Ginsburg’s Grim Reminder

22 Feb 2012 16:26:45 Z

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has given gun owners a grim reminder of why this election year is so important. Speaking to an Egyptian television network, Ginsburg said she thinks the U.S. Constitution shouldn't be a model for other countries.

"I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," are her exact words. And what would be a better option, in Ginsburg's opinion? The constitution of South Africa — which provides no mention of a Right to Keep and Bear Arms in its lengthy bill of rights. You have a right to affordable housing, according to Ginsburg, but not the right to defend yourself inside your affordable home.

Imagine if one of the five justices who sided with the Second Amendment in the Heller or McDonald cases were to retire in the next four years. The likelihood of that happening is good, and we know that Barack Obama would replace him or her with a nominee who believes, just like Justice Ginsburg, that you and I don't actually have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

This is what's at stake in this year's elections. Will we have a president who believes that our Constitution is nothing more than an old piece of paper that should be discarded or ignored when he sees fit? Not if the NRA has anything to say about it. We've been fighting for our Second Amendment rights since 1871, but never has there been a more critical time for our firearm freedoms. The danger is real, the stakes are immense, and the task won't be easy. Together, however, I know NRA members will go "All In" this election season to deny Obama the opportunity to nominate any more anti-gun judges to the nation's high court.

CPAC 2012

22 Feb 2012 16:26:45 Z

I've been leading the NRA — and our fight for freedom — for more than two decades now. We've had some tough fights. We've been through rough battles. But we've never backed down.

The NRA's 4 million members are among history's most committed, most active and most politically savvy defenders of the fundamental freedom that separates us from every other nation on earth. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the essence of what being an American is all about — living truly free as individual citizens.

No matter what other issues you may care about, it is the core principle of real freedom for each citizen that defines the uniqueness of our nation. There is no greater freedom than to own a firearm to protect your self, your family, your community and your nation. Thus, Second Amendment freedom is, truly, the heart and soul of America.

Our soul is at stake in this election. This campaign is a fight for our country, our values and the freedom we believe in.

All of our Second Amendment liberty, all of the rights we've worked so hard to defend, all of what we know is good and right about America — all of it could be lost if Barack Obama is re-elected.

It's all or nothing and I'm here to announce that gun owners, everywhere I go, are signing on, joining up, and donating to our cause.

The fight is on and the NRA is ALL IN!

Let me put that another way.

Time after time, election after election when freedom is at risk, gun owners step up and make a difference. We're stepping up again. We're not backing down, and mark my words: when the sun goes down on Election Day, Barack Obama will have America's gun owners to thank for his defeat!

The president and his campaign advisors don't like hearing that. He'll say he hasn't pursued an anti-gun agenda. He'll hit the campaign trail and give us lip service about how he's left gun owners alone— during his first term.

Well, Mr. President, with all due respect, we've had enough lip service the first term to know we don't need a second term! Sir, it's time for you to go!

All that first-term lip service to gun owners is part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment — during his second term!

Getting re-elected has been Barack Obama's top goal since the day he was sworn into office. From day one, he's been looking ahead to 2012.

He doesn't want to tangle with 4 million NRA members ... or 30 million people who identify themselves with the NRA ... or with America's 100 million gun owners. So the president and his consultants made a political calculation to avoid the gun issue during his first term, to make us a non-player in his campaign for a second term.

Their strategy was clear: don't enable anti-gun legislation and, when pressed on the issue of gun control, sing a few platitudes to hunters and shooters to make us think we're respected. Hide, shroud and cloak any and all desires to attack the Second Amendment during the first term — wait for the second term.

Now don't get me wrong. I've been around long enough to see politicians have a sincere change of heart.

But Obama has already signed on to destroying the Second Amendment and our freedom.

He endorsed a total ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of all handguns.

He endorsed a ban on the sale or transfer of all semi-automatic firearms.

He backed a 500 percent increase in federal taxes on guns and ammunition.

He voted to ban single-shot, over-under AND side-by-side shotguns.

He said the right of lawful citizens to carry a firearm for personal protection should be banned nationwide.

