The New GUN WEEK: ‘Remember New Orleans!’

The New GUN WEEK: ‘Remember New Orleans!’
Date: Oct 18, 2005 7:27 PM
The New GUN WEEK, October 20,2005
Page 1

‘Remember New Orleans!’

20th GRPC Aims to Expand Gun Ownership
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Energized by a rousing speech from National Rifle
Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre to
“Remember New Orleans," and reminded by Second Amendment
Foundation (SAF) founder Alan Gottlieb that places like
California are where gun ownership should be expanded,
hundreds of activists attending this year’s Gun Rights
Policy Conference (GRPC) in Los Angeles went away charged
with enthusiasm, ready for battle during the 2006 election
cycle.

Held at the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International
Airport, this 20th annual GRPC brought together the leading
gun rights experts in the nation. Fresh from a federal
court victory that derailed gun confiscations in New
Orleans, Gottlieb and LaPierre basked in a moment of glory
to the cheers of activists who had been enraged over the
seizures.

If timing is everything, it could not have been more
synchronized with the three-day event, as SAF and NRA went
to court on the eve of the conference and secured a victory
just hours before the event officially opened. More than
once, LaPierre told well-wishers that this year’s conference
was “the best" he could recall, and it was made much sweeter
by the New Orleans court win.

The fact that NRA and SAF teamed up on the landmark lawsuit
was not lost on the audience, and there are indications that
another “partnership effort" may be on the horizon as the
battle heats up to stop a gun ban referendum in San
Francisco next month.

During the conference, activists from across the country
heard updates on federal and international gun rights
issues, got the lowdown on state legislative affairs, got
some very timely advice on federal court appointments from
NRA President Sandra Froman, and got some tips on using the
Internet to further the gun rights cause.

There was an often hilarious keynote address from talk show
host Larry Elder, touching remarks from talk host Michael
Reagan, and a damning expose of gun facts by Prof. John
Lott, author of More Guns=Less Crime.

The conference opened with the traditional look back and
ahead from SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor
Joseph Tartaro, and Gottlieb, who is also chairman of the
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
(CCRKBA). But this year’s remarks were different than in
the past, with both men zeroing in on the lessons taught by
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of his usual treatise on how the gun rights movement
got to this point, Tartaro told the audience that
“experience is one of the greatest teachers" and year, there
was “a bitter lesson taught by Hurricane Katrina."

“The government can’t protect everyone, and may have trouble
protecting anyone," Tartaro cautioned. “In some cases, it can’t
even protect itself."

He warned the audience about “governments that have been
taken over by nit-picking politicians," and such governments
can resort to disarming private citizens in an environment of
panic. He also noted that speaker, Tom Gresham, host of the
weekly Gun Talk radio program and CCRKBA board member, could
not attend this year’s conference because he was “acting as
refuge for his relatives" who had been displaced by
hurricane.

Tartaro noted that “no matter how prepared we are, stuff
happens."

“Take care of yourself first," he advised. “If you don't
survive, you can’t help your relatives, your friends or
community."

“Having a gun and enough ammunition for it," he suggested,
“is a number-one priority."

He noted that rifles and shotguns are good to have ready in
cases of emergency, but that “a handgun is always with us,
no matter where we go." Tartaro’s last bit of advice: “Be
prepared, listen to what’s happening and be prepared to
respond."

Tartaro noted press accounts, even in the traditionally
anti-gun New York Times, that told about armed citizens and
neighborhood militias providing the only semblance of law
and order after the hurricane, when scores of New Orleans
police reportedly abandoned their posts and some even
participated in the looting.

“Good Samaritans have to be armed," he said, “in order to
deal with these situations."

He said people who rushed to gun stores to purchase firearms
are invariably “new gunowners" who make a decision based on
experience.

However, Tartaro cautioned, gun control extremists “are not
going to give up. They are going to continue beating the
dead horse of gun control."

Taking the microphone, Gottlieb predicted passage of
legislation to protect the gun industry from harassment
lawsuits this year, and then suggested that gunowners need
to all get together on the issues. “Anyone you know," he
said for example, “who has ever supported a ban on
.50-caliber rifles has helped (anti-gunners)."

Gottlieb suggested that the strategy among anti-gunners has
been based on a divide and conquer philosophy, targeting
such things as so-called assault weapons in order to lull
many gunowners into a false sense of security about their
own firearms.

