Remember the tidal wave that devastated Indonesia seven years ago?

While Americans sat down to Christmas dinner, an earthquake off Sumatra sent a tsunami racing across the ocean faster than a 747, and carrying more energy than 1,500 Hiroshima bombs.

As the wave approached the coast, it slowed and rose into a wall of water that was 100 feet high in some places. It then plowed inland like a derailed train, bulldozing villages, flattening forests, drowning, destroying and washing away everything.

The Indonesians never saw it coming, so they weren’t able to act to save themselves. By the time they tried, disaster was upon them. As a result, nearly 250,000 men, women and children who might have been saved—if only they had taken action in time—were killed.

Today in the United States, just as in Indonesia, too many Americans don’t see—or don’t recognize—the tidal wave that’s bearing down on our nation and our freedoms.

If we don’t warn our fellow Americans in time, disaster could be upon us on Election Day—just nine short months from now.

That’s why I wrote to you last November and again this month, calling on you to help alert, educate and mobilize the American people to defeat Barack Obama before he dismantles our Second Amendment freedom—and all of our freedoms as Americans—completely and forever.

If, like thousands of other informed, active and patriotic Americans, you already responded to my letter, I thank you. If not, I urge you to renew or upgrade your NRA membership or make a contribution toward defending freedom now.

We’re running out of time.

That’s why NRA is “All In” for the 2012 election, and why you must be “All In” with the NRA.

Most Important Election In U.S. History

It might seem like a stretch to compare an election to one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.

This year’s election could prove the most disastrous in the history of this country. Why? Because this election will decide whether Americans remain free.

There’s no simpler, more accurate or exact way to say it—it’s all or nothing.

Either we defeat Barack Obama and retain all the benefits of our pro-gun victories over the past 30 years—from the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, to the Right-to-Carry revolution, Castle Doctrine, hunter protection and landmark victories in the U.S. Supreme Court—or we lose this election and lose it all.

Everything you and I, and gun owners across America have fought to achieve over the past three decades could be lost as a result of just one presidential election.

It’s not just firearm freedom that’s endangered—all of our freedoms are on the line.

In so many ways, Obama is leading our country straight to the dependence, lawlessness, unchecked government power—and the tyranny it invariably leads to—from which our Founding Fathers fled, and most feared and tried to prevent from ever returning to America by writing our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

That’s what I mean when I say “all or nothing.” This year’s election will literally be a struggle for the survival of freedom in America.

And America’s first freedom—your Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms—is very likely the first that will fall as a result of Obama’s re-election.

After all, Obama has spent his entire career seeking to effectively eliminate your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. History proves it.

Obama’s Secret War On Second Amendment Freedom

Obama won’t admit his anti-gun agenda, but his record speaks for itself.

Within a week of his election to the White House in 2008, Obama’s “transition team” posted several elements of his gun-ban agenda on the Internet—at change.gov—but then abruptly deleted the web page.

Since then, whenever the Obama administration has dropped its guard and revealed its true intent to ban firearms, it has quickly backed down to restore a facade of sanity.

For example, in 2009, less than a month after he was confirmed as attorney general, Eric Holder admitted that his boss wanted to ban your semi-automatic firearms. Then he quickly backed off.

In 2010, top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency told anti-hunting activists the agency had the power to impose a ban on your lead ammunition. Then they quickly backed off.

In 2011, the Department of Interior announced that it was considering bans to stop you from target shooting on public lands. Then it quickly backed off.

The motive behind this madness is clear. Obama and company are engaged in a conspiracy of public deception intended to:

1. Lull gun owners into a false sense of security to decimate the ranks of groups like the NRA and neutralize gun owners as a political force in elections and, thereby;

2. Win re-election to a second term in the White House, at which point they will be immune from elections and free to consolidate and misuse their ever-increasing power to;

3. Excise the Second Amendment from our Bill of Rights forever through legislation, litigation, regulation, executive orders, judicial fiat, international treaties and every lever of unchecked power that they can wrest from all three branches of government.

And the key to their success lies in keeping gun owners like you in the dark.

Make no mistake: Barack Obama has spent his entire political career engaged in a stealthy assault on your Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

• 1996: Obama endorsed a total ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of all handguns.
• 1998: Obama endorsed a ban on the sale or transfer of all semi-automatic firearms.
• 1999: Obama supported a 500 percent increase in federal taxes on ammunition.
• 2003: Obama voted to ban single-shot, over-under and side-by-side shotguns.
• 2004: Obama said the right to carry should be banned nationwide.

Obama even said you shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun in your home for self-defense!

It’s true: Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Washington, D.C.’s ban on firearms in the home for self-defense, Obama had the gall to say that the ban was constitutional.

