" zone?
Regarding Charlton Heston, as an actor, he made a lot of movies I really like, such as The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Mother Lode, The Big Country, Soylent Green, and so forth. I also appreciated his lifetime of work for RKBA. But I felt that his "Cold Dead HAnds" speech was unfortunate. For the believers like you and I, it was a good way to motivate and energize the troops. But as a public relations move, it was a disaster, and made our movement into a caracature in the eyes of many. When he blew up in his famous faux pas on Letterman (I saw it) after Columbine, and when he was skewered by Michael Moore in the Bowling for Columbine movie, he may have appealed to gun people, but he looked to the American public like a replay of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial.
The sad part of this is that the NRA treated Heston like Elijah Muhammad treated Muhammad Ali -- he was left in the ring too long, after his skills dissipated. Heston had Altzheimer's and having had some close and unfortunate exposure to that awful disease that threatens so many, he was left to represent us in public after his presence became a liability. This is not to denigrate the man at all -- it is to note that the NRA did us or Heston no favors.
What we need now is a younger man, maybe an actor or maybe a well recognized military or sports figure who commands a lot of respect among our youth. He should be articulate and not resort to the buzz words we in the gun community do. He should be the sort of guy who can go on Charlie Rose or Fareed Zakaria and skewer the heavyweight antigun forces, but then go on The View and charm the ladies, as well. We don't need someone to preach to the choir and repeat ad infinitum what we all believe, anyway. We need someone who can go out to the non-believers and the unsure and show them the face of gun ownership that the media is not fairly presenting.
For instance, the news media reported (CNN again, I believe) that 75% of NFL football players owned guns, and reported it in a way that made it sound like these players were secret Al Queda members. Rubbish! Just today on the news there was this article on the news, showing JJ Watt, star defensive end for the Houston Texans football team, doing all kinds of really neat stuff for physically challenged kids. A couple of guys like that taking physically challenged kids out to shoot would be a wonderful way to show the fun of shooting to some really neat, but unfortunate kids.
That's the sort I would like to see on the public podium being the face of gun owners.
For India, the first person that always comes to mind for me is SRK -- he's always been someone I'd like to have over for supper and an evening visit, and he speaks very intelligently on TV. Or maybe a famous cricket player.
But the point is, spokesmen need to be someone that people find easy to accept, not someone who is abrasive. I hardly think too many people are swayed by vicious argument, or if they are, they may not hold the ideas very deeply. We need someone who people can relate to. I am reminded of the story of John Wayne, who famously supported the US involvement in Viet Nam and made a movie about it: "The Green Berets." Wayne was invited by a Harvard student organization to appear before them and speak. Wayne, of course, knew that the students intended to embarrass him and won them over. Read this if you are not familiar with the story:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2 ... 21,1300482
That's exactly the sort of spokespeople we need right now: someone who can take a ribbing, laugh at themselves, but stands up for our values in such a way that people admire him, even if they don't agree.