“Their target is guns," Gottlieb insisted, “and their
ultimate goal is control."

He contended that anti-gunners believe that government will
provide security and safety, even in an emergency.

“We believe," he countered, “that American citizens are
perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, thank you
very much!"

Too Burdensome

Gottlieb hammered on the recent past, noting that
anti-gunners have tried all kinds of tactics simply to
discourage Americans from being gunowners. Passage of
strict laws, like the Clinton ban on semiautos, has been
proven to be ineffective, yet anti-gunners continue pushing
for, and defending, such laws. They also fight expansion of
concealed carry laws.

“The real motive is to make gun ownership so burdensome, so
onerous that they don’t want to put up with the hassle," he
explained.

To counter this, Gottlieb noted that earlier this year, he
quietly started a campaign that capitalizes on President
Bush’s theme of an “ownership society."

“In an ownership society," Gottlieb observed, “people
protect what they own.... Buy a firearm, own a piece of
freedom."

The idea registered with his audience. Gottlieb revealed
that in the coming months, SAF is going to officially launch
the “Own A Piece of Freedom" campaign.

“We want you to help expand America’s gun ownership
society," he said.

Today, there are an estimated 80 million gunowners, and
Gottlieb believes that if that number can be doubled, there
will come from those ranks millions more Americans who will
fight gun control initiatives at every level.

Quoting science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who stated,
“An armed society is a polite society," Gottlieb told the
audience, “Heinlein didn’t go far enough. An armed society
is a free society."

He also said the battle can be waged on another front, one
launched a few weeks ago by the CCRKBA. It’s the “Control
Borders, Not Guns" campaign.

He said the nation must focus attention on keeping violent
illegal aliens out of the country. Once inside our borders,
Gottlieb contended, illegal criminals commit violent
felonies that are used by anti-gunners to clamor for more
gun control laws that affect American citizens.

It’s those same anti-gunners, he said, who invariably
support amnesty and sanctuary laws for illegals, and even
the notion that they should be allowed to vote. Invariably,
he argued, these illegal voters support liberals who also
believe in gun control laws.

Federal, UN Briefing

The first panel discussion focused on federal affairs and
the threat of global gun control that is being pursued
within the United Nations (UN).

CCRKBA Public Affairs Director John Snyder told the audience
that “gun grabbers still parade through the halls of
Congress."

“The (Charles) Schumers, (Ted) Kennedys and (Dianne)
Feinsteins still want to take away from us as many of our
firearms as they possibly can," he insisted.

He said the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act will
provide important protections for gunowners by protecting
gunmakers from junk lawsuits.

Snyder warned that there will be attempts by domestic gun
grabbers to use the UN and other international bodies to
further their agenda. He said there are efforts right now
to adopt treaties that would affect the export, import and
manufacture of small arms, and programs that would require
national registries.

“My reaction to this is quite simple," he declared. “You UN
people, keep your hands off our guns!"

Following Snyder at the podium, NRA Federal Affairs Director
Charles Cunningham told the audience that elections do
matter to gun rights politics. He cited the defeat last
year of South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle (D), who had been one
of Capitol Hill’s biggest obstructionists and had supported
gun control measures. With him gone, and a larger pro-gun
majority in the Senate, Cunningham said Congress had gone
through “an election upgrade."

“Gun control in politics has become a losing issue,"
Cunningham stated. “We have to see that it stays that way."

He concurred with Snyder that passage of legislation to
protect the gun industry from harassment lawsuits is
essential, and that the bill now being considered by
Congress is acceptable. There are two amendments that have
been greatly distorted on the Internet, he said. One is an
amendment calling for a study of so-called armor-piercing
bullets that essentially does nothing, and the other is a
trigger lock provision that does not require trigger lock
use, but simply the sale of such locks. Nearly all new guns
sold today come with locking devices already.

BATF Reform?

Looking at the federal political landscape, Cunningham said
that a reform of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF) is “long overdue."

“This rogue agency continues as if elections didn’t happen,"
he said. “The policies and practices of this agency are
completely out of line with what Congress envisioned."

