The Liberal Gun Club Annual National Meeting

October 2024

The LGC National Meeting 2024 – Las Vegas Nevada, October 18-20th

We returned to Vegas for the 2024 Annual Meeting, which included training, fun events, and socializing opportunities with fellow LGC members. Our National Operations team knocked it out of the park again this year.

Attendance was down a little from last year, we had fewer but fuller classes, and the weather was truly uncooperative on the range. Cold and rainy in the desert? Egads!

Despite the 40-plus mph winds, our intrepid attendees still managed to complete the two full days of defensive pistol classes. Many thanks to Clint Sand and Alessandro Padavani for getting the work done and managing actually to teach stuff to people in that mess.

The excellent “Fun with Old Guns ” returned, where attendees sampled truly unique weapons from throughout firearms history. We can’t thank the volunteers enough for that experience, and it was a blast (pun intended)!

The BEST part was David Yamane’s Saturday keynote address, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Liberal Gun Ownership.” It was an excellent presentation, and the professor edited the video with the slides he prepared for the evening.

It is well worth the listen, so I won’t spoil the theme, but I suspect you will be nodding your head in violent agreement for the whole thing.

General, Press, and Legal Update

It’s also about how and what the club has been up to. It’s not been as busy as in years past, but things seem to have picked up as we close in November (I wonder why?). Our spokesperson, Lara Smith, gave this update for the meeting.

Notable Press and Publicity:

• We continue to receive interest in the organization from the press at home and internationally, including Le Monde, Scripps News, The Guardian, the WSJ, and the AP, as well as regional news outlets like the Boston Globe.  
  
• We were part of an in-depth article that took several range trips and was picked up by the AP. It was a nuanced article on why gun owners oppose assault weapons bans and got deep into root cause mitigation. We have also done several podcasts and in-person interviews, generating buzz on platforms such as Cape Gunworks and Active Self Protection.
• We participated as a panelist at the University of Wyoming School of Law’s Symposium regarding the reduction of suicide by firearms.  She spoke on the unintended consequences of gun laws creating a reluctance for certain populations to seek health care.
  
• We continue to work with the Convergence Policy think tank as a panelist on gun violence prevention policies that do not harm 2A rights.
• Lara has also personally been invited to participate in a panel through Tufts University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. The panel will bring together gun owners and non-gun owners to discuss harm prevention policies and strategies and reach at least some policy consensus.

Legal Briefs:

• The club remains a named party in the lawsuit challenging California’s extreme restrictions on places that CCW holders can carry.  That case is now at the appellate stages and has already partially succeeded.
• The club also was a party in another Supreme Court amicus brief in Ocean Tactical v. Rhode Island, challenging Rhode Island’s large capacity magazine ban.
• Finally, the club is preparing to file a briefing in challenges to the new Massachusetts latest omnibus gun law.

Instructor Education and Resources Update

As we mentioned in January, we appointed a new Instructional czar, Clint Sand, to help bring our instructional resources to the next level, modernizing how we do things and improving existing resources available to our students and instructors. You may recall he set 4 Goals for the year:

• Goal 1: Engage the Instructor Community
• Goal 2. Update and Modernize Content and Curriculum
• Goal 3. Build instructor competencies
• Goal 4. Drive awareness and demand

We have been revising our content, onboarding new instructors, and clarifying existing course offerings. Instructors should check their mailboxes soon for a full update. If you are interested in becoming an instructor, reach out and let’s talk. We always need more!

That’s it for now!

Many thanks again to our Operations team for an excellent event!

As always, join the conversation. The easiest way is to click the “Discussions” link at the top of this page and find your favorite way to engage with us!

October 2023

 WE ARE STILL COLLATING PICTURES AND STORIES FROM THIS LAST WEEKEND! WATCH THIS SPACE!

We’re going back to Vegas! Four instructors will be providing classes for us this year, and we will also be offering an Introduction to Range Safety and Shooting class on Thursday afternoon for new members or anyone who wants a refresher. Registration for this event is required for any of the classes.

As many of you are aware, the LGC Annual Meeting is our Club’s marquee event of the year where we come from all over the country to meet in a weekend of education, camaraderie, and fun. It is a chance to meet other club members and instructors, share, learn, get involved, and hear from Club Leadership about achievements made during the past year as well as plans for the future.

After you register for this event, hotel reservation information is sent via the registration confirmation email. Details on signing up for classes that occur during the National Meeting are provided via the same email. You need to sign up for this event before signing up for classes.

Registration link.

October 2022

We went back to Vegas for our first in-person national meeting since 2019! The last couple of years, we’ve had meetings planned in real locations, and COVID, for better or worse, had other plans, so we moved them to virtual, and they were pretty successful, but there is nothing quite like being on the range with friends, and turning money into noise, or being onsite with an excellent instructor, putting in training hours and getting real-time feedback.

We had a busy weekend, and the folks at Pro Gun Vegas were generous with their time and their range bays. When we come back to Vegas for another meeting, we are going to ask them to host us again!

We had 3 bays going both days with full classes, people got some good training, and got to shoot A LOT of guns.

Defensive Shooting and Close Personal defense with our very own, Alessandro Padovani,

Simulated Defense and Threat Assessment & Intro to 3 Guns by the amazing Amy Dillon,

two full days of Intro to Steel Challange with Reilly Bodycomb,

and an amazing Introduction to Black Powder, History of Firearms with Jim Downey!

We had  machine guns,

suppressors,

and of course, the star of the weekend was the replica Gatling gun!

It was an exhausting and exhilarating weekend. We capped it off with our usual State of the Club (membership is up, new merch is out, more outreach),

our annual award of the Keith Ellis Community Service award to Wisconsin’s Blake Alvarenga. for all his hard work spreading the word of the LGC.

Lastly, we had an absolute barn burner of a keynote from Michael Tinker Pearce.

We couldn’t have done without the army of volunteers that helped arrange things, Danielle Casey, Lonny Weissman, Blake Alvarenga, Paul Kronk, and Shawn C. from DC!

We hope to see you next year!