Worse yet, when the Illinois legislature voted on a bill that would exempt residents from prosecution for violating a local handgun ban if they used their handguns for self-defense in their own homes, Obama voted against the bill!

Once in the White House, Obama filled his cabinet with the most rabid anti-gun and radical anti-hunting extremists ever seen in Washington.

When he was Bill Clinton’s “gun czar” in 1998, Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel led the charge for a massive new ban on imported semi-auto rifles. One of his henchmen bragged at the time, “We’re bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.”

Obama’s “regulation czar” Cass Sunstein is an animal “rights” zealot who believes hunting should be outlawed and animals should have the “right” to file lawsuits.

Attorney General Eric Holder was the Clinton administration’s point man on gun control, and he filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Supreme Court’s historic Heller case claiming that you have no individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms!

That’s just the beginning.

As soon as he had the chance, President Obama set about stacking the U.S. Supreme Court with anti-gun justices he could trust to reverse our monumental victories in the Heller and McDonald cases.

Judging from their anti-gun histories, it appears that’s exactly what Obama’s nominees—Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—will do. They are among the most rabidly anti-gun U.S. Supreme Court justices in American history.

I could fill 10 more pages detailing how Barack Obama has positioned his chess men to deliver the death blow to your Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but my point is this:

Our freedoms cannot and will not survive four more years of Obama.

In the 2012 election, the Supreme Court and, therefore, the Second Amendment, hang in the balance. Victory, and the survival of Second Amendment rights, is possible only if gun owners work together to defend their rights.

That’s the Spirit of 1776, and it’s the lesson of 1976. The year of our national bicentennial was the year of the most important Second Amendment election in 200 years of American independence. The story of that election provides guidance for today—and highlights the dangers that lie ahead.

Enactment of a handgun ban by the District of Columbia City Council in 1975 was intended to start a national trend. So in 1976, a handgun confiscation initiative appeared on the statewide ballot in Massachusetts.

It was proposed that authorities confiscate all handguns in the state, including BB guns. Gun owners would have six months to surrender their firearms, after which they would face a mandatory year in prison for owning a handgun.

The confiscation law seemed poised to pass. The most liberal state in the nation, Massachusetts—along with the District of Columbia—was the only place that had given its electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. (McGovern had run on a platform calling for a national ban on all handguns considered “unsuitable for sporting purposes.”)

Most of the Massachusetts media strongly supported a handgun ban. The Boston Globe, whose reach extends throughout the relatively small state, vehemently opposed handgun ownership. So did the television stations in Boston.

Early polling suggested that a handgun ban would pass handily. Further, in the 1974 election, voters in several state legislative districts had overwhelmingly supported measures instructing their state legislators to vote for strict anti-gun legislation.

Massachusetts gun laws were already among the most severe in the nation, requiring permission from local law enforcement officials before the purchase of any firearm; allowing local law enforcement agencies to set conditions on the possession or use of that firearm (e.g., the gun must be stored unloaded and may not be used for self-defense); and demanding all guns be registered.

The leader of the “People vs. Handguns” organization was the popular Republican John Buckley, the sheriff of Middlesex County. Buckley was fresh off a 1974 win against a pro-gun challenger. Alongside Buckley was Robert diGrazia, the police commissioner of Boston who was appointed by the staunchly anti-gun Boston Mayor Kevin White.

At the insistence of Buckley and diGrazia, the Massachusetts handgun prohibition lobby did not think small. Confiscation would be total, with no exemption for licensed security guards or target shooting clubs. Even transporting a handgun through Massachusetts (e.g., while traveling from one’s home in Rhode Island to a vacation spot in Maine or a target competition in New Hampshire) would be illegal, except for people with handgun carry permits (which, as of 1976, were almost never issued by most states).

Everyone understood the national importance of the Massachusetts vote. If handgun confiscation could win in Massachusetts, then it could be pushed in city after city, and state after state. The U.S. Conference of Mayors (a collection of big-city mayors) was already making plans for handgun confiscation elections in Michigan, Ohio and California. A Buckley speech to the Conference of Mayors detailed “How to Circumvent the Legislature for Gun Confiscation in 37 States by the Initiative Petition.”

Eventually, it was hoped, the mass of state and local bans would provide the foundation for a national ban.

The group known today as the Brady Campaign knew how high the stakes were; after all, Robert diGrazia was a member of their board of directors. (At the time, the group called itself the “National Council to Control Handguns.”)

They sent out a fundraising letter touting what they called “THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF HANDGUN CONTROL.” They promised that, “A victory in Massachusetts will be the first step toward the day when there will be … no more handguns.”

The group’s money paid for the confiscation lobby’s commercials, which featured a one-year-old sticking a .45 in his mouth. The commercial elicited a lot of angry complaints from mothers who did not want their own small children to see such behavior on television.

