Back in the saddle again

I was informed today by KC3 president Kraig Keller that I had been re-elected to the board of directors of KC3 (the Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed) by a unanimous vote of the BOD.
This is extremely gratifying since I was the target of a vendetta by two of the outgoing board members who resented my pointing out during their tenure as the president and vice president that KC3 had languished and become almost a non-entity in Kentucky politics. Before they abruptly resigned this year, leaving KC3 without leaders in place, they pushed through a rule specifically meant to keep me off the board. Basically, if they weren't going to control the organization then they wanted to make sure that their sharpest critic couldn't be involved in fixing what they'd broken.
KC3 was founded by Tony Haubner of northern Kentucky in 1995 to effect the passage of a concealed carry law for the Commonwealth. Since the 19th century it had been illegal to carry concealed deadly weapons about your person, which exposed our citizens to violence without recourse to the best means of self-defense. I was one of the first four or five people who joined with Tony to put together KC3.
Working with Rep. Robert Damron of Jessamine county on HB40, his bill to establish CCDW in our state, KC3 quickly became a force on the political stage. We rewrote the rules of the media game and countered the traditional media powers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald Leader newspapers, with an effective grassroots campaign utilizing talk radio and a savvy approach to the media as a whole.
Sadly, after our initial victories in the first several years we fell into internal squabbles and bickering that split the group. As time went by, the organization passed into the hands of some board members who talked a good game but were completely ineffectual. They didn't show up for meetings with the legislature and they pissed away all the clout that we had built up. They made some noise but did essentially NOTHING in the time that they inflicted themselves on the organization. Fed up with their ineffectiveness and tired of fighting with them, I left.
Now they have left KC3 and a new board is holding the reins. I nominated myself for a place on the board at the annual meeting this summer and am happy to know that after today's vote I'll be able to work with the other members to get this outfit fired up again.
Despite our early victories in the legislature we still have much to do to make Kentucky an even better environment for gun owners, and to improve the public's safety. The universities and the public schools have been consistently hostile to personal defense and concealed carry. Our new goal, as outlined by current president Kraig Keller, is to remove obstacles to the possession of firearms by lawful, licensed citizens on school property.
The Israelis have shown the world that the best defense against lunatics who would invade our schools and threaten our children is the armed citizen or teacher. Now it's our task to convince Kentuckians that we should use the same logic here, rather than yield to the paranoia and fear-mongering of the teacher's unions and other hoplophobes.
If you live in Kentucky and care about your right to self-defense, you should seriously consider joining and supporting KC3. We're on the move again and we need your support!