By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
One could not come away from the 2013 Gun Rights Policy Conference without feeling as if the enemy has been clearly identified as two people, a president with an adoring following that includes the mainstream press, and a billionaire Nanny Statist who wants to use his wealth to dictate how everyone should live.
If it isn’t Barack Obama making moves to erode Second Amendment rights, it’s Michael Bloomberg trying to buy them away via campaign contributions and support funding for anti-gun organizations. That seemed to be the prevailing wisdom from dozens of speakers who clearly connected with an audience of activists for the two-day event.
Held in Houston, the 28th annual event brought together some of the top thinkers in the gun rights community with a smaller-than-normal audience of hardcore activists.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), led off the event observing that the road ahead “is going to look more like a Civil War battlefield than a paved highway.”
Joe Tartaro, president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), noted that gun owners “have been travelling a pretty rock road for the past nine or ten months.”
“It hasn’t been a vacation since the election of Barack Obama in 2008,” he quipped.
Sharing the podium with a look back and forward, the two veteran gun rights advocates noted tht while Secretary of State John Kerry recently signed the international Arms Trade Treaty, more than half the U.S. Senate has already announced they will not ratify the document, thus making one of President Obama’s gun control victories rather hollow and far more symbolic than substantive.
Tartaro said the gun control efforts over the past ten months since the Sandy Hook tragedy “caused tens of thousands to join gun rights organizations” and fear of more gun laws had emptied the shelves at gun stores.
Gottlieb acknowledged that there will be continued assaults on firearms civil rights at the federal level. He cautioned that “our opponents are extremely well funded” and that they will out-spend gun owner lobbying organizations.
“President Obama will not back down,” he said, “Bloomberg will not back down, the media will not back down and as gun owners we cannot back down.”
In a bold move that will obviously create controversy, Gottlieb said CCRKBA will be promoting Saturday, Dec. 14 – the anniversary of the Newtown tragedy – as “Guns Save Lives” day.
“The gun prohibition lobby,” he predicted, “their next big push to eradicate Second Amendment rights will come on Dec. 14. We’re not going to let them own that day. We will out-organize the other side and show America that there is a good side of guns.”
During the conference, veteran Arizona gun rights advocate and author Alan Korwin was handing out lapel stickers declaring that “Guns Save Lives.”
There will be a website soon with information on what Gottlieb called the “open source national project that all freedom loving organizations are invited to become a part of.”
Gottlieb also predicted that Bloomberg will be funding several “million dollar initiative efforts” like the one currently underway in Washington State, which the anti-gun mayor has yet to fund.
Federal affairs
Following the opening remarks, a three-member panel discussed federal legislative activities. Jeff Knox, director of the Firearms Coalition and founder of GunVoter.com, reminded the audience that they are the “gun lobby.” He also focused on the threat Bloomberg poses to the Second Amendment.
However, he quickly pointed to the thwarting of gun control legislative efforts following Newtown. Explaining to the audience that after the Aurora, Colo., “Batman massacre” and the failure to push gun control measures then, Bloomberg and other anti-gunners “waited for the next event to launch a full scale attack.”
“They came very close to tipping us over,” he recalled. “The initial reaction was that we were going down.”
But hard work by gun rights organizations derailed those efforts, which seemed to infuriate Bloomberg and other gun prohibitionists even more, Knox intimated. He said that Bloomberg is not only funding MAIG activities, he is also apparently providing funds to other gun prohibition efforts, and he is supporting other anti-gun efforts.
“This conglomeration of anti-rights activism is, in my opinion, the greatest threat we face now,” Knox stated.
Bloomberg’s MAIG group has allegedly financially supported positions in various municipal governments for staff people to work on “gun violence” issues.
He was followed at the podium by Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners of America. He looked back at legislative gun control efforts, including the Manchin-Toomey bill, which he characterized as a gun registration measure. While he believes that effort is dead, he said there are other threats.
For example, Pratt said the recently-activated Obamacare legislation is actually an anti-gun bill at its core. He asserted that military veterans are losing their rights if they acknowledge having emotional problems from combat.
He said the way to keep gun control at bay is to cause a meltdown of telephone lines on Capitol Hill. The Congress may be dysfunctional, but that doesn’t mean there is no cause for alarm.
Pratt pointed to various county sheriffs around the country who have been telling federal agencies to stay out of their jurisdictions.
Mark Barnes, president of Mark Barnes Associates in Washington, D.C. reminded the audience that Bloomberg has contributed more than $200 million to Johns Hopkins University “to establish, in my opinion, the world’s largest anti-gun think tank.”
The university apparently plans to hire up to 40 professors “to strategize, research and write on firearms ownership,” Barnes said.