Out-of-state money also flowed in from the Gund Family Foundation, established by a very wealthy Ohio family. (To this day, Gund remains a major funder of the gun prohibitionists.)

Gov. Michael Dukakis strongly endorsed the confiscation plan. He was a rising star in the Democratic Party, having ousted an incumbent Republican governor in 1974 by a 10-point margin. He would win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. “We must disarm society,” Dukakis explained. “We must realize that violence only begets violence. Only when we ban handguns will we reduce violence.”

Even the state’s highest court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, helped out. A man named Hubert Davis was caught with an unlicensed sawed-off shotgun. In the trial court, his attorney asserted that the ban on short shotguns violated his right to arms under the Massachusetts state constitution.

Davis’ motion was denied by the trial court. While Davis was appealing to the intermediate court of appeals, the Supreme Judicial Court “took the matter on [its] own initiative.” The Supreme Judicial Court, having reached out to take the case, did more than just uphold the ban on short shotguns; the court also ruled that there was no right to arms under the Massachusetts state constitution.

The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution had guaranteed that, “The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence.” Since then, Massachusetts courts had recognized the right to arms as an individual one, subject to legitimate restrictions (such as a ban on mass armed parades without a license). Courts in other states, interpreting identical or near-identical language, came to similar results.

But on March 9, 1976, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down its unanimous decision in Commonwealth v. Davis: there was no individual right to arms in Massachusetts. Period. Whatever the right had meant in 1780, as of 1976 nobody in Massachusetts had any right to keep or bear a firearm. A complete ban on all guns would be constitutional. The implication for the pending vote on handgun confiscation was obvious.

The court also did an even bigger favor for the confiscation lobby. At the urging of Second Amendment supporters, the state legislature had put an alternative proposal on the ballot: If a violent criminal who had used a gun to commit a crime was sentenced to a term of imprisonment (say, “one to five years”), then the criminal would actually have to serve at least the minimum sentence.

Under the Massachusetts Constitution, if the public voted in favor of Question 5a (handgun confiscation) and 5b (prison sentences for violent gun criminals), then only that question that received the most votes would become law. Everyone knew that 5b would pass in a landslide, and so less than two months before the election, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court threw 5b off the ballot, insisting that incarcerating and deterring violent gun criminals did not involve the same subject matter as handgun confiscation.

]]> http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/12374/against-all-odds/feed/ 0 http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/12368/a-whelen-for-william-holden/ http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/12368/a-whelen-for-william-holden/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:29:42 +0000 ESnyder http://www.nrapublications.org/?p=12368
When noted actor and hunter William Holden died, one special rifle remained partially completed at a master gunsmith's shop.]]> When noted actor and hunter William Holden died in 1981, one special project rifle remained partially completed at a master gunsmith’s shop. This .35 Whelen, built on a classic Mauser action, would remain unfinished for six more years, when it was sold to an American television network executive. The new owner immediately located the finest craftsmen who could complete the rifle as it was originally intended and also honor Colonel Townsend Whelen, creator of the .35 Whelen cartridge.

The lengthy process of completion, following the traditional lines of fine sporting rifles crafted by Griffin & Howe, was to take an additional 3 1/2 years, during which time the metalwork was polished and reblued four times to reach the desired final finish. Cased and equipped with accessories, the bolt-action masterpiece was finally delivered.

After viewing the Robert E. Petersen Gallery at the National Firearms Museum in 2011, owner Sheldon Gilbert elected to donate this rifle and other firearms to the museum collection to recognize NRA as the organization whose magazine, American Rifleman, debuted the .35 Whelen concept and in memory of conservation-minded hunters like William Holden and Robert E. Petersen, who provided inspiration for this magnificent safari rifle.

The National Firearms Museum at NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, Va., is open seven days a week (closed selected holidays), and its galleries are filled with thousands of arms that captivate the imagination as visitors travel through centuries of guns and history. Admission is free (donations are appreciated), and you can find out more by calling the staff at (703) 267-1600, checking out our website at www.nramuseum.com or e-mailing nfmstaff@nrahq.org.

Gun Owners Score Wins In Spending Bill

If you pay any attention at all to policy debates in Washington, you’ve probably noticed that Congress and the president aren’t reaching agreement on much. Bills that pass in the House of Representatives aren’t coming up in the Senate. Bills that carry the president’s agenda in the Senate aren’t passing in the House. Part of that log jam is due to the difference in positions between the parties, and part of it is due to differences in how the two chambers structure debate. Some commentators condemn the resulting stalemate, while others argue that the Founders designed our system to produce exactly this result when the nation is so closely divided.

The one thing you can’t argue about is the end result. Major legislation simply is not passing through the Congress. The only bills it seems this Congress can pass are spending bills to keep the federal government functioning, and even those don’t usually pass until a deadline is looming.