In fact, he supported efforts to prohibit Americans from keeping a gun in their own homes for self-defense.

He did all of these things when he thought gun owners didn't matter. Now he wants us to think he's had a change of heart but, clearly, Barack Obama is no Paul on the road to Damascus.

His was a pure political calculation, a conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep. Obama learned from history that NRA members can change history in close elections.

He remembers 1994. When Bill Clinton shoved his old gun ban down our throats, gun owners had their say at the polls in the next election — and control of the House changed hands.

Obama remembers 2000. Gun owners turned out in droves and beat Al Gore in Arkansas, West Virginia and even his home state of Tennessee. We made the difference in that razor-thin election, and we'll make that difference again in 2012!

Now when I first explained that last fall, the news media went crazy — calling me crazy! But I've got news for all you reporters. You can call me crazy, but the media won't win this election. Gun owners will.

We see the president's strategy crystal clear. Get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms freedom. Erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. constitution.

They're already setting the stage for gutting the Second Amendment and our freedom. The president has already appointed two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. When given the chance, Obama jumped to put Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the bench. They are two of the most rabidly anti-gun Justices in history.

They've joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. Not long after hugging Obama like a giddy schoolgirl at the State of the Union, Ginsburg said this about our American Constitution, and I'm quoting her here:

"I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa."

Let me quote her again:

"I WOULD NOT LOOK TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IF I WERE DRAFTING A CONSTITUTION IN THE YEAR 2012. I MIGHT LOOK AT THE CONSTITUTION OF SOUTH AFRICA."

So much for her oath to uphold and defend our Constitution.

If Obama wins re-election, he will likely appoint one — and perhaps three — more Supreme Court Justices. If we get one more like those three, the Second Amendment is finished. It'll be the end of our freedom forever.

That is a fact. Operation Fast and Furious is also a fact, but we were never supposed to find out about it.

They wanted to create the appearance that straw purchasers in the U.S. caused Mexico's drug wars. So the Justice Department and ATF conspired in secret to allow, encourage and engage in illegal gun smuggling — knowing full well that those thousands of guns were heading straight to the cartels.

They ran a massive campaign out of the Department of Justice and the White House to manipulate public opinion and encouraged the media to slander the reputations of honest gun dealers — when they knew the truth all along.

That's the kind of thing you'd expect out of some South American dictator, not from a U.S. attorney general and not from an American president. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder shrug their shoulders and say, "I didn't authorize it. Don't ask me."

They're stonewalling two congressional investigations, as if Americans shouldn't care that a massive criminal enterprise appears to have been run right out of our own Justice Department, just to set the political stage for a future Obama gun ban.

Here are the facts:

The Department of Justice launched a criminal enterprise.

They smuggled thousands of illegal guns to drug cartels.

Those guns were used to kill a federal agent, Brian Terry.

Those guns have and will be used to kill innocent Mexicans and Americans for decades.

And they did it all, for political gain — so they could wrongly blame honest American gun owners for Mexican drug violence.

Now the truth is out and no one — nobody — has been held accountable. Even Valerie Plame got a special prosecutor. All Fast and Furious gets is a White House cover-up.

The fact that Eric Holder is still on the job and hasn't been fired is a disgrace! Forget fired. SOMEBODY OUGHT TO BE IN JAIL!

Now I ask you, after letting his Justice Department become an accessory to murder, how does the president even look at himself in the mirror?

But you won't hear Rachel Maddow talking about the White House cover-up. Chris Matthews may scoff at my speech, but he won't invite me onto his program to talk about Fast and Furious. In fact, the entire NBC network has barely even mentioned the scandal. They've become part of the cover-up and Brian Williams and everyone at NBC ought to be ashamed!

And if that wasn't enough, the Obama administration launched that secret operation while it was also working behind the scenes at the
United Nations. In the shadows, I believe they've all but signed off on an international arms trade treaty that could effectively ban or severely restrict civilian ownership of firearms worldwide.

I've been around long enough to know that the U.N. has little regard for our constitution, and none at all for the Second Amendment. But I never thought I'd see the day when an American White House would tolerate a proposal that would literally gut one of our most fundamental freedoms.