With that kind of academic activity, he cautioned, “it’s extraordinarily serious.”
The effort to counter this at the grassroots level will require that gun owners “give back in kind” to wage a well-financed counter offensive, Barnes contended.
Later, Dr. Timothy Wheeler, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation, put it even more bluntly.
“Bloomberg has bought himself a school of public health research at Johns Hopkins,” he remarked.
He said anti-gun researches habitually consider that “any research that doesn’t agree with them doesn’t exist.”
“The bias is clear among these folks,” Dr. Wheeler said.
For example, he suggested these anti-gun academics had either dismissed or attempted to refute such research as that done by Prof. John Lott, who was also at the conference and made a presentation of his own. Lott, according to Wheeler, had not even been invited to a conference of medical professionals discussing firearms research.
Wheeler further criticized agenda-driven researchers for making “character attacks” on gun owners and for essentially dismissing the right to keep and bear arms.
“Constitutional rights are not on the radar screen of these people,” Wheeler observed. “They’re not interested in controlling crime, they’re interested in controlling you and me.”
DC an ‘alien planet’
Veteran political writer John Fund, who spoke at the 28th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference last month, was also one of the honorees at that event, walking away with the 2013 Bill of Rights Award for his volume of work.
Fund, the national affairs columnist for National Review Online and a senior editor at The American Spectator, is a frequent guest on Fox News and formerly wrote for the Wall Street Journal, serving on that newspaper’s editorial board from 1995 to 2001.
His 2004 book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, is considered must-reading by many conservatives. He co-authored something of a follow-up book with Hans von Spakovsky titled Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.
Fund has also been published in Esquire, Reason, National Review and The New Republic. He has appeared at the GRPC in the past as a speaker, as well.
His presentation at this year’s conference was about Washington, D.C., which he calls an “anti-gun alien planet.”
He described the nation’s capital city as very “social,” with a population of “social engineers, socialites and socialists.”
“They hate people from the hinterlands who come to challenge their power,” he observed.
Noting that satire and ridicule are better means of beating gun prohibitionists than anger, Fund pointed to the Navy Yard shooting. He said the gunman in that attack “did what Joe Biden wanted him to do, he went out and bought a shotgun.”
Biden earlier this year took plenty of flak for advising people to “get a shotgun” for home defense.
Fund also said Connecticut, with the fifth toughest gun laws in the country that did not stop Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza also is one of only six states that has not adopted an outpatient treatment program for mental health.
He said at least two-thirds of mass shooters have demonstrated mental illness, and that people who are not treated for their illnesses could be “ticking time bombs.”
“It would be more effective if we focused on the people at the center of these tragedies rather than the instrument with which they commit their evil deeds,” he observed.
State legislative affairs
This year’s conference featured two panels dealing with state legislative affairs, both loaded with six speakers each. The first panel discussion led with Andrew Rothman, vice president of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance of Minnesota, who said a “funny thing happened” in response to President Obama’s visit to that state in an attempt to influence gun control legislation.
“We filled up the hearing room” and two overflow rooms, and Rothman credited the GRPC in Chicago two years ago for helping make the victory possible. He remembered a photograph of thousands of Illinois gun owners that was “such a powerful image” he brought that home to Minnesota. He was inspired to raise the same kind of crowd, dressed in maroon T-shirts, and descend on the capital.
“We have a tough year ahead,” he said, noting that Minnesota is one of five states targeted by Bloomberg for pushing gun control measures in 2014.
“Minnesota is the front line,” he said. “If they get us, they’re coming after you.”
Alice Tripp, legislative director of the Texas State Rifle Association, noted that the Lone Star State’s population growth has been a problem because all the people who will come here “bring their politics with them.”
Texas gun activists have been “getting everything they can” now, she explained. Of ten pro-gun bills filed during this year’s session, eight were passed.
“Bills are meant to punish criminals,” she said, “not restrict and intimidate the law abiding.”
Tripp stressed the importance of being effective, and that requires working together.
Hawaii State Sen. Sam Slom, the only Republican in that state’s senate and a SAF trustee, said he is the only conservative in the state legislature.
“In Hawaii after Newtown, there was a flurry of activity,” he recalled. “Only one of them did pass.”
Proposed bans on semi-autos, ammunition and magazines all failed.
“You have the maximum amount of influence,” he warned, “but you have to use it, you’ve got to be involved. We need candidates now.”
He told the audience that they need to support a candidate now, or become a candidate.
He said politicians have to be reminded that they work for the people and have political spine, and that takes the work of individuals who are willing to get involved and make a difference.
Frank Fiamingo, president of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, discussed the difficult gun rights situation in the Garden State. Gun laws there are very restrictive. Gun owners cannot get carry permits unless they are in specialized jobs, and demonstrate a “justifiable need.”
