Are employees and visitors to the NRA HQ allowed to carry firearms?

Perhaps you could provide the specific link from which you drew this conclusion?

That’ll keep them safe from all the people who go shooting sprees. Except for the ones who are complete lunatics.

Oh wait…

The NRA believes, and has a respectable amount of evidence for, the proposition that law-abiding owners of firearms do not cause significant social problems when allowed to carry in public. You are free to disbelieve it, but their position is neither inconsistent or patently ludicrous.

↑ ↑ ↑ This

I am quite aware of what they believe and whether or not I believe it isn’t relevant to the point. But if they believe that, then why wouldn’t they believe the same to be true in their headquarters? People keep missing the premise of this conversation and repeating points that have already been made and aren’t really relevant to the conversation.

In any case we don’t even know if the premise is true. It’s looking like, in fact they do allow the public to carry in their building, which is something I’m inclined to believe.

Still waiting for the answer to my question: what links did your Googling find?

I found several message board posts with no cites whatsoever, then found the first link in Loach’s post above. I assumed since they actually called that they had the correct info. I didn’t scroll down enough to see the update.

Some of the confusion (the false information that the NRA prohibits carry at national HQ) comes from the fact that the NRA has indeed banned carry at their national conferences/meetings. IIRC, at least some of these were due in part to the location of the conference, either it was held in a restrictive state or city (like New York or California) or that the state prohibited carry in the particular venue.

The argument was then that the NRA should have only held their annual conference in a locale that respected the right to carry.

Asking for a friend, are we?

Might tell, uh, your “friend” to be sure to wear a bulletproof vest.
I imagine those people have little sense of humor on the subject, and very light-draw triggers on their armaments.

A question for clarification (from a newbie, just registered today) pls:
Do context and intent matter?
Though the offending comment clearly distinguishes a currently-unpopular-in-some-quarters religious minority, it is doing so in a way that, to this reader, is aimed solely at the Islamophobic types, and NOT at the minority themselves.
IOW, it betrays a sympathetic stance with that beleagured group.
If that does not matter, my conclusion would be that any mention of unpopular groups would be risky in this context – a lesson I will need to take to heart, if that is the intent.
No rush in this, but a response at some point would be most deeply appreciated, so I can be sure what the local etiquette requires.
Thanks in advance for any guidance.
Cheers

@Bricker: that was a most useful and pertinent data point.
Thank you so much for that contribution.
Cheers

Just to let you know, the conversation you have joined is from 2 years ago.

I worked at NRA in Washington, DC nearly 3 decades ago (as an IT consultant).

Back then, handguns were illegal in the District, though apparently you could carry them (unloaded etc, not “ready to use”). A coworker told me that there was a gun range in the basement of that building.

So at least back then, some employees possessed guns in the building - though nobody “carried” (either open or concealed) as far as I know (though if it were concealed, I guess I wouldn’t know :D). Certainly not the people I tended to meet with anyway!

Of course, open / concealed carry laws were much stricter then than they are now, and I suspect Virginia’s are looser than they are in the District. Dunno if that was why NRA moved out to the suburbs; that all happened a few years after my short stint there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were a consideration.
Interestingly, the location in DC was on the edges of a dodgy neighborhood (we came and went through a back door that let into an alley, and frequently found drug paraphernalia lying on the ground) so one couldn’t be blamed for thinking that having a gun handy was a pretty good idea! The neighborhood has since gentrified quite a bit; the old bulding is now a fancy hotel.

Welcome to the SDMB.

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