Gun Owners of America at PSA The Gathering 2022 (Look Back): No-Compromise 2A, Constitutional Carry and the NFA

Look back: this interview was filmed at Palmetto State Armory’s “The Gathering” event in South Carolina in 2022 and published on the channel October 11, 2022. It is a booth interview, not a product review or range test. The political details below are as they stood in 2022. Some have changed since, and we note where.

Channel fans and family, this one is different from the usual gun and glass videos. It was shorts weather, and not because Pennsylvania suddenly warmed up. I was down in South Carolina for the second PSA Gathering, and the first booth I stopped at was the one I think matters most for gun owners: Gun Owners of America (GOA), or as I like to call them, the organization that actually has some balls. Jordan from GOA sat down with me to explain who they are, what they fight for, and how you can help.

TL;DR (as filmed in 2022)

Who: Gun Owners of America lobbies for the Second Amendment in D.C., in state capitals “and everywhere in between.”
The pitch: no compromise. In Jordan’s words, “shall not be infringed” actually means shall not be infringed.
Big state issue: constitutional carry. GOA calls itself the original advocate of carrying without a government permit.
Big federal wish list: repeal the NFA, and push back on ATF regulations they say turn honest gun owners into criminals overnight.
How to help: join at gunowners.org (annual membership). Link at the bottom.

What sets GOA apart

Jordan’s answer was simple: GOA does not give an inch. Their view is that gun rights have been chipped away over the years by Democrats and Republicans alike, and they are done with compromise. He pointed out that the late Senator Harry Reid called GOA “worse than bad,” and when the radical anti-gun crowd talks about you like that, you are probably doing something right.

I brought up the elephant in the room. A lot of longtime gun owners will tell you the NRA does good work but also compromises. We also got millions of brand new gun owners in the couple of years before this video, and if you polled most of them, they would probably say background checks and some permits are “common sense.” Honestly, when I first got into guns, I thought the same way. A little compromise seemed reasonable.

Constitutional carry and why permits matter

Pennsylvania was the example on my mind. Our legislature actually got constitutional carry through, and Governor Wolf vetoed it, which everyone knew was coming. My own take: I want people to take training classes, but I am 100% opposed to making training a requirement to carry.

Jordan agreed that being trained, safe and confident is something we can all get behind. His case against permits came from his home state of North Carolina. When COVID hit and people rushed to buy guns, they found out they needed a pistol purchase permit first. That meant delays, backlogs, and fingerprint appointments scheduled months out. His point: a permit turns a right into a privilege, and that is why GOA pushes constitutional carry, which simply means you should not need government permission to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.

Update since filming: North Carolina repealed its pistol purchase permit requirement in 2023.

The NFA, the ATF and suppressors

In a perfect world, Jordan said, GOA would like to see the NFA repealed and the ATF gone. In 2022, they were fighting the Biden administration’s ATF rules in court, arguing the agency lacked the authority to issue them and that the rules could make an accessory illegal overnight.

This is where I got on my soapbox. On the channel we cover a lot of suppressors, and shooting suppressed is the polite thing to do. In plenty of other countries you can buy a suppressor over the counter, and some actually require one. Here, with more guns per person than anywhere else, you still need a permission slip. At the time we were also seeing a lot of Form 1 denials, and nobody seemed to know why. Jordan’s response: the ATF is out of control, unelected and accountable to no one.

Where things stand now: the $200 NFA tax on suppressors and SBRs dropped to $0 on January 1, 2026, but registration and the NFA paperwork still apply. Suppressors are still NFA items, so plan for the federal process and check whether your state allows them at all. And after this month’s elections, the fights GOA talked about are back on the table in a lot of states. See our Blue Wave 2026 breakdown for what changed.

How you can help

My last question was for folks who are already members of other gun groups but want to help GOA take the fight to the government instead of always playing defense. Jordan kept it short: go to gunowners.org and sign up for an annual membership right there.

Our take

No matter which side of the aisle you are on, if you care about using a firearm today and owning one in the future, you have to take the fight to them instead of playing constant defense. In 2022 GOA was one of the few groups saying that out loud, and four years later the same questions about permits, the NFA and the ATF are still with us. If you already belong to one organization, it is worth looking at what a no-compromise group like GOA is doing in your state.