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How Do We Change This?

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I've been a member here for more than a few years.  My activity waxes and wanes as time and my current obsessions allow.  I've seen the forum grow  in to a cool little community that I was able to parlay in to some really good friendships and have in the past few years watched it stumble a bit.  
Currently the amount of ads and personal marketing/promotion by some on here has completely turned me off to the site.  It is a bit disconcerting as if I want to see crappy firearms videos and reviews I can easily find as many as I want all over the internet.  Additionally the lack of engagement by some of the "leadership" seems to have really affected the community as well (an example, I dm'd about becoming a site sponsor when I was trying to get my FFL and to this date have not received an answer.  It's been at least a year).  The current mods do what they can but at the end of the day, the only one that cares about "your" business is you.  So, I have not paid for premium membership and have tried to stay off the site for a while as it just bums me out.  

It's mostly just a rant.  But hell, NJ firearms owners are a minority group composed of some amazing folks.  I'd love to see it flourish and grow in to something better than I remember.  I'd love to see less divisiveness and more of us standing a bit more united and actually making a difference in the firearms culture and laws in this state.  

Feel free to flame me.  I'll be checking in on this thread but not commenting further.  It's the internet and really not THAT important to me.  

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I joined because I am a long-time Pennsylvanian currently "behind enemy lines" and I wanted to hear what the 3% on this side of the Delaware river had to say.  My cholesterol level keeps me out of the rather famous pork roll vs. taylor ham controversy, so there's plenty of threads I have no interest in and I  just "scroll on."

 

Be careful about change, since the change trend these days is cancel culture and banning speech that differs from what the left approves.  I suspect it will get worse before it gets better.  I hope I am wrong. 

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I'm not entirely sure what you would like to see changed . . . Crappy videos are par for the course on sites like no matter the subject.  I've been deep in gun sites, photography sites and tax sites beside the more typical social media.  I haven't found one that didn't have it's share of bullshit.  

On the "minority" side:  NJ does have just about the lowest gun owner rate in the country.  But, it's still over a million owners and as of last April, right around 15% of the population.  That number has grown.  I don't know what the current rate is but 15%, if everyone of us were reachable and voted on 2nd Amendment issues, we would be a significant voting block.  

Of course, what you get here is a tiny fraction of that one million gun owners.  For the most part, we are from the most passionate of that one million.  This would be a boring place if everybody agreed on everything but I do agree that a few have gotten out of hand over little tiny shit.  When that gets personal, we do need an adult to step in.  

I 've been here for about 6 months.  I don't think that very much here is a problem.

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FYI - are you referring to the "Slav Guns" videos?  Not sure if you are aware but that's the owner of the site.  :)

The ads aren't horrible in my opinion.  More than there were before but not overkill.  And it helps to keep the lights on I'm sure.

Have you tried contacting the mods again about becoming a sponsor if you are still interested in that?  Not making exuses for them but they are volunteers and have lives as we all do.

You should start re-engaging.  There are A LOT of new members here undoubtedly many of them new gun owners who just joined the NJ firearms community.

Could some of the "stumbling" be from the current political enviroment we find oursevles in?  Maybe.  NJ isn't exactly a friendly environement to be gun owner.  But it's part of our responsibility as "the old guard" around here to make people feel welcome.  To ensure them that it's okay to own firearms responsbily and **gasp** talk about it with friends and family.  

When I purchaed my first gun my wife didn't want' me talking about it at all.  But then we would be out with friends and they would talk about wanting  to become a gun owner but not knowing how to go about it, where to go to take classes or go to a range, what guns would be good to start out with, etc, etc.  She finally realized it would be okay for me to engage our friends and family about the topic. 

I don't think we'll there will less divisiveness any time soon.  Especially since the left talks about wanting "unity" but only on their terms.  What may occur is New Jerseyians who were on the fence or slightly anti prior to last year may start coming over more to our side.  Especially as many of them have now become first time gun owners.  Imagine what an eye opener it mus have been being mostly disinteresedt or naive about NJ guns laws and then suddenly becomeing a NJ gun owner.  The sheer number of new gun owners in NJ over the past year is a great opportunity to start having conversations with people who we may never had had the opportunity to talk to before.  It would be ashame to miss that opportunity.


 

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I'd like to focus specifically on the sponsorship request that fell through.  We're genuinely sorry about that. As someone else pointed out, everyone on the (largely volunteer) NJGF staff pitches in here as best we can. We do try to provide good service! Here's my recommendation: if any one of you going forward has a special request (particularly if you feel it's important/urgent), please PM at least 2 admin/mod staff members on that request. That way, if one recipient is absorbed with another project (or dealing with a personal issue, etc.), the other person can pick it up. Your request is far less likely to fall through the cracks if there are at least 2 pairs of eyes on it!  

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