Know Where Your Candidate Stands
By Frank Miniter

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Rep. Duncan Hunter
   Campaign-trail commitments prevented California Rep. Duncan Hunter from attending the event, but he told the NRA members via videotape that if they believe that keeping and bearing arms is an important part of national security, they should join him in this race for the presidency. “When you elect me, you’ll have a real Hunter in the White House.” Hunter reaffirmed that Second Amendment guarantees are not just for hunting, but also for self-defense and protecting our communities and country.

Rep. Tom Tancredo
   Presidential candidate Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo told the crowd via a videotaped message that he is proud of his A-rating from the NRA, and reminded them that he is a co-sponsor of the legislation to overturn the D.C. gun ban. “I can’t wait until that lower court ruling is upheld, because I have a concealed-carry permit, and I’ll feel a lot safer, by the way, when I’m able to carry here in Washington, D.C.” Tancredo also elaborated on his pro-gun platform with his co-sponsorship of legislation that would make it illegal for the government to take away law-abiding citizens’ guns in the time of a crisis, such as in a post-hurricane Katrina situation, and reiterated his support for legislation that would prevent frivolous lawsuits from being filed in an attempt to bankrupt gun manufacturers.

Governor Bill Richardson
   Democratic candidate for president Governor Bill Richardson didn’t attend the event, but sent a video in which he said, “Thank you for allowing me to take this time to address the NRA Celebration of American Values. Responsible gun ownership, the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns, is indeed, a historically cherished American value and tradition. As a Western governor, I understand and support the Second Amendment. I am grateful to have received the formal endorsement of the NRA as a Congressman, and again as governor in 2006. This position doesn't always make me the most popular guy in the room with certain audiences. But the reality is that New Mexico has an age-old history of hunting, sportsmanship, and other lawful shooting activities ... . I have a long record, both as a congressman and governor, as a defender of the rights of citizens to own guns. You may have heard that I not only supported New Mexico's ‘Concealed Carry’ law, I have a permit myself.”

Rep. John Dingell
   Former NRA Board member Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.) recalled the days “when firearms ownerships and basic rights were very much under attack.” Instrumental in helping to form NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action in 1975, Dingell remembered the planning stages of NRA’s lobbying arm: “We had to have a combination of citizen action, fundraising, expenditures, lobbying and public relation activities of a kind and character that would, in fact, cause us to do the things that needed to be done, in the way they had to be done, and in a way which was effective. That was ILA.”
   Dingell also emphasized that NRA members best exemplify the mainstream values of America. “We believe in hunting and fishing and enjoying the outdoors. We’re patriots. We serve our country in time of war,” he said, “and we protect the great constitutional rights, all of them, including and especially the Second Amendment.”

Attorney General
John Ashcroft
   John Ashcroft took the opportunity to explain why, as Attorney General, he produced a landmark policy paper stating that the Second Amendment protects individual rights to bear arms. “…It was high time in evaluating this right, to make reference to the controlling document—the Constitution—and the intention of those who framed it,” he said. Prior to his time as Attorney General, Ashcroft said there were people who wanted to migrate the Constitution away from this concept. “They had gotten a number of people to declare that it really wasn’t a right that was inured to individuals at all.” A thorough 80-page opinion reflected otherwise, he said. “The most comforting thing about it was that honest scholars on both sides of the issue had to finally conclude—and some of them had to change their opinions to do so—that what was intended, what was embodied in the Constitution, what was enshrined there, was a durable right, and that the right is inured to individuals, not to state institutions and governmental institutions in particular.”

Harold Ford, Jr.
   Former Democratic Tennessee Representative Harold Ford, Jr. lent his support via a videotaped message and offered his opinion on pending gun legislation. “Right where you are today in our nation’s capital, law-abiding residents can’t keep a gun to defend themselves in their homes. That’s wrong, he said.” As a congressman, Ford was a co-sponsor of the D.C. Personal Protection Act. “The Bill of Rights applies to ever one, and the last time I checked, the District of Columbia was a part of that great country. It’s out of our hands now and let’s hope that the courts side with us.”

America Needs You
   Former Speaker of the House, Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, the final speaker of the day, infused an inspirational speech with constitutional reaffirmations and historical reminders. “We formed the Constitution by loaning power to the government, but the government does not have power over us, except to the degree that we loan it,” he said. After impressing upon the audience their right to free speech guaranteed under the First Amendment and declaring the unconstitutionality of the McCain-Feingold Act, Gingrich went on to define the Founding Fathers’ intentions of the Second Amendment. “It’s not, as some candidates suggest, about deer hunting,” he said. “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a political right granted at the core of the American system to ensure that the American people have a right of self-protection and that no tyrant can take away their power or can put them in a concentration camp or can kill them without mercy. It is a political right.”

   Yet this is not merely an American challenge, said Gingrich. “There is a worldwide effort underway by the left to strip innocent, law-abiding citizens of the right to bear arms and to coerce the United States by turning into international law a series of provisions which are a fundamental assault on the core values of the American Constitution and a fundamental assault on the core values of the Founding Fathers,” he said, and assigned blame on this assault to billionaire financier George Soros, “who has spent an amazing amount of the money he’s earned in free society trying to undermine the very freedoms that allowed him to become wealthy.” He went on to say that the United Nations also is today at the center of a struggle to try to strip from us the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by doing it through diplomacy “when they know they could never possibly do it inside the United States in a political system in which every effort to take away our rights has been defeated again and again.”
   To understand how critical the ’08 elections will be, Gingrich left no doubt that gun owners can’t rest through this pivotal election. “If the left has its way guns will not be an issue in the next election. They’ve gotten awfully good at hiding who they really are until just after the election,” he said.
   In the end, unless anti-gun politicians succeed in cloaking their views behind rhetoric, Americans who cherish their Second Amendment freedoms will defeat them, as polling data confirms. According to an ABC opinion poll 73 percent of Americans believe the Second Amendment is an individual right, and according to a Gallup poll, 146 million eligible voters live in households with one or more firearms.
   Yet more compelling, according to a Gallup poll, 33 million Americans perceive themselves to be members of the NRA, yet only about 4 million are actual members. For the sake of our constitutional rights, these gun owners must become NRA members so the NRA can inform them about critical issues and expose their representatives’ voting records. The time is now. Urge your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to visit www.insureyourgunrights.com or www.nrahq.org  to join NRA today—your rights depend on it.
   Read about these speakers’ support for the Second Amendment by clicking on their images at right. For full transcripts and video of many of the candidates’ speeches, go to www.nraila.org.