Mr. Bugbee energetically objected to charts that we printed with a letter from former National Rifle Associaiton (NRA) member, Juanda Lee. In her letter "Bring back our old NRA" she said she had dropped her membership. We have focused this letter on his skepticism.

January 8, 2013

Dear Editor:

<…>To verify Ms. Lee’s credentials as an apostate, could she or anyone produce documentation in support of her important claim that for several years she was a member of the NRA? Without those credentials her letter is little more than a naive, youthfully earnest restatement of anti-gun sentiment. Perhaps an editor’s note…could have stated that The Mountain Enterprise staff was unable to verify Ms. Lee’s essential claim to prior membership in the NRA.

Mike Bugbee, Lebec

I have seen Juanda Lee’s NRA card and her stacks of NRA magazines that came with the membership. She is a retired deputy marshal for San Diego County. Her personal gun was a .38 revolver and she enjoyed target shooting. "I’m really good at it," she said in a recent interview.

She especially enjoyed your note that her comment was "a naive, youthfully earnest statement…." Juanda Lee was born in December 1923; she recently turned 89 years old. She joined the NRA in the 1990s.

But you are right, she said, that she is a youthful, independent thinker.

She said she watched the NRA organization transition from educating hunters and target shooters to a more militant effort to influence government policy and influence the politics of members.

Although a Republican most of her life, she says that is when she let her NRA membership lapse.

Juanda helped launch the Mountain Communities Boys & Girls Club when she lived in Lake of the Woods.

She is my mother.-Editor

This is part of the January 18, 2013 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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