Since the only bills that seem to move through the entire legislative process are spending bills, NRA-ILA puts a great deal of effort into protecting gun owners by urging the Congress to pass “riders” on those bills that help accomplish our agenda. It’s the legislative version of catching a ride on the only train out of town.

Thanks to these efforts, the most recent spending bill to pass the Congress and be signed by the president contained a dozen policy victories for gun owners. These fall into a few different groups.

First, there is the category of riders that are renewed every year. Some of these go back decades, but are still needed to plug loopholes in federal law that bureaucrats might manipulate to limit our rights. For example, the bill prohibits any change in the definition of “curio and relic” firearms, to protect the status of collectible firearms for future generations of collectors. It also prohibits arbitrary denials of curio and relic importation.

Several of the annual riders are needed to correct oversteps in regulatory authority. This category includes a prohibition on revoking or denying a federal firearms license due to the licensee’s low business volume, meaning that small dealers can’t be closed down simply because they don’t have the same sales volume as “big box” stores. The bill also prohibits any regulation mandating annual physical inventories by FFLs, a laborious and time-consuming process that’s generally unnecessary because of the detailed acquisition and disposition records that dealers must maintain. Another provision eliminates the need for an export permit to Canada to ship small firearms parts valued at less than $500, a pointless requirement imposed by the Clinton administration.

Another provision requires that any release of trace data by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) must include a disclaimer stating that the data can’t be used to draw broad conclusions about firearm-related crime, and another prohibits the transfer of any current BATFE authority to any other agency or department. This provision blocked an effort by the Clinton administration to transfer firearm enforcement to the FBI or Secret Service, and also keeps any administration from dodging the will of Congress by letting another agency implement policies that Congress has prohibited BATFE from implementing.

Yet another category of riders addresses newer problems. One prevents BATFE from blocking imports of shotguns with features the agency considers “non-sporting,” like adjustable stocks and extended magazine tubes. And another prohibits government agents from allowing the transfer of firearms to members of drug cartels. You’d think this should be unnecessary, but congressional investigations into the “Fast and Furious” scandal have proven otherwise.

As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work getting the Congress to pass these riders every year. So this year, we worked to change some of the traditional annual riders into permanent law, so they won’t need to be passed again. Most important is a prohibition on creating or maintaining a database of gun owners or guns. This rider blocks any centralized federal gun registry and dates back to 1979. A related provision now permanently prohibits the creation of a gun registry from gun dealer records that are surrendered to the government when a dealer goes out of business. While that may sound unnecessary to some, this provision has been needed since 1997, when anti-gun Clinton administration bureaucrats were trying to monitor gun owners through any means they could think of using. In a related vein, the final permanent rider prohibits retaining any information about the successful clearance of a background check for a gun purchase for more than 24 hours.

That’s a big list of accomplishments for a spending bill. And it goes to show that no matter how Congress chooses to do its business, your NRA-ILA will make sure that our Second Amendment rights are protected.

We Must Stand Together To Fight Attacks On Our Rights

Some people just can’t stand the thought that anyone anywhere owns, shoots or can stand the sight of guns. In Britain, the London city government announced a few months ago that the very sight of firearms is so injurious to the mental health of young people that it was excluding young people from a program that gave free tickets to Olympic shooting events this summer.

In Orlando before Christmas, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials detained a teenage girl and made her miss her flight to Jacksonville. She was not detained as she passed through security because she set off any alarms, but because her purse was adorned with a design that included firearms. She was eventually released after questioning, but merely the idea of wearing something with such an offensive design made her a security threat in the minds of bureaucrats.

We shouldn’t be surprised that security personnel who see nothing wrong with humiliating 85-year-old women at our nation’s airports might see a teenage girl sporting a purse with a firearm motif as a potential danger. But it should upset us as much as it did her and her parents. She wasn’t trying to make a statement; she liked the design. Those who harassed her, however, were definitely making a chilling statement, about both free speech and their attitude toward the Second Amendment and America’s gun owners.

Like school officials who have expelled students for wearing NRA t-shirts, they were making it very clear that they believe guns and those who support the Second Amendment or engage in the shooting sports are unacceptable in the new world they are intent upon creating. NRA attorneys  intervened in cases in which school administrators and teachers have violated students’ First Amendment rights because of their hostility toward the Second Amendment.

We have won the political and legal arguments in one forum after another over the last decade, but we cannot forget for even a minute that those hostile to our rights and the values we share are not about to give up and will continue to find ways to attack those rights. Enemies of the Second Amendment gather in our schools, in the media and among the political elite.

The NRA works hard to counteract theses influences on young people by assisting the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H shooting programs and even home schoolers. Needless to say, we also work to counteract enemies of the Second Amendment in the media. We take them on when they’re wrong and do all we can to get our message out where we can through existing media and, as you know, we have developed ways around what so many call the “mainstream” media when we must.

