RSWC #221, Mark Oliva, NSSF, Managing Director of Public Affairs

Riding Shotgun With Charlie
#221
Mark Oliva
NSSF, Managing Director of Public Affairs

Heading down to Virginia for a few other shows, I was able to connect with Mark Oliva. He’s been on my radar as a potential passenger for sometime. I met him last year at SHOT. You can’t miss him. He wears a big cowboy hat. Many others do, too. But he has an NSSF badge that says “All Access.” We were able to meet at an “undisclosed location” in Northern Virginia. His job at NSSF takes him into DC regularly.

We start off with some Range Day benefits, like Mark being able to figure out what he wants on his Christmas list. Then we cover talking about taking new folks shooting and shopping for their first gun. And why it’s important for ranges to have family friendly facilities and not just a five gallon bucket for a portable bathroom. If we want to get more people into the shooting sports, then we need to make it more comfortable and enjoyable for them. If places aren’t welcoming to women, he calls it the “hey, little lady complex.” He and his wife, a former Marine, went to one of those ranges and his wife outshoot everyone else in the class.

Mark was born in New England and went into the Marine Corps right out of high school. He spent 25 years serving the country. He’s lived all around the country while serving. And picked up a drawl living in the Carolinas. He got orders to work on Capitol Hill and then he was offered a position at the NSSF. Summing up one career into the other, he says that he went “from one big gun club to another.”

With his current position at NSSF as the Managing Director of Public Affairs, he’s on 24/7. He’s got two phones; a personal and a work phone. When the work phone rings, he has to answer it. Any day. Any time. Because he has to be knowledgeable about everything that’s going on, he says he knows “a lot about a lot of things but it’s hard to drill down and become a subject matter expert.” His job in the military was also in public affairs, so this was an easy transition. He enjoyed talking about the Marines and wanted the same thing in his other career.

I do love it when people say the 2A events around the country, SHOT, NRA AM, GRPC, are a family reunion. It is exciting to go to these events, but it’s just as important to see and catch up with friends that we’ve made and the relationships we’ve built. Mark says the folks at the NSSF, no matter what they do, love hunting and shooting and keeping the firearm industry going and thriving.

Mark talks about how he doesn’t give any credence to the media who want to take our rights away. So he can and does have to be firm with them. With everything that is going on, he can’t walk blindly into conversations with reporters. When he has these discussions, he’s got to have the facts to refute some of the untruths that reporters throw at him.

We talk about how big the industry is, but also about how small it is. He runs into people that are with one company, then move to another company doing the same thing. All these folks, the movers and shakers, know each other. It’s a bit like the six degrees of separation. Or as I’ve heard it called, the Olympic rings of the gun community.

I ran into Mark at SHOT last week. He was wearing a cowboy hat. Shocking, I know. He’s all over making sure everyone is getting the things they need and taken care of. SHOT week is really the NSSF’s Super Bowl of the shooting and outdoor industry. Everyone is on the go, on their feet, from sunup to way after sundown. And it’s always a great week!

Favorite quotes:

“You come out to SHOT Show, you can’t buy anything at the show. But man this is a great place to make a Christmas list.”
“It was really easy and natural for me to have that kind of job, so why would I not want to do that in my next career?”
“When it comes to the facts, you’ve got to have a good solid knowledge of those facts, and a handle on those facts.”
“You’ve seen Justice Thomas repeatedly say that the lower courts are denigrating the Second Amendment to a second class right. And he’s frustrated with it.”

NSSF Website