Standing Guard - Wayne LaPierre

The American Rifleman ^ | Jan, 2003 | Wayne LaPierre

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Standing Guard

by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President

. A good friend in England—an activist who has watched the rights of firearm owners systematically dismantled there—was asked, “If you had a message for Americans, what would it be?”

Instantly, emphatically, he said, “Don’t let them register your guns. If they don’t know where they are or that you have them, they can’t come and take them away from you.” This man knows of what he speaks. He abided by their law, then government changed the law. And the government took his guns.

The road leading to government confiscation taken by honest Britons began with firearm owner registration and licensing. And that is the very road we are facing today. Nine months ago, the media was saying gun control was a dead issue. That all changed September 11 when foreign terrorists—armed with boxcutters and a determined will to die—committed the worst mass murder in American history.

Now, the word “terrorism” has been hijacked by the anti-gun-rights crowd as their new reason to “universally” register all peaceable Americans who would own guns. They’ve camouflaged their firearm-owner registration agenda in an “anti-terrorism” wrapper. A cabal of anti-gun-rights organizations, bankrolled by billionaires and billionaire “charitable foundations”—with the unquestioning megaphone and lobbying voice of big media conglomerates—has begun a massive campaign to stampede the American public into supporting wish lists from the likes of U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and John McCain.

They want registration and to make every now-lawful gun sale between private individuals living in the same state a Federal crime. That’s what’s at stake in every variation of the “close the loophole” legislation now pending before Congress. The very exercise of our rights—the peaceable ownership and use of firearms—are all “loopholes” in their world.

These anti-gun-rights politicians will move with a series of amendments tied to homeland security or any similar legislation.

U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer would make the National Instant Check System records on legal sales at Federally Licensed Dealers part of a permanent database—with information on you and me and our friends and families—which would be open to any and all “law enforcement” even for “civil” inquiries. Read: sweetheart deals between big city mayors and trial lawyers. Lawsuits.

Groups like Americans for Gun Safety and politicians like John McCain claim to be middle-of-the-road, but the middle of their road is just as treacherous as the one that led to firearms forfeiture in Britain.

John McCain would make all now-legal intrastate purchases even remotely connected to a gun show into criminal acts unless covered by his Federal regulation. Yet everything criminals now do at gun shows is already illegal, punishable by at least a 10-year prison term. His “loophole” is a phony.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein—the biggest proponent of firearm confiscation in the Congress—demands that all now-legal intrastate sales be criminalized. In her world—with the strings pulled by HCI/Brady Center—innocent and legal commerce between all honest, decent, law-abiding citizens would become a crime unless those sales were subject to national registration.

California’s senior senator said she “would bring the nation in line with her home state’s stringent laws ... .” California law now requires background checks, waiting periods, gun owner competence tests and confiscatory bans on an utterly confusing list of formerly legal firearms. Strictly private sales are a crime.

And she wants “mug book” fingerprinting and digitized photography of gun purchasers—just like the authorities do for criminals. Always remember, California is where guns have been confiscated from those who tried to register them under the law. Thousands of honest Californians who registered their self-loading rifles—under a deadline amnesty given by the State Attorney General—were ultimately told the amnesty was not legal. They were told that their registration was no good. They were told to give up their property or face prosecution—all this because HCI fought the gun registration extension in court. In banning further gun registration, HCI called those honest, trusting law-abiding gun registrants “gun runners.” In today’s parlance, “gun runners” as a name for innocent firearm owners has morphed into “terrorists.”

This year, with the uncertainty of the terror campaign launched against our way of life, there is a certainty about the campaign of legislative terror coming our way from the enemies of the Second Amendment.

We must be prepared to fight each and every attack on our liberty no matter what its guise. No gun control! No deals! We must fight their spin with the truth: Enforce existing laws against already illegal gun commerce and illegal possession by violent criminals, illegal aliens and drug dealers.

For the sake of our future, I urge you to fax, e-mail and phone your U.S. Representative and your Senators with that message—no new gun controls. Enforce the law. If you mail, send a personal postcard.

As Freedom-loving Americans, we must never be forced to pay the price for foreign terrorists with the loss of our rights.

[Aegedius]

"The American Rifleman" is now up on the web at www.americanrifleman.org.

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We already have gun registration in the USA. It's called the form 4473.

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4473's aren't complete registration, but it's well known that the FBI and BATF keep records of the information contained on the 4473 in violation of the law. Feinswine simply wants to get all the guns purchased prior to the Brady bill on a list also. Don't shoot the messenger.

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Are you not getting the tone of my posts? I am NOT in favor of registration, I am merely pointing out that it already exists (illegally) in one form. If you have purchased a new gun since the adoption of the Brady bill, your name is on a list. Do you disagree with that? The point I was getting at is that if the government ignores laws about keeping records, what's to keep them from ignoring that pesky little 2nd amendment thing? DO YOU SEE THE POINT YET? Since hopefully that's cleared up we can redirect our energy to what we, as pro-2nd amendment folk can do to prevent Feinswine from realizing her goal.

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But if it ever gets to the confiscation part, I'm sure that they'll have ways to get people to tell them who they sold thier guns to.