This year, however, is an election year. That gives us all a chance to reduce the power of political elites dedicated to denying us the rights guaranteed us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. At the NRA Annual Meetings last year, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre announced that in 2012 gun owners have to dedicate themselves to making certain that Barack Obama will leave office after one term without an opportunity to act on his lifetime hostility toward the Second Amendment. We are uniquely positioned because of who we are and because of our sheer numbers. We can make certain that a year from now, former President Obama will have time to work on his presidential library, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton will be looking for jobs in the private sector and that none of them will have any role in selecting Supreme Court nominees or negotiating international firearm treaties through the United Nations.

We are all busy earning a living and raising our kids and enjoying the freedoms unique to this country even in these hard economic times, but this year every one of us is going to have to devote some time and energy to the one thing we can do to guarantee that we will be able to continue to enjoy the freedoms unique to this country. We are all going to have to work from now until November to help Wayne LaPierre make Barack Obama a one-term President.

We have defeated anti-Second Amendment presidential wannabes before. Remember Al Gore? After the 2000 race, then-President Bill Clinton lamented that his Vice President would not be moving into the White House because you and I and millions of other supporters of the Second Amendment cost him the electoral votes of at least five states—and therefore the Presidency.

We did it then and we can do it again!

All Or Nothing Election For The Second Amendment

Feinstein: “Do you believe that if there was some form of registration when you purchase these firearms that that would make a difference?”

Breuer: “I do, Senator… Very few hunters in the United States or sports people and law-abiding people really need to have semi-automatic weapons or long guns. …Without that kind of notification [registration], we lose track and can lose track of these kinds of potent weapons.”

That chilling exchange on registration and gun bans between arch-anti-Second Amendment U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Lanny Breuer indelibly exposes the first step in President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda for the destruction of our freedom.

We need to look no further than the unconstitutional registration-based gun bans in Washington, D.C. and Chicago to understand that gun-owner databases are always the precursor for confiscatory bans on firearms.

Assistant AG Breuer was speaking officially for the Obama administration as head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in endorsing gun registration, giving bureaucrats the power to decide what guns “law-abiding people” could own based on the government’s ever-changing notion of “need.”

The colloquy between the two radical gun-ban advocates came during a November 2011 U.S. Senate hearing exposing “Operation Fast and Furious”—the rogue Justice Department scheme that sanctioned violations of federal firearm and smuggling laws. “Fast and Furious” aided criminals moving thousands of firearms into the hands of Mexican narco-terrorists and led directly to the death of hundreds of Mexican nationals and to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The purpose of “Fast and Furious” was to give truth to the constant administration/media lie about American freedom being responsible for the 40,000 drug cartel murders in Mexico, a nation that long ago banned virtually all private ownership of firearms.

With Breuer’s testimony, the Obama administration’s call for a “need-based” gun ban is clearly in line with Feinstein’s vision of private ownership of firearms. As the Senate author of the 1994 Clinton gun ban, Feinstein told CBS “60 Minutes,” “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them—Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in—I would have done it.”

While Obama spends hard-earned taxpayer dollars jetting to $75,000-a-plate fundraisers with his super-rich cronies, he remains above the fray, knowing that his cadre of radical bureaucrats and “czars” are tirelessly pursuing the dirty work of his agenda. While Obama appears aloof, his termites are eating away at the very foundation of our freedom.

When it comes to the Second Amendment, Obama endorses that right as one limited to membership in organized military forces—a view shared by four justices on the U.S. Supreme Court including Obama’s pick, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

In joining the Court’s four-judge minority in voting against declaring the Chicago gun ban unconstitutional, Sotomayor signed the opinion that could “find nothing … that could warrant characterizing [the Second Amendment] as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.”

Obama’s plan for a second term is to overwhelmingly alter the 5-4 Second Amendment majority on the court. If he is reelected, Obama could fill as many as three vacancies, marking the end of the right to keep and bear arms and, with it, virtually all that we have accomplished working together for the past 30 years.

For the planned Obamageddon against the Second Amendment, timing is everything. The hunker down and wait plan was first expressed by Sen. Feinstein in an interview with Leslie Stahl of CBS “60 Minutes” in the opening days of the Obama regime.

As CBS reported it:
“Asked by Stahl if trying to renew the assault weapons ban would start a culture war and pose a distraction for an already overburdened Obama administration, Feinstein replied, ‘I agree with you.’ ‘So you are going to hold off?’ asked Stahl. ‘That’s correct. I’ll pick the time and the place, no question about it.’”

That time and place is just one election away on November 6. This is an all-or-nothing election for the Second Amendment and its outcome depends on you. As NRA members—as citizens proud to carry the NRA Membership Card proclaiming our singular dedication to securing the Second Amendment for the future—we must muster every ounce of strength and energy to defeat Barack Obama and educate our gun-owning friends about the terminal dangers that lie ahead if he retains the awesome power of the presidency.