He disclosed that a letter had been sent to the chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee in late summer, seeking an
oversight hearing of the agency that could result in reform
legislation that will rein in the bureau.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America
then told the audience that, while “we do have a lot to
celebrate," gunowners must not let down their guards. He
likened gun locks to seat belts, recalling how seat belts
were originally introduced as safety devices for optional
use, but gradually were mandated by states. He suggested
that gun locks could follow the same path, with legislatures
eventually making it a crime not to use them.

Pratt further contended that firearms dealers have been
subjected to extreme regulations. He asserted that
government should not be permitted to tell a dealer what he
can or can’t sell, and that the notion of such regulation is
not in the Constitution.

“We should not be in a position of agreeing to gun control
when gun control is the winning issue that it is," Pratt
observed. “We should force the issue."

Pratt wants to force Congress to vote on a completely clean
gun maker protection bill, to have members on record with a
vote.

John Burtt, chairman of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Institute
and a former California resident and retired Riverside
police officer, told the audience that he and his wife moved
from the Golden State to Oklahoma two years ago
“specifically because of the anti-gun attitude of the
legislature."

California banned .50 BMG caliber rifles and declared them
assault rifles that must be registered with the state or
moved out of California. Burtt warned the crowd that “the
extremists in the California legislature have successfully
banned a single shot, bolt-action center-fire rifle that has
never been used in a crime in the state of California, as an
assault weapon, all because the firearm was ‘too powerful’
“ That set a horrible precedent, he contended, because now
that lawmakers have banned one gun, they will be emboldened
to ban other rifles they decide are “too powerful" for
private citizens to own.

“Many states . . . take their cue from what happens in
California," Burtt warned. Since the ban became effective,
similar bans have been introduced in 10 other states.

Addressing the problems faced by blackpowder shooters, Pat
Walker of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association
(NMLRA) reported that his group is re-organizing and that he
is a member of the board of directors.

Blackpowder shooters face the same problems at the federal
and international levels as do those who shoot modern
firearms. One dilemma faced by the blackpowder community is
that, while front-loaders are deemed not to be firearms by
the ATF, they are considered firearms for the purpose of
taxation on their manufacture by the Internal Revenue
Service.

People who build muzzleloaders for sale are small
businessmen who object to paying the 10% tax on those guns.
However, relief is on the way for people who build 50 or
less blackpowder rifles, handguns or shotguns because of a
new exemption that took effect Oct. 1.

He detailed the restrictions on blackpowder possession and
shipping, and noted that the UN is also looking at proposed
international controls on blackpowder possession.

“The last time we fought this kind of tyranny," Walker said,
“we won, and we won with blackpowder."

State Level Issues

Shifting attention to the states, the next panel provided an
overview of what state legislatures have been doing to
gunowners.

Hawaii state Sen. Sam Slom (R) said Honolulu is “just like
West L.A. without the salsa." The gun control issues are
much the same, he explained. He said there have been
“several important victories" at the state level, and that
gunowners are winning on several fronts.

Slom noted that people are learning important things from
the Hurricane Katrina disaster, one of them being that “you
can dial 9-1-1 but it’s a lot better to have a loaded
magazine when you do it."

He said gunowners can have “a profound influence" at the
state level, and that with the 2006 election cycle on the
horizon, now is the time to get involved in the political
arena. One successful strategy he’s used is to take fellow
lawmakers to the gun range. He recounted his experience
with a female lawmaker, who had been against guns, but after
one trek with him to the range, “she liked it, and she wants
to come back."

“Don’t hesitate to ask someone" to go shooting, he urged.

He also recommended getting more women involved in shooting,
building coalitions and revitalizing organizations with
aging memberships. Slom also told the audience to utilize
talk shows, write letters to the editor, and go on or start
programs on public access television to get the pro-gun
message in front of the public.

CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron reported that 38
states have shall-issue concealed laws, eight others have
discretionary issue laws, and four remain holdouts with no
concealed carry.

Waldron called concealed carry reciprocity “the next
frontier" on the gun rights map. This is going to be a
tough challenge, he said, because many states don’t like the
idea of citizens from other states carrying guns inside
their borders. Those discretionary-issue states will likely
remain so.

“If they don’t trust their own citizens with a license, why
would they trust outsiders," he questioned.