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I read the website that's linked from your signature. Is that yours? If so, good work. Isn't it amazing how tangled up the media elites are with the lawyer scum and anti gun crowd?

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OPINION: Gun Owners Beware: It's Not Your Right

Thursday, January 02, 2003

By Cal Skinner (cal@illinoisleader.com)

Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard holds a U.S. flag during the singing of "God Bless America" on Sept 14, 2001. A year later, he questions the meaning of the Constitution's Second Amendment.
OPINION --“When politicians and elected officials really grasp the problem and make a commitment to say it’s not your right to have a gun, that’s the only time we’re going to be able to cut the homicide rate down,” said Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard is quoted as saying in the Chicago Tribune on January 1st.


That’s a statement that even the Chicago Tribune editorial board dared not make in its 9-part series of editorials on murder in Chicago. The closest the Tribune dared come to advocating repeal of the Second Amendment was this December 18th statement: “We choose our murder rate . . . when we weigh gun control bills…” (That statement may inadvertently hold some truth, but not in the way the Tribune meant!)


A society where just the police and, presumably, the military have guns. Isn’t that a dictator’s dream? Isn’t that the Tribune’s goal?


Editorials to Influence News Coverage
At least three times the Tribune has closely coordinated its front-page news coverage with its editorial policy. The most obvious has been the paper’s campaign against the death penalty. As with its campaign against the Second Amendment, the editorials have only hinted at the paper’s final goal. Perhaps management fears whatever lingering reputation it has for being a “conservative” paper would go right down the drain if it openly supported the abolition of both the death penalty and the Second Amendment.


The third example is its mini-campaign against legislative pork - or was it against the four legislative leaders? It was more half-hearted, but it was certainly coordinated, starting with the lead story in early February featuring pictures of Governor George Ryan, House Speaker Mike Madigan, Senate President Pate Philip and their respective Minority Leaders, Lee Daniels and Emil Jones. A string of editorials and stories on legislative pork followed.

(Understand that a weaker legislative branch, which would occur without strong legislative leaders, means a stronger Chicago Tribune.)

On New Year’s Day, the Tribune continued its coordination between editorial board policy on lowering Chicago’s murder rate and its supposedly independent news coverage. (One could more accurately call it “editorial-tainted news coverage.”) The Tribune ran a front-page article comparing Chicago’s murder rate to that of New York and Los Angeles.


Chicago was not first in total murders, as it was last year, but its murder rate (killings per 100,000 people) was three times that of New York City and 30% higher than the rate in Los Angeles. The Tribune story included Police Superintendent Hillard’s quote, part of which was: ". . . [I]t’s not your right to have a gun…”


Why Hillard Is Dead Wrong
Does this sound like the worst nightmare of Second Amendment supporters?


Daley’s police department has failed to lower the murder rate, but, instead of admitting incompetence, Daley’s police chief trots out the old canard that no guns means fewer murders.


Hillard is dead wrong on so many levels.


First, New York City, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, cut the crime rate with good police work. It is one-third of Chicago’s. A Tribune editorial even points this out.


Secondly, all three cities ban handgun ownership. (Guns registered by 1982 in Chicago were made legal.) Obviously, Hillard is calling for a more widespread ban on guns. Equally obviously, an Illinois ban would not eliminate guns being brought into Chicago from Indiana, Michigan or Wisconsin, so he must be advocating a national ban.


Thirdly, Dr. John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, found the murder rate decreased an average 1.5% in counties after the adoption of the right-to-carry law. That was the result between 1995 and 1996.


Dr. Lott examined crime statistics in all 3,000 United States counties. His fascinating book gives new meaning to the phrase “comprehensive research.” (Those interested in more information, should buy the paperback version and read Chapter 9, which summarizes his work.)


The Chicago Tribune’s recently completed editorial series on murder in Chicago in the longest I have ever seen. It purported to burrow into every nook and cranny of the subject, but somehow could not find Dr. Lott’s research, even though the first edition of his book was written while he was at the University of Chicago and quickly became quite celebrated among those who follow public policy. I think the Tribune committed a deliberate refusal to look at the most extensive research available on the effects of the passage of gun legislation, simply because it did not lead to the conclusions the Tribune sought.


My own conclusion: Gun control advocates in Chicago are just gearing up, despite the sharply deepened voter concern for personal security in the wake of “9/11.” The national Democrats learned in the last Presidential election to anger gun-owning voters at their own risk. Chicago Democrats and their friends at the media giant Tribune don’t have the same fear.

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Editor's Note: During the 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Libertarian candidate Cal Skinner actively promoted enactment of a Personal Security Act, which would allow law-abiding citizens to defend themselves after passing a short-course in the self-defensive use of a gun.


What are your thoughts on this issue? Is Hillard right -- do we not have the right to keep and bear arms? Should only the military and the government have that right? Write us your thoughts at letters@illinoisleader.com.

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Former State Rep. Cal Skinner
After being a state representative for 16 years, Cal Skinner most recently ran for Governor on the Libertarian Party ballot in November 2002.

http://illinoisleader.com/opinion/opinionview.asp?c=3599

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