So I went to New York a few months ago and testified before the U.N. Talk about an out-of-body experience!

There were representatives from Libya and Russia and China and Cuba and North Korea and Syria and Iran — all those great bastions of freedom — and I looked them all right in the eye and told them about American freedom and that they had no authority whatsoever to mess with it! No way, no how!

Now you won't hear those words from President Obama, because he wants to be part of that club of governments. Heck, maybe they'll even give him another Nobel Prize.

And when he can, the president will go around Congress to impose any restrictions possible on the right to keep and bear arms. He is already pushing the limits of executive order power, circumventing Congress with backdoor gun registration on lawful firearms purchases. And we know there are more executive orders ready to go, amounting to a full-scale regulatory war on the gun rights of every lawful American.

Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast and Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today.

The president hopes we'll ignore those facts. He hopes gun owners will follow the elite media who deny them. But we know better. We know that those facts, and so much more, are the nightmares we will all face in a second Obama White House.

President Obama and his cohorts will deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. They'll deny the fact that if this president gets a second term, America as we know it will be on its way to being lost forever.

All across this country, people are worried. Parents fear that their kids won't be able to live the American dream. We witness violence and drug gangs in our communities, see the collapse of our southern border, and fear for our safety. We are angered as our American values and culture are sacrificed upon the altar of international acceptance.

But let me tell you this. We are the majority. We see the soul of our nation — our individual freedom — on the brink of being destroyed and gun owners are answering the call to fight back, to save America.

Between now and Election Day, we're taking our message directly to the voters in the battleground states where this race will be won or lost. Where America will be won or lost.

Gun owners and Americans who care about our great freedom are stepping up and supporting our cause. We'll spend and do whatever it takes to tell the truth the media ignores.

We're going ALL IN for this election and if you don't believe me, take a look at this brief sample of what's to come:

(VIDEO PLAYS)

We're going to deliver that message in every battleground state and we're going to spell the difference between victory and defeat!

The presidency of Barack Obama is a failure. In everything we care about, everywhere you look, anyway you look at it — the Obama administration has failed. HE HAS FAILED!

And going all the way back to grade school, when you fail, you flunk. Well, his report card is coming November 6th and that's when gun owners flunk Obama out of the White House!

Anybody who says gun owners won't be a factor has not paid attention to the history of elections in this country. Every time freedom is at risk, it is fought for and preserved by the work, the wallets and the will of millions of NRA members, gun owners and patriots. In the face of great peril, we always stand up.

We deserve a president who truly shares our values and freedoms, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, endowed by our Creator and due all humankind.

Our liberty lives in the Second Amendment, the fundamental right that separates us from all other nations on earth. That freedom makes us better than other countries. That freedom makes us stronger.

If you believe in freedom and if you're as sick and tired of all the lies and schemes and Obama failures as I am, join us and stand up in this great fight.

If you don't remember anything else I say today, write this down: This is the most dangerous election in our lifetime. If Obama wins, we'll go to our grave mourning the freedom we've lost.

This election is All In — all of our freedom, all of our rights. And that means all of you, ALL IN.

No one sits this one out. So stand up right now and you tell me, will you defend freedom with all your heart and might? Come on, stand up and let them hear you at the White House!

Will we fight to preserve our liberty and keep our nation strong and safe and free? Will we save America and our freedom? Will we save the Second Amendment from a second Obama White House?

We will not be denied our destiny, our place in the history of preserving American liberty! This is our time. Our election to rise up and fight for our rights!

We will defend our nation because we must.

We will prevail! We will prevail and we will stand for who we truly are.

WE ARE THE NRA.

WE ARE AMERICANS.

WE ARE PATRIOTS.

WE WILL DEFEND FREEDOM, AND IN THIS ELECTION WE ARE, BY GOD, ALL IN!