Waldron said many rural-area Democrats have “seen the light"
and are sensitive to the gun rights issue. However, he said
gunowners need to keep an eye on local governments, which
have the authority to set up “no shooting" areas that can be
used to eliminate shooting opportunities near populated
areas. Range encroachment is a big issue, which is why two
thirds of the states have range protection laws on the
books, he suggested.

Advances are being made in terms of reciprocity, Waldron
said, and that could open up more areas where citizens can
go legally armed outside their home states. He noted that
several states, including Texas, Florida and Oklahoma, have
passed pro-gun bills this year, while in Washington state,
the legislature turned back several gun control measures
even though Democrats control both houses and they had
political debts to pay to anti-gunners.

Illinois Troubles

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State
Rifle Association (ISRA), noted that his state is a “test
bed for all kinds of legislation." This year, some 240 gun
control bills were introduced, and that the Illinois Council
Against Gun Violence gets hundreds of thousands of dollars
of support annually from the anti-gun Joyce Foundation.

Illinois gunowners fought the bad bills, had to “swallow
some salt" with a couple of pieces of legislation, but also
got a bill passed that protects gun ranges. They also
managed to turn back a bill that would have deemed
fund-raising banquets like those done by the Rocky Mountain
Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and Friends of the NRA to be
gun shows.

There are two pro-gun lobbyists working the legislature in
Springfield, he noted, while lamenting that he had
approached a variety of other organizations in an attempt to
build a coalition, but none of those groups ever assisted
gunowners in legislative hearings.

Pearson predicted there will be all kinds of efforts in
other states, based on the Illinois model, to ban lead shot
for hunting, and ratchet down in other ways on gun
ownership.

Jim Irvine, chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Association in
Ohio, offered a brief review of activities in the Buckeye
State. Recalling that the Columbus ban on so-called assault
weapons had garnered an NRA pullout of its 2007 convention,
Irvine said there are court challenges on the horizon to
battle local gun bans or restrictions in Toledo, Clyde and
elsewhere that were passed despite state law to prohibit
such local ordinances.

He reported that new concealed carry reform legislation has
been introduced and it includes state preemption. The new
law would also do away with some of the problems in the
current law, he added. Another tenet of the bill would
protect licensed gunowners from being named in print by
zealous anti-gun newspapers.

“Good legislation is not a destination," he said. “It’s a
journey."

He also encouraged gunowners to get involved politically, to
elect pro-gun candidates, and to get their friends, family
and fellow shooters involved.

In California, they will need more than one election to
change the political landscape, according to attorney Chuck
Michel with the California Rifle and Pistol Association.

“California and Sacramento remain the petri dish for all
kinds of gun control legislation," Michel stated.

He said there are “a number of extreme measures still
floating around" the state assembly, including bills that go
after ammunition sales.

Profiling Shooters

One of the ammunition bills, which was sidelined this year,
would have set up the means to profile shooters by logging
the caliber of ammunition they were buying. That way, he
said, the state would know what kind of gun someone owns,
how often they shoot, and would allow the state to conduct a
cross reference with the state’s handgun registry to
determine whether someone is purchasing ammunition for a gun
that is not registered to that individual.

These ammunition bills can be traced to California Attorney
General Bill Lockyer and the anti-gun Brady Campaign, he
indicated.

Michel lamented that the California Department of Justice
“continues to become the gun police in the state."

“They are seizing guns, interpreting every statute to our
detriment," Michel alleged.

The legislative session is not over and Michel said there
were bills on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. Michel
also gave an update on the campaign in San Francisco to pass
a gun ban through a referendum. There is an NRA website
(www.stopthesanfranban.com) that deals with the ban
proposal.

SAF has already announced that it will look at a court
lawsuit to stop the ban from taking effect if it passes, and
Michel announced that the NRA and CCRKBA are also preparing
for battle.

LaPierre Speech

Saturday morning’s session reached its peak with LaPierre’s
address that was interrupted by applause several times, and
brought the audience to its feet. His appearances have
become a conference tradition, and this year’s speech was
over the top.

Beginning on familiar themes, LaPierre noted that the United
States is “the first country in history that was founded not
on a race, not on a royalty, not on a religion but on a set
of God-given unalienable rights and freedoms."

“The doorway to freedom in this country was framed by those
muskets that first defended it at Concord Bridge," he said.

