I grew up in Northern Michigan, which is a huge hunting area. I had friends up there who were big into
wants to eclipse rights of gun-own- ing Americans. Indeed, all they ask for are a few reasonable, common- sense regulations. Again, it was Obama who led
the charge. “I think that we’ve seen for
some time now,” Obama said at his January news conference, “[is] that those who oppose any common- sense gun control or gun safety measures have a pretty eff ective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow the federal government is about to take all your guns away. And there’s probably an economic ele- ment to that. It obviously is good for business.” The credibility of Obama’s assurances may have been miti- gated by the fact that one week later Feinstein, who admits that for years she had a concealed-car- ry permit for personal protection, unveiled a sweeping plan to ban
hunting. We’d set up bowling pins in the woods and shoot our shotguns at the targets, and kind of have fun with it, seeing who could hit the targets the most. A lot of people go hunting with their families every season, and they live for hunting season. It’s great bonding experience.”
— Celia Bigelow campus director, American Majority Action
158 fi rearms. Her proposal would tighten the defi nition of an assault weapon, and would prohibit the sale, transfer, importation, or man- ufacture of blacklisted fi rearms. A few common-sense regu-
lations? “I think they’re simply lying,” Larry Hunter, the chair- man of Revolution PAC and one of the co-organizers of Gun Appre- ciation Day, tells Newsmax of the liberal mantra. “It’s not true they don’t want to take guns away. You can start with Janet Reno, who said the ultimate objective is to prohibit guns. Eric Holder has said the same. Dianne Feinstein has said the same. Michael Bloom-
keep talking about how powerful we are. It’s not the NRA; it’s the people we represent. It’s the people of this country who understand the Constitution.
The more the Second Amendment is attacked, the more the NRA’s membership grows. Why? The administration’s proposals are scaring these folks. They’re joining the NRA because they know that the NRA is the one organization they can count on to really fight these kinds of proposals in Congress and the state legislatures. So, actually, they’re coming to us and saying, I want to be part of this, I know how important it is.
Will the president win congressional approval for a ban on so-called “assault-weapons”? All bets are off when the president really goes to work on one of these things. Gun owners went into the assault weapon battle in the ’90s with a significant margin in the House. But then the president used the carrot-and-stick approach to change votes. It cost the American people bridges and dams and ambassadorships and government jobs, but he got what he wanted. So you never know when you’re doing battle with a president, whether it’s going to come out the way it should.
berg, Rahm Emanuel, and Andrew Cuomo all say the same thing. This is about making ownership of pri- vate fi rearms against the law.” As that suggests, the mistrust
became palpable as both sides readied for the legislation battle. Hunter, for example, saw the
Feinstein plan as a fi rst step in a broader eff ort to regulate guns by other means — an end-run around the Second Amendment. Hunter says: “They want to fi rst
make gun ownership so onerous, so inconvenient, so annoying, so expensive through taxes and oth- erwise, that people both intention- (Continued on page 58)
Are there any solutions both sides of the aisle can agree on? We have proposed that those who’ve been adjudicated to be potentially violently mentally ill should be included on the list that is checked when someone tries to buy a gun, so that they will be prohibited from buying one. Nothing’s been done — in 23 states none of these people have put in a database. We can agree on that. We can also agree on trying to do something to improve the mental healthcare system in this country, so these people receive the treatment that they need.
Is the media giving gun owners and the NRA a fair shake? I would have to say no. In fact, even the fairest news outlets fall for the mythological way in which we debate these issues. So what happens is they create a caricature, and then you sell it and pretty soon even people who think they’re being fair accept it and you’re dealing in mythology rather than reality.
New York is enacting tougher gun laws, and other states may follow suit. How will you respond? Some of these things are going to fall in the courts. Some of them are unenforceable. We’re going to be in court in a lot of places, and we’re going to win some of those court battles. But when this is all over, we’re going to prevail.
MARCH 2013 | NEWSMAX 55
COURTESY OF AMERICAN MAJORITY ACTION
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