AK-47 assault rifle raffled at rally

Leo Buchignani, junior in communications and president of The Orange and Blue Observer, calls the winner of the AK-47 raffle Thursday afternoon on the Quad. The Orange and Blue Observer, a conservative journal at the University, will use the raffle money to buy the gun and to help fund their paper.

The Orange and Blue Observer (OBO), a conservative political journal at the University, staged a controversial raffle Thursday - first prize was an AK-47 assault rifle.

Michael Hooper, a police officer from Mattoon, Ill., was announced the winner of the firearm by OBO members at a booth outside the Illini Union. Alex Kroll, OBO treasurer, said more than 140 tickets were purchased, netting the OBO a profit of $405.

Hooper will purchase the gun for $290 from Dave's Firearms & Cycle Repair, 1868 County Road 1600 N in Urbana. The OBO will then reimburse Hooper using money made from the raffle.

To enter the raffle, participants paid $5 and had to state that they had a Firearms Ownership Identification Document (FOID). If a participant didn't have a FOID, the OBO provided applications for the participants.

A FOID is required in Illinois to buy or possess a firearm, according to the Illinois State Police Web site.

Leo Buchignani, president of the OBO, said the raffle would help pay for future issues of the journal.

The OBO, a registered student organization, normally publishes three times a school year with funding from the Student Organization Resource Fee (SORF), said Leo Buchignani, OBO president. However, this year the SORF board only gave the journal enough funding to publish two issues.

Kroll also said the raffle was meant to raise awareness about the benefits of gun ownership.

"Consequently, every law-abiding citizen should own one," he said, "Provided, we don't know who will use one and who will not, but it's a risk we have to take."

OBO members argued that most citizens cannot protect themselves if they do not have a gun.

"Illinois is one of the most restrictive states for gun laws and we are protesting the high amounts of murder, rape assaults and crimes in Illinois," Buchignani said. "By putting one more gun into the hands of law-abiding citizens, we're providing protection."

If more women carried firearms, Buchignani said, there would be fewer cases of rape. Buchignani said possessing a gun makes differences in physical strength irrelevant in violent situations.

"Hand guns eliminate the strength advantage of men over women," Buchignani said. "I don't understand why feminists don't advocate this cause. Hand guns prevent crimes and we used an AK-47 to emphasize that free citizens have a duty to be armed."

The raffle winner was announced at 3 p.m. Hooper was not present during the announcement, and an OBO member left a message on Hooper's phone.

During the announcement, about 10 protesters sat on a nearby stone bench holding signs.

A.J. Kane, freshman in ACES, held a sign entitled, "Anthrax Raffle." He also had a sign-up clipboard to challenge the validity of the OBO's purpose.

Kane explained his sign by saying, "Both anthrax and an AK-47 have a lot of power to kill.

"As absurd as it is to offer anthrax on campus, offering and AK-47 is even more absurd," he said.

Kane said he supports gun ownership and owns a single-shot rifle for target purposes.

"However, the AK-47 is a combat weapon with too high of a capacity to kill, and its existence should be limited," he said. "There's a point where a weapon's killing power makes it too dangerous for people to have (an AK-47),"

Gun grabbers are increasingly trying to separate the right to keep and bear arms from its constitutional underpinnings. To everyone but liberals and gun grabbers the word militia implies a body organized for military use. The Supreme Court Miller decision of 1939 held that the militia was 'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."

To begin with, only the national government was represented at the trial. With nobody arguing to the contrary, the court followed standard court procedure and assumed that the law was constitutional until proven otherwise. If both sides were present, the outcome may have been much different.

However, since only one party showed up, the case will stand in the court records as is. As to the militia, Mr. Justice McReynolds related the beliefs of the Founding Fathers when commenting historically about the Second Amendment. He stated that, ". . .The common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the militia- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.

"The significance attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.

It is clear that the firearms that are most suited for modern-day militia use are those semi automatic military pattern weapons that the yellow press calls "assault weapons". Since nations such as the Swiss trust their citizenry with true selective fire assault rifles, it seems to me that this country ought to be at least able to trust its law-abiding citizenry with the semi automatic version.

Self-defense is a vital corollary benefit of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But its primary constitutional reason for being is for service in the well-regulated militia which is necessary to the security of a free state. WE must be prepared to maintain that security against even our own forces that are responding to the orders of a tyrannical government, and the only viable way to counter a standing army's qualitative advantage is with a huge quantitative one. Don't let the gun grabbers and their politician allies separate us from the constitutional reason for the right to keep and bear arms. Miltary pattern weapons are precisly the weapons that should be MOST constitutionally protected. Even defenders of the right often neglect the constitutional aspect of it, and concentrate on their near non-existent use in crime.

If we don't constantly emphasize the constitutional reasons for the Second Amendment than we shall surely lose it, because hunting, while a worthy enterprise, is too trivial a reason to maintain it has a constitutional protection. We need to emphasize to our hunting bretheren that maintenance of the second amendment's constitutional rationale serves to protect their rights to continue to own firearms for hunting. The second amendment is literally the final check for the preservation of our republic from the depredations of untrammeled tyranny. We need to constantly remind the people what the militia in the 2nd amendment is REALLY for..... A citizen body organized for military purposes and by extension, logically equipped with weapons of military utility. Just consider that the founders of our nation had just finished defeating the greatest military power on the planet, thanks in no small part to a citizen militia, armed with military weapons such as the smooth bore Brown Bess musket, and often technologically superior rifled muskets. It is the height of absurdity to think that the second amendment in the Bill of Rights is primarily concerned with shooting bunny rabbits.

The second amendment is literally the final check for the preservation of our republic from the depredations of untrammeled tyranny.

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