Newt Gingrich Calls for Universal Right to Bear Arms at NRA Forum

The Daily Beast ^ | April 14, 2012 | Michael Ames

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Friday’s Celebration of American Values Leadership forum featured speeches by Mitt Romney, recent contender Rick Santorum, plus conservative stars like former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. But members of the influential gun lobby today reserved their greatest enthusiasms not for their presumptive nominee Romney, but for Newt Gingrich, a candidate who perseveres to the wonderment of many and the joy of some.

Romney spoke before Gingrich and focused mainly on general-election themes and descriptions of President Obama’s governing philosophies. “Our founders created a system of government that is limited. Barack Obama is leading us away from that vision,” Romney said. “President Obama is leading toward a government of limited freedom and limited opportunity.”

The stump speech painted the election in broad brush strokes, contrasting the bright hope of freedom, a word Romney used nearly two-dozen times,against the dark threats of a massive, sun-blocking bureaucracy that he said flourishes under Obama.

Romney cannot claim a life of gun enthusiasm. The director of the NRA’s lobbying branch, Chris Cox, introduced the former Massachusetts governor as a “life member of the NRA,” but Romney signed up for his lifetime membership just six years ago, when he first explored running for president as a Republican.

Nor can the NRA claim a long courtship of Romney. In 2002, the lobby did not endorse his run for governor, despite his Meet the Press claim to the contrary. In that race, the NRA gave Romney a B grade, but gave his Democratic opponent, Shannon O’Brien, a sterling A.

Today in St. Louis, Romney repeated his support for Second Amendment rights as elemental, and he focused on the power of the judiciary to protect that right. Romney warned that a second Obama term would “remake” the Supreme Court and imperil the future of gun rights. “Our freedoms,” he said, would be in hands of an Obama court “not just for four years, but for 40,” he said.

The crowd was appreciative of the man who will likely court their votes this fall, but the NRA faithful became far more animated for Gingrich. With his characteristic flourish for sweeping and historical ideas, the former House speaker laid out a guideline for an international gun-rights movement that the NRA’s Cox called “the Gingrich Doctrine.”

Today in St. Louis, Romney repeated his support for Second Amendment rights as elemental, and he focused on the power of the judiciary to protect that right. Romney warned that a second Obama term would “remake” the Supreme Court and imperil the future of gun rights. “Our freedoms,” he said, would be in hands of an Obama court “not just for four years, but for 40,” he said.

The crowd was appreciative of the man who will likely court their votes this fall, but the NRA faithful became far more animated for Gingrich. With his characteristic flourish for sweeping and historical ideas, the former House speaker laid out a guideline for an international gun-rights movement that the NRA’s Cox called “the Gingrich Doctrine.”

“The right to bear arms comes from our creator, not our government,” Gingrich said. The NRA “has been too timid” in promoting its agenda beyond American borders. The Bill of Rights was not written only for Americans, he said. “It is a universal document.”

“A Gingrich presidency will submit to the UN a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right to every person on the planet.” Every world citizen, he said, “deserves the right to defend themselves from those who exploit, imprison, or kill them.” For his latest big idea, Gingrich earned a standing ovation from the crowd of roughly 5,000.

“We don’t need to go across the planet trying to impose American values, but we do need to go across the planet spreading human values,” Gingrich said. “The Second Amendment is a right for all mankind.”

Many establishment Republicans have openly called for Gingrich to give up his quest. His refusal to submit has been described as egomaniacal and destructive. But in St. Louis on Friday, the man who handily won the South Carolina primary but whose campaign is running on financial fumes, seemed as confident as ever.

“This is still a more open nomination process than anyone in the elite media believes,” Gingrich said.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

“.....“It is not enough to be against the Small Arms Treaty that keeps us physiologically on defense. The time has come to win the following proposition: Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed if people everywhere on the planet had the right to bear arms and far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet.”

“It isn’t enough to watch people move from one dictatorship to another – to watch Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria lurch from disaster to disaster. We should think about people, and we should help people understand that they are endowed by their Creator. And we should say that the Second Amendment is an amendment for all mankind and an amendment which will improve all mankind.”......

2012 NRA Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum - Newt Gingrich

National Rifle Association Meeting - Part 1 Newt Gingrich Speech 1:00:18 (follows Mitt Romney – Rick Santorum follows Newt)

National Rifle Association Meeting - Part 2 3:09:30 Rick Perry’s Speech

[RitaOK]

This is an incredible man, this NEWT guy.

