Gun owners look beyond the NRA for representation

By LISA MARIE PANE
September 1, 2019

Bob Mokos is a passionate gun owner who on the surface would seem like a card-carrying National Rifle Association member.

The retired airline pilot has been shooting guns since he was a child. The Vietnam veteran got more serious about firearms as a civilian after one of his sisters was fatally shot during a mugging in Chicago. After the 9/11 terror attacks, he became qualified to carry a gun in the cockpit.

But Mokos has grown so disillusioned with the NRA over the years that he has joined forces with a rival organization — the gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

“The more gun owners I contacted, the more I found out that everybody is thinking the same thing: The NRA does not speak for us,” said Mokos, who was a founder of the Minnesota Gun Owners for Safety.

As the 2020 presidential campaign draws closer, gun control groups are seizing on the turmoil engulfing the NRA — as well as recent high profile shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio, and this weekend’s in Odessa and Midland, Texas — to court firearms owners in hopes of persuading them that there can be bipartisan solutions to gun violence that don’t infringe on their Second Amendment rights.

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