Presidents Corner July 2010

Greetings KSRA Members!

Hope everyone is having a great summer!  If you missed the KSRA Annual Meeting and Shooting Festival you missed a great event.  A very good time was had by all!  We started off the public events with the Annual Membership Business Meeting and elected the Board Officers and Directors for 2010 – 2011.  I’m honored to be serving another year as your President.  And I’ve been very blessed with more and more members stepping up to volunteer their time and talent.

After the business meeting we presented awards in several categories.  Again, I was honored with the Volunteer of the Year Award.  I was deeply honored and those that were present for the presentations will probably tell you that I just about couldn’t talk I was so emotional.  Thank you for such a wonderful tribute in recognition of my hard and heartfelt work!  I was so proud of our members as I watched our Vice President, Terry McClure, present awards to our youth, Lydia Paterson and Caitlin Morrissey and to two fine adults, Steve McGee and Shirley McGee for their great accomplishments in their respective shooting disciplines.  Congratulations to all of them for a job well done!

Then we got to listen to great presentations by Senator Tim Huelskamp, Congressional Candidate Jim Anderson, Senator Derek Schmidt and Congressional Candidate Dan Gilyeat.  All great patriots to be sure!  We appreciate their taking the time to be with us and share their thoughts on a subject that we all find interesting and critically important – protecting the Second Amendment and furthering gun rights in Kansas.

The silent auction was a great success and the exhibitors enjoyed the meeting as much as we enjoyed them being there.  We had everything from guns to politics.  The KSRA debuted its new trade booth with lots of story boards and we sold lots of new memberships and merchandise.

A lot of attendees told me the highlight of their day on Saturday was the banquet.  It was wonderful.  We heard from Kris Kobach, Jerry Moran, Vicki Tiahrt, Todd Tiahrt and John Sigler.  It was amazing.  We could have sat there for many more hours listening contentedly and enjoying the camaraderie of the event.  At the close of the banquet everyone visited with the speakers and a good time was had by all.

Sunday at the range started with a bit of rain but it cleared before lunch and the cowboys showed us how it’s done and got the audience involved.  We enjoyed a great lunch and lots of visiting and shooting.  A big thank you goes out to the Central Kansas Gun Club for hosting our event! 

We surprised the attendees with lots of drawings and give-a-ways both Saturday and Sunday and then bid farewell till next year.  I want to give a very special thank you to Elizabeth Brown for spearheading this Annual Meeting and making it a very special one to remember.  She has volunteered to Chair the committee for 2011 and we are already looking at facilities.  We will be having the 2011 meeting in the Kansas City area and have many great things already planned.  Look for a detailed announcement in the next month or so!  And I want to also give a special thanks to Terry McClure for spearheading the range activities. These two folks deserve a big pat on the back for all their hard work providing a great meeting and shooting festival! 

As you are probably already aware, we have moved the KSRA headquarters to Bonner Springs.  Our new membership Secretary, Letha Paterson, lives in this area so it was the logical thing to do.  The new address and phone number is posted in this issue as well as on the website.  I’ve known Letha for a very long time and I’m sure she is going to serve you quite well.  She is very involved in the shooting industry which helps as well.  She will be in training with Elizabeth and I until the end of July and then will assume full responsibility August 1st.  In the meantime, Elizabeth and I have undertaken a complete evaluation as to the efficiency of the processes involved with our database management and record keeping and have been making many changes that will make the job much more efficient and take a lot less time.  We have also accomplished finding printers and suppliers for merchandise and materials that will save us a lot of money.  One of our tasks was to evaluate our merchandise sales and we will be discontinuing items that haven’t been popular and bringing on new items that we think everyone will like much better.  Keep an eye on the website for those changes coming soon!

KSRA is still in need of a treasurer.  This is an important board executive officer position and we take the job of finding the right person very seriously.  They must have full charge accounting experience, be able to pass a background check and credit check and have at least 3 business references to attest to the quality of their work in the accounting field, and, of course, they must be a member of the KSRA.  If you, or someone you know, is interested, please have them call me personally.

Our email list for receiving email alerts and notifications has grown to almost 1600 and our membership is reaching close to 3400 now.  If you are not on the email list, please go to the website and OPT-IN as those emails allow you to keep informed of current news and activities that cannot wait for a quarterly news magazine.

Elections are right around the corner now.  Be sure that you are registered to vote and go to the polls and vote in the Primary Election on August 3rd and again in the General Election on November 2nd.  And be sure to VOTE YES ON 1 for the Constitutional Amendment in November!  It is very important that we get it passed to protect our Second Amendment rights in Kansas!   Your vote does count, and this year could make the difference between taking back our freedoms or sliding down a slippery slope to a place that I know, and I’m sure you know, we don’t want to go.  We’ll be sending emails with detailed information on candidates and questionnaires have gone out to them. I will be meeting with the NRA Liaisons to participate in the endorsement decisions in just a few weeks and will email details so get on that list!

Enjoy your summer and remember the words of James Buchanan, "The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among freemen."

Yours In Freedom,
Patricia A. Stoneking
President