Friday at the NRA Convention

I had a great time today at the 2009 NRA Annual Meeting here in Phoenix Arizona. I spent a lot of time today with Eric Shelton (of the Handgun Podcast) & Carl (of the Gun Dudes Podcast) which was a lot of fun in itself, both are great guys and were a lot of fun to hang around. As an extra bonus Eric even gave me a Handgun Podcast T-shirt which was great.

I started out the day at the NRA Grassroots Workshop, which set a new record turnout with over double the size of their workshop from last year. All the speakers were great, and we had surprise visits from Wayne LaPierre & Chris Cox which was really fun for me due to the fact that Eric & I were practically on the front row. If you don't believe me, I have photographic evidence.

Dave Kopp was at the table next to ours, and true to his word he gave Eric & I AZCDL pin's. If you're an AZCDL member & you run into any of the AZCDL leadership this weekend they will give you an AZCDL pin.

In the afternoon a group of us went to watch the NRA Celebration of American Values. There were a lot of good speeches given, but my favorites were given by Wayne LaPierre, Governor Haley Barbour, Ken Blackwell, John Bolton, Dick Morris, Michael Reagan, Mitt Romney, and Michael Steele. Once they're available in the NRA Archive I think you'd enjoy listening to them.

After the Celebration of American Values was over we headed over to the NRA Press Office to spend an hour with Cam Edwards of NRA News. He gave us the inside scoop on some of the exciting new changes that will be taking place on the NRA News website that will make it easier for us to search for & link to specific segments of his nightly gun rights news program. He also shared advice on how to plan audio interviews & podcast segments for the podcasters in our group. Thanks Cam!

We rounded up the day by hanging out with Michael Bane and his sponsors. What a fun evening. I enjoyed chatting with Michael Bane as well as representatives from Smith & Wesson, Tactical Solutions, and Insight Tech-Gear, not to mention lots of fellow bloggers. I even came away with some free T-shirts & hats, which are always a fun thing to get. While there I met Yamil Sued of HotGunShots.com & saw some of his action photos on his ipod. Amazing photography and a very friendly guy.

A fun packed day, and I have not even been onto the NRA Exhibit floor yet! Saturday morning the exhibit floor will be my first stop. I don't plan to leave the exhibit until I see everything there or they kick me out, whichever comes first.

As I find things of interest on the exhibit floor I'll be updating my twitter feed & will be uploading photos to my flickr stream & facebook. You can also follow other bloggers here at 2ablogbash.com. If you can't go there yourself, come along with me & enjoy the fun!