He touched on the boycott by NRA of ConocoPhillips, in
reaction to a lawsuit that energy giant filed to derail a
new Oklahoma law protecting gunowners from being fired for
having firearms in their cars on company property. That
boycott was immediately joined by SAF and CCRKBA.

Several employees of the Weyerhaeuser Company in a small
Oklahoma town were fired when guns were found in their cars
on the eve of a hunting season. The Oklahoma legislature
reacted swiftly, passing two laws. One statute allows those
former employees to sue to get their jobs back and the
other—the one being challenged by ConocoPhillips in federal
court—clarified the legality of having a firearm in one’s
private vehicle.

He also once again warned about a United Nations gun grab,
noting that the International Action Network on Small Arms
(IANSA) has called a conference next summer for the purpose
of writing a treaty aimed at banning small arms ownership by
private citizens around the world.

“The UN issue is going to be critical to the future of
firearms freedom in the world but also in the United
States," he said. “We have to stare down the UN in this
country; we have to go after their funding."

LaPierre also suggested that IANSA may try to postpone their
2006 conference for a couple of years, “in the hope that
Hillary Clinton gets elected president in 2008." That
would, he suggested, create a far more favorable political
climate in this country to accept global gun control.

‘Remember New Orleans’

If LaPierre hadn’t already fired up the audience, he ignited
emotions by turning the subject to New Orleans. Alluding to
the gun grab that prompted the NRA-SAF lawsuit, and touched
a raw nerve among American gunowners, he predicted that the
“intellectual exercise" that has been waged around the gun
rights issue for so long “is all about to change in the
United States."

Describing in grim detail the scene in New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the city’s dikes,
LaPierre called the city “a hellish nightmare of
hopelessness."

Out of the despair, armed citizens emerged, he related.
Some formed neighborhood groups to try and bring some
semblance of order and security.

“You band together to protect those who can’t protect
themselves," he said. “You realize all of a sudden you’re
once again part of the militia in the truest historic sense
of the word."

But then came the police, he said, and incredibly they start
confiscating firearms. Yet, LaPierre revealed for the first
time that among those law enforcement and national guard
contingents were people who reported these gun grabs to the
NRA, and helped the organization find plaintiffs to make its
case.

He described some of these disarmed citizens, whose guns
were sometimes seized at gunpoint, as “brave people who
simply refused to obey orders given by authorities in one of
the most politically corrupt cities in the United States of
America."

“That’s New Orleans as you know it," he said, “the first
place in American history to disarm peaceable citizens house
by house at gunpoint, and it must be the last! Is this law
enforcement? No it’s not law enforcement. It’s tyranny
plain and simple and it must not happen again in the United
States of America ever."

He said New Orleans “is proof that the right to keep and
bear arms is as necessary on a colossal scale as it is on a
personal scale. ... No matter the scale, the equation is
always the same. Where there are good people and bad people
only armed good people prevail."

In the wake of the New Orleans case, LaPierre promised that
NRA is “going into every state that has emergency power laws
that even mention the word firearm. We’re going to amend
every one of those state laws to say that never again when
they declare a state of emergency can they confiscate one
single firearm from a law abiding citizen."

He further promised to go to Congress and change every
federal disaster relief law “to say that all government is
prohibited from confiscating one gun from law abiding
people."

“When all is said and done," he predicted, “the scenes from
new Orleans I promise you are going to be the worst
nightmare for the gun banners here in our country. Never
again, can the anti-gunners claim that honest citizens don’t
need firearms because the police and the government will be
there to protect you. I promise you that we’re going to
make sure New Orleans sets the anti-gunners back to the
stone age."

He closed his rousing speech by launching a new slogan that
appeared to signal a new NRA public relations campaign:
“Remember New Orleans."

He told the audience that the next time they are asked by a
reporter, “Why do you need a gun," the response should
simply be “New Orleans." If asked why anyone needs to carry
a concealed firearm, why anyone would want a high capacity
magazine, what’s wrong with a 15-day waiting period, and
what would make anyone think that the government would ever
confiscate their guns, or whether they really believe the
Second Amendment is still relevant in the 21st Century, the
answer would be the same: “New Orleans."

In the next installment, Gun Week wi/detail panel
discussions on reaching out to other constituencies, the
Bill of Rights, who is funding the anti-gun movement and
special addresses by Prof. John LoU and NRA President
Sandra Froman.