If Obama is returned to the White House, if the pro-gun majority in the House of Representatives is reversed, and if Nancy Pelosi once again wraps her iron fist around the Speaker’s gavel, gun owners will face the worst serial assaults on our freedom ever.

The first thing John Chapman did upon returning home to find his front door propped open was retrieve his Taurus .38-cal. revolver. He slowly went upstairs to investigate, noting that drawers in the bedroom had been opened and items were strewn about. An intruder then sprang from behind the bedroom door. Chapman told him not to move, but the intruder rushed at him anyway. Chapman fired two shots. The intruder ran outside and collapsed on the sidewalk. He will be arrested after his release from the hospital. (Charleston Gazette, Charleston, WV, 11/03/11)

Food delivery drivers have statistically one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Whether that weighed on the mind of a Papa John’s delivery driver when he obtained a concealed-carry permit isn’t clear, but he was glad he did when a man stuck a stolen pistol through his car window and said, “What you gonna do is drop off that money.” The driver drew a .38-cal. revolver and emptied the cylinder. The wounded assailant dropped his pistol and ran into a house across the street, where he was found by police. (The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN, 11/05/11)

Shirley Bennett ‘s boyfriend taught her to shoot following an attempted break-in at her home three years ago. She purchased a .38-cal. revolver, obtained a permit to carry and no longer felt vulnerable to criminals—criminals such as Joe Covington, a registered sex offender who approached Bennett’s SUV in a bank parking lot. “He was hitting me from behind, trying to force me into my vehicle,” explained Bennett. “I said, ‘I got a gun, don’t make me use it.’ I think my heart was going 90 mph.” Covington allegedly continued wrestling with her, so she drew her gun and fired a shot, causing him to run. Police found Covington several blocks away. “I honestly believe I would not be here today if I didn’t have a gun,” Bennett said. (Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 11/11/11)

Based on a Walmart security video, police believe two suspects waited around the parking lot looking for an easy target. The suspects thought they’d found it when a 61-year-old woman walked to her car with groceries. They tugged at her purse in the shopping cart, but the woman fought back. She drew a .380-cal. handgun and, without a shot being fired, the suspects fled. They were caught by police. “[The suspects] purposely targeted someone they thought was easy prey,” said police Lieutenant John Flowers. “Let this be a lesson to criminals about committing a crime against anyone of any age.” (The Sun Herald, Biloxi, MS, 11/18/11)

Roosevelt Maggett was at home recovering from cancer treatment when a burglar knocked on the door, pushed him over a chair and tried to choke him to death. “He grabbed me,” Maggett explained. “He said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” Despite his weakened state, Maggett was able to reach for a firearm. “I guess the good Lord gave me the strength to get him up off me,” he says. Maggett fired one round into the burglar, killing him. (WMC-TV, Memphis, TN, 11/26/11)

Those who say there’s no way an armed citizen could stop a potential mass shooting—and may even exacerbate the carnage—should take the following tale to heart. Customers at a Houston, Texas, Denny’s restaurant were eating breakfast one morning when two armed robbers brandishing guns burst into the store and demanded money. One of the diners stood up, drew a handgun and opened fire on the men. The robbers fled the scene. No one was injured. (Associated Press, 11/26/11)

Exploding the Myths About National Right to Carry

Here at NRA-ILA, we fly in a constant headwind of disinformation. Anti-gun groups generate outlandish claims on a daily basis and the biased media parrots their propaganda without question. We are constantly correcting the lies, misstatements and half-truths that our political opponents strew in our path.

In truth, I don’t mind because there is a positive side effect. Anti-gun groups erode their own credibility with every provable lie. By the same token, we build our own credibility every time we disprove an absurd statement made by the enemies of freedom.

What I do mind is when small, self-described “pro-gun” groups constantly sound false alarms about solid pro-gun reform legislation in an effort to raise money. These repeat offenders peddle misinformation as the gospel. They dilute the good work your NRA staff and fellow members do to protect the Second Amendment.

Friendly fire is an all-too-common accident in war, but these misrepresentations are different—they’re intentional. I’m especially thinking about the misguided, unfounded and just plain wrong information circulating on the Internet lately regarding H.R. 822—the “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011,” which has just been favorably reported by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

H.R. 822 is a good bill. It enhances Americans’ right to self-defense by enabling millions of permit holders to exercise their right to self-defense while traveling outside their home states. It would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed firearm permit to carry a concealed firearm in any state that issues concealed firearm permits, or that does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms for lawful purposes.