[Linda Frances]

I watched this speech last night and it was great. The left will need to be medicated.

[junta]

I’m heartened to see the right jetison reactionary politics when it is prudent to do so, and gun rights is certainly an area where we can attack the left.

[Svartalfiar]

Damn. If only his actions would meet up with his words. Sigh

[bgill]

Go, NEWT!

[RedMDer]

All contributions are for the Current Quarter Expenses.

[thatjoeguy]

‘Sigh’ is correct. If only you’d spend a few minutes actually looking at his record rather then listening to the MSM.

He has a record, just look at it.

I’ve posted this before but here is what Newt did on his FIRST DAY as Speaker January 5th, 1994:

Rather than just pop the cork on the champagne and pat each other on the back Newt IMMEDIATELY started the ball rolling by;
- Led passage of nine reforms (they said he couldn’t/wouldn’t get any but he got all nine)
- Eliminated three committees.
- Eliminated twenty five subcommittees.
- Eliminated more than six hundred congressional jobs called LSOs and he didn’t pick and choose which ones, he eliminated ALL of them. A savings to the tax payers of nearly 35 million dollars.

It was billed as the longest first day in the history of the house (til 2:00am the next morning).

To add icing to the cake he hadn’t even started on the Contract With America yet. That was to come later (within 100 days actually) this was just in cleaning up the House.

Oh by the way he also balanced the budget for four years in a row and paid DOWN the debt by nearly half a TRILLION dollars. When was the last time America had a balanced budget for even one year?

JB

[353FMG]

NEWT should stick to what pertains to America — never mind the rest of the world.

Does he really think that China, Russia, Europe and African countries will ever allow its citizens to go about armed?

They never did in the past, why should they change now?

[txrangerette]

Can’t stand it that Newt’s way ahead of you and the curve?

He’s teaching the truth.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...

Among which is the right of self defense.

Instead, the UN and governments around the world believe the comman man must remain disarmed while only the already powerful can bear arms.

Which is one of the reasons things are so horrible around the world, as he so logically points out.

He challenged the NRA to think more broadly about the right to keep and bear arms.

Imagine NRA chapters in other countries...oh wait, you can’t begin to imagine it, can you?

But Newt can.

[353FMG]

>We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...<

.
Sheesh, we haven’t even accepted that in this country and now you want the world to acknowledge that idea?

Half of the world doesn’t even believe in a Creator and the other half is doing its very best to destroy that concept.

Newt is trying to make one giant leap into outer space without a rocket — let him fix the many problems we have at home before sticking his nose in other countries’ domestic affairs.

[txrangerette]

You have no concept, none, of what Newt is doing.

He simply stated a truth.

It is the truth, whether you like it stated or not.

I happen to like truths stated.

I also liked it when Reagan called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, and when Reagan stuck his nose in and said, “
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.

Funny how stated truths often lead to things happening for the good.

But not if you’re as scared to say a few words of universal truth as it appears you are.

[RitaOK]

The PEOPLE decide these things but small thinkers and cowards remain subjects without leaders like Newt willing to throw off tyrants and would be tyrants and mild mannered socialists seeking power.

[RitaOK]

What did you have in mind, surrounded by cowards and the faithless as we are?

[353FMG]

It’s much easier to badmouth foreign tyrants than the domestic one.

[txrangerette]

You’re dreaming.

He denounces Obama constantly.

Nobody does it better.

And in this speech he was talking about universal truth, which only tangentially hit any foreign tyrants.

It actually hit every government worldwide who enforces against the people’s inherent right of self defense, whether tyrants or claimed democratic ones.

Since you’re already in dreamland, pull the covers up over your scared widdle head, nite nite now...

[Marguerite]

"Our Founding Fathers understood that the land of the free had to be the home of the brave, because without being the home of the brave you would not remain the land of the free." ... "I want to speak two positive words about the Obama administration: 'good-bye'". -- Newt Gingrich

[Marguerite]

April 14, 2012 - Newt Gingrich rallies for votes in Greensboro

http://myfox8.com/2012/04/14/newt-gingrich-rallies-for-votes-in-greensboro/

[onyx]

GO NEWT!

[onyx]

Newt.org = The Candidate of Substance & Real Solutions!