Thread by @abrabelke

Working in government and politics, you develop a thick skin for the slings and arrows hurled at you by others.

But this morning, someone sent me a @daily_montanan editorial that was rerun by the @missoulian, and I decided this commentary required a response.

Like many Montanans, I grew up in a family of gun owners. Our family took target practice at the range, hunted game big and small, and learned proper gun handling from an early age. And for four generations, we were card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association.

The original mission of the NRA was firearms and education and training. It was later expanded to include supporting government policies that protect and strengthen our Second Amendment rights, which are essential to the protection of our other constitutional rights.

In 2011, I took a job as an NRA lobbyist. As a survivor of domestic violence, I wanted to strengthen the right of self-defense. As a Montanan, I wanted to work on conservation/hunting policy w/ groups like @DucksUnlimited.

But the NRA wasn't the organization I thought it was.

Wayne LaPierre and his cabal of insiders have turned the NRA into a cult of personality that insists on fighting an unwinnable culture war to keep the dollars rolling in. Because how else will he pay for his luxury vacations and designer suits? nbcnews.com/news/us-news/w…

After the Newtown tragedy, the culture at the NRA changed dramatically. There was no room for me in a group of hardliners who sold fiery rhetoric and cared little for good policy.

But a focus on constitutional rights doesn't make the checks roll in like conspiracy theories do.

So I left my job, ultimately left D.C., joined the board of @97Percentorg to support policies that protect the Second Amendment and focus on safety, and spent months talking to @timkmak for his book on how the NRA has been weakened by Wayne and his ilk. vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/t…

And while this is all well-known to those who know me, I felt the need to respond to today's editorial because it baffles me that a job I had a decade ago is being used to denigrate my character and paint me as an unrepentant, partisan extremist by people I've never met.

Read through my tweets. Talk to my colleagues at the #mtleg, both DEM and GOP. I'm a moderate who loves MT and is honored to have spent most of my working life in its service.

And in a state where many of my neighbors own guns for different reasons, it's laughable that my short time at the NRA equates to something tainted about my ethics.

But the peddlers of partisan editorials don't want that narrative challenged by reality; it serves them too well.