H.R. 822 would not create a federal registration or licensing system, nor would it establish a minimum federal standard for permits. Rather, it would simply require states to recognize each others’ carry permits, just as they recognize carry permits held by armored car guards or drivers’ licenses held by average citizens.

But myths about the bill continue to be generated by these self-proclaimed “gun rights” supporters who have no active lobbying presence in Congress or any state legislature.

One myth suggests that H.R. 822 would involve the federal bureaucracy in setting standards for carry permits—such as higher fees, waiting periods, national gun owner registration or worse. In truth, H.R. 822 doesn’t authorize any such action by any federal agency. No federal rules or regulations would be needed to implement H.R. 822, which simply overrides certain state laws.

Another myth holds that H.R. 822 would undercut permitless carry laws such as those in Arizona, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. In reality, H.R. 822 would have absolutely no effect on how the permitless carry states’ laws work within those states. If you live in Arizona, Alaska or Wyoming, where permits are not required but remain available under state law, H.R. 822 would make your permit valid in all states that issue permits to their own residents—in other words, everywhere except Illinois and the District of Columbia. And if you live in Vermont, where no permits are issued or required, you could still get a nonresident permit from any other state to enjoy the same benefits.

Another myth suggests that when H.R. 822 moves through the legislative process, it will be subject to anti-gun amendments. If we let ourselves be paralyzed by that fear, we could never promote any pro-gun reform legislation anywhere.

Instead, we move ahead to make positive changes for gun owners because we know we can avoid or defeat anti-gun amendments by careful vote counting and strategic use of legislative procedure. This was proven when the House Judiciary Committee considered amendments to H.R. 822. Anti-gun lawmakers offered a blizzard of amendments to weaken or gut the legislation, or just to score political points against Second Amendment supporters. Every one of those amendments was easily defeated.

If you see or hear these myths continue to circulate, you might want to ask the sources why they continue to spread misinformation. (While you’re at it, you can ask them what exactly they intend to do with the money they’re asking you to send.)

But enough about the myths. Let’s talk about the truth: H.R. 822 is solid, positive, pro-gun reform legislation and it’s a natural extension of our success in enacting Right-to-Carry laws at the state level. That’s why NRA-ILA is strongly supporting it. By the time you read this column, the bill may already have come to the floor of the U.S. House. If so, it will need your help to get through the Senate. Visit www.NRAILA.org today to see the bill’s current status, and use the “Write Your Reps” tool to express your support for this important bill.

The Importance of the 2012 Election

As I travel around the country I run into a lot of people, including some NRA members, who seem to believe that in light of the Heller and McDonald decisions, the Second Amendment is safe regardless of whether or not Barack Obama wins a second term next fall. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are facing the most crucial election in our lifetimes in terms of the Second Amendment. All of us who know President Obama’s beliefs, and the opportunities he will be presented during a second term, must realize the seriousness of the situation.

Long before he emerged as a presidential candidate, this president was working overtime to gut the Second Amendment; he denigrated gun owners during his campaign and recently promised The Brady Center’s Sarah Brady that he would deliver on his anti-gun commitments, but at least for the moment had to work “under the radar.”

This is a president whose administration devised the infamous “Fast and Furious” program to create the illusion that U.S. gun dealers have been the principal source of firearms going to Mexican drug cartels and has tried to cover up its culpability.

This is a president who has signaled to the international anti-gun community that the United Nations should go ahead with its plan to develop a treaty that could severely restrict or eliminate our Second Amendment rights.

And, this is a president who has already appointed two anti-Second Amendment justices to the United States Supreme Court—one of whom told Congress during her nomination hearing that the Court’s decision in Heller was “settled law,” but promptly acted and spoke against that all-important decision as soon as she was on the bench; and another who used the same code words despite a record of anti-gun activism in the Clinton White House.

But this is also a president who understands just how politically dangerous it can be to openly confront America’s gun owners and Second Amendment supporters before an election. You can bet that when Obama and his political advisors sit down to devise their upcoming campaign strategy, they remind each other that they ought to defer such confrontations until the hoped-for second term.

Obama’s managers know what happened to Al Gore in 2000 and they can read the polls. They know that in October 2011, the Gallup poll revealed greater support for the Second Amendment than ever before; that on gun issues, the views of the public are far closer to the NRA’s than those of this administration. They see the Second Amendment as a political “third rail” that those on the left should avoid in an election year.

But if there is a second Obama term, the gloves will come off and “under the radar” harassment will be replaced by an aggressive all-fronts attack on our rights. No one who has followed this president’s career doubts this for a minute and every gun owner who goes to the polls next November should think about the consequences of a second Obama term.

If he is re-elected, President Obama will have an opportunity to appoint two and possibly three more like-minded judges to the Supreme Court and hundreds of anti-gun jurists to the lower federal courts. If this happens, Heller would be openly reversed or rendered meaningless by decisions allowing restrictions that have the practical effect of prohibiting U.S. citizens from exercising the very rights the courts have recognized as fundamental.