Pleading the Fifth

22 Feb 2012 16:26:45 Z

Why would a government employee refuse to testify under oath about a government operation? Patrick Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona, repeatedly refused to give a deposition to investigators digging into "Operation Fast and Furious." When Rep. Darrell Issa subpoenaed Cunningham, the Justice Department employee responded through his private attorney that he'd be invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

For more than a year now, Attorney General Eric Holder has insisted that there was no wrongdoing in "Operation Fast and Furious." But one of his own attorneys is refusing to go on the record about the operation that put thousands of guns in the hands of Mexican cartel members? If Holder were honest, he would have come clean about "Fast and Furious" months ago. Instead, the Justice Department has dragged on the investigation for months, throwing roadblocks in the way of congressional investigators and engaging in desperate spin to avoid responsibility for the infamous operation.

The American people deserve answers, and it is unconscionable that employees of the Justice Department are refusing to give them. Then again, the head of the Department of Justice didn't provide any satisfactory answers in his recent testimony before Rep. Issa and the House Oversight Committee. Instead, the attorney general attacked members of Congress for daring to question previous statements that have been proven false, and actually whined that he hasn't received enough credit for the good things done under his watch.

The former head of the DEA office in Tucson, Ariz., recently told the Daily Caller website that knowledge of gun walking in "Fast and Furious" was common outside of the ATF, and that Holder either knew it was happening or was willfully ignorant of the transfer of firearms to the Mexican drug cartels. As more information leaks out, it's obvious that Holder's petulant responses and pathetic excuses simply don't hold water.

New York’s Bad Laws

22 Feb 2012 16:26:45 Z

Another American has run afoul of New York City's bad gun-control laws and faces years in prison for trying to do the right thing.

Ryan Jerome, a former Marine Corps gunner who has his license to carry in Indiana, was in New York City recently to sell some gold. Although he had checked a website before he left to ensure he was in compliance with New York law, apparently the site gave him bad information, and Jerome thought he was legally carrying his concealed firearm.

When Jerome and his girlfriend went to the Empire State Building, he saw a "no guns allowed" sign and told a ticket seller that he was armed. Instructed to go to a security office, Jerome was arrested and spent two days behind bars before he could bail himself out. If convicted of illegal gun possession, Jerome could be sentenced to 3 ½ to 15 years in prison.

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg thinks people like Ryan Jerome and Meredith Graves, the medical student recently arrested in NYC for trying to abide by a "no guns" sign, should spend years behind bars for their heinous crimes. I don't believe that's the case, and that's why the NRA has been lobbying for HR 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which would have protected both Jerome and Graves from the anti-gun zealot down at City Hall if it were law. The bill passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote just a few months ago, but it still faces the Senate and President Obama's veto pen.

Still, we'll keep fighting for this legislation, because the NRA is here to fight for the rights of all law-abiding Americans to exercise their right, not just to keep, but to bear arms as well. If Mayor Bloomberg wants to throw the book at Right-to-Carry holders trying to do the right thing, then we'll throw the Bill of Rights back at him.

More Gun Owners A Good Thing

22 Feb 2012 16:26:45 Z

It looks like guns were popular gifts this Christmas season. The FBI says the two busiest days in the history of the National Instant Check System happened within a month of each other this year. The first, on retail's Black Friday, shattered the old record set in 2008. Then, on Dec. 23, more than 102,000 NICS checks were performed, also outpacing the number from 2008.

Anti-gun organizations like the Brady Campaign are trying to claim that these numbers mean nothing, and that there aren't many new gun owners at all. Now, we may not be able to figure out what percentage of the sales are to first-time buyers, but with training courses filling up months in advance in a lot of places, and the fact that most of us know someone who's become a new gun owner in the past year or two, it's safe to say the Brady Campaign's engaging in some pretty pathetic spin.

The NRA is helping these new gun owners every day, whether it's providing the training they receive, grants to ranges across the country so they have places to shoot, sanctioning competitive matches, or fighting for their rights from Capitol Hill to state capitols across the nation. I'm glad more Americans are exercising their Second Amendment rights, but we need them to defend their rights as well by becoming NRA members. For our firearm freedoms, 2012 is going to be a crucial year and the stronger the NRA, the more secure our Right to Keep and Bear Arms will be.