Remember, in Heller the Supreme Court ruled not only that the Second Amendment guarantees us as citizens the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but that like other rights this one is subject to legitimate regulation. What this means is that over the coming decades, attorneys will be in court trying to determine what regulations are or are not legitimate.  If the judges trying these cases are as anti-gun as the man who will be appointing them, we all know how they will rule.

We all take some comfort in the fact that we have many Republican and Democratic friends in both Houses of Congress ready to oppose overt anti-Second Amendment legislation or an anti-gun U.N.-backed treaty, but the president has in many areas demonstrated a willingness to bypass Congress and essentially rule by rules, regulations, “demand letters,” executive orders and other decrees. The bottom line is that our rights are truly in danger. We cannot rely exclusively on the courts or even on Congress to protect them. We are the final line of defense of the Second Amendment. We all have to be prepared to fight as never before. We must organize those who agree with us to remove President Obama and his allies from the White House next November—before it’s too late.

The stakes are high, so as 2011 comes to an end we all need to dedicate ourselves to making 2012 the year in which we rally to defend the rights we enjoy and hope to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

Obama Steals Power

For our fragile republic, the emerging autocracy of President Barack Obama presents the gravest danger to our individual liberty in our lifetimes. A single word serves to define the rogue rule of the Obama regime: Lawless.

Obama—with his election battle cry of “We can’t wait!”—has created a constitutional crisis, subverting the power of Congress and the courts.  For him, there is only one branch of government—Obama.

Stung from the 2010 landslide defeat of his majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, President Obama says he doesn’t need congressional authority to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

His transformation means destroying our very foundation of liberty—including the Second Amendment.

Obama is creating a blizzard of executive orders and edicts throughout his bureaucracy. He is moving and spending tax dollars as if those funds authorized by Congress were his political slush fund.

Obama’s edict creating gun owner registration in the four border states—New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and California—is a case in point. He has no authority to register long gun sales at licensed dealers, but he is doing it anyway. And you can bet this is just the beginning.

NRA has filed suits in federal courts to stop the registration scheme. But will Obama obey a court order to stand down? Why should he obey a court when he won’t follow the explicit rule of law banning registration?

For their bigger plans for the destruction of the Second Amendment, “we can’t wait” morphs into “we’ll wait for the second term.”

Obama routinely brags about circumventing Congress. “We can’t wait for a dysfunctional Congress to do its job. When they won’t act, I will. I’ve told my administration to keep looking every single day for actions we can take without Congress.”

“Dysfunctional?” In Obama’s lexicon, that word describes anyone or any institution that won’t do his arrogant bidding. For Obama, “dysfunctional” means the new Congress no longer acts as the President’s functional rubber-stamp.

For Obama, “dysfunctional” means attacking congressional oversight like the investigations by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, exposing “Operation Fast and Furious”—the Obama administration’s conspiracy to assist criminals in violating federal firearm laws which armed Mexican narco-terrorists.

Let me tell you what is really “dysfunctional.”

Perhaps the most important tool citizens possess to reveal wrongdoing in government is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). With a few narrow exceptions, the government must provide documents demanded by citizens and organizations like NRA.

Remember Obama’s promise of the most transparent government in history? In January 2009 he proclaimed, “In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) … is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government.”

Given “Fast and Furious”, the Obama administration attempted to revise FOIA rules to give bureaucrats power to flat-out lie. It would have given agencies power to deny the very existence of documents requested.

In a scathing letter to Attorney Gerneral Eric Holder, Sen. Grassley wrote, “It’s hard to believe that the Justice Department thinks it’s appropriate to make false statements to the American people. …” Grassley warned he would take “all necessary action” to block the proposed rule. Because of widespread outrage, the rule was temporarily withdrawn, but only because the Obama administration was called out. With this attempt to cut off access to government decisions, the Obama regime has shown its hand for a second term.

With his “we can’t wait,” Obama is following the direction of his former head of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orzag, who said:

“We need to jettison the Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy and instead begin to build a new set of rules and institutions … relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”

Got that? “Automatic policies” and “commissions.”  Imagine an Obama “gun-ban commission” replacing the Congress.

Imagine him setting into place “automatic policies” that chip away the Second Amendment every time the gun ban politicians and media declare a “gun violence crisis.” It would be gun control on autopilot.
As members of the most effective political force in America, we must enlist the support of friends, neighbors, family and co-workers to secure the future. And we must keep NRA strong and effective—so renew or upgrade your NRA membership and commitment to freedom today.

The Second Amendment and our national character as we know it are at stake in the coming elections. We must get out the vote as never before. The nation cannot survive another four years of Obama’s arrogant one-man rule.