The right to carry is essentially on paper only, and people who do carry without a permit can go to prison for several years. Transporting firearms unloaded can still be a felony.
“A concealable firearm, you have no right to possess it in New Jersey,” he stated. “We are coming from behind. We have a lot of catch-up to do.”
He recalled how anti-gunners paraded the parents of murdered Connecticut school children into legislative hearings on New Jersey bills to influence the outcome.
“That’s how desperate they are,” he said
Sean Caranna, co-executive director of FloridaCarry.org, recalled how the Sunshine State was a leader in passing modern concealed carry laws.
His state has been, for gun legislation, a laboratory. That includes the Stand Your Ground law, which is under attack due to the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case. He said the State Legislature has been under constant attack to repeal the law.
“They’re trying to roll back self-defense rights,” he said of the anti-gun lobby.
There are more than 1 million concealed carry license holders, and at this point, gun owners are being advised to stay on defense. But Caranna made it clear that’s not going to happen. There are now four bills pre-filed to improve gun rights, and more are on the way.
He has been assured by at least one lawmaker that there will be no changes to the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law, but there is an effort to criminalize escalation of force used in self-defense.
Jim Irvine, president of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, said that in Ohio there is an effort to “eliminate victim zones” and allow universities to let students carry firearms. Last year, they passed three pro-gun bills, including the removal of “No Gun” signs from state buildings.
He said gun owners are going on the offense during the next session of the Legislature, pushing reciprocity bills, reducing the required training time for getting a concealed carry license, and push for SYG legislation and protection of open carry.
Irvine noted that there has been increased interest in concealed carry, and his group trained a group of 24 teachers to carry guns in schools. The three-day class had some 1,500 applicants, he revealed. Six more classes were conducted and there are plans for even more classes.
“The bottom line is we have teachers and administrators…protecting kids in our schools,” he said. “This is something we can win, and we can win nationally.”
He also said the Buckeye Firearms Association had sent three people to Colorado to help with their recall effort.
Referring to Bloomberg’s efforts to influence elections, he said “anywhere Bloomberg attacks our rights, we have to go there and help.”
Second State panel
The second state affairs panel was led by Stephen Aldstadt, president of the Shooters Committee on Political Education (SCOPE) in New York. He detailed the effort by anti-gun New York Gov. Andrew Cuopmo to push through the much-reviled SAFE Act, which sheriffs in the Empire State are opposing
He warned that the hastily-passed law is “not going to go away anytime soon” and that a number of lawsuits have already been filed to overturn it.
New York is “ground zero” politically, and Aldstadt told the audience that gun owners in that state “really need help.” The ideal scenario would be to repeal the SAFE Act, which includes registration and other limits on gun owner rights.
“If we don’t push this back,” he warned, “it will come to your state.”
Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGuns Foundation, reported that Gov. Jerry Brown has actually helped Golden State gun owners by quietly challenging gun control measures. An attempt to ban rifles with bullet button mechanisms failed, he said, and other legislation has also failed. He asserted that Gov. Brown “finds most of this stuff remarkably silly.”
Hoffman is wary of the proposed lead ammunition ban, which started just in certain areas ostensibly to protect California condors. Now anti-gunners and anti-hunters want to ban all lead ammunition for all hunting in the state.
“The lead ammo situation is extremely dangerous,” he warned.
He said the attorney general is “exceedingly anti-gun” and that she has allowed for indefinite holds on firearms for background checks.
The third panel member was Kansas Judge Phil Journey, a former NRA director and now vice president of the Kansas State Rifle Association. He declared that “we have pretty much eviscerated the collective right theory” that was first put forth by a Kansas court decision in 1905. In recent years, Kansas has seen the passage of legislation legalizing ownership of Class III weapons and suppressors.
Journey, a district court judge, noted that the real challenge facing the firearms community is gray hair. He said gun owners must step up their efforts to recruit younger shooters into the gun rights battle.
“We have got to get children into the shooting sports,” he stressed. “We know why we got our asses kicked up and down the ballot. They beat us at outreach and beat us at technology.”
Valinda Rowe, a spokesperson with Illinois Carry, advised the audience that “when one state faces a battle, we all face a battle, and when one state wins a battle, we all win a battle.”
She rattled off a list of Illinois victories, starting with the court battles and ending with the adoption of a concealed carry bill earlier this year. However, Rowe anticipates more battles over the horizon because gun rights opponents “want the concealed carry law to be so restrictive as to be non-existent.”
Row publicly thanked SAF for its legal work to force the state to adopt a concealed carry statute.
Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, reported how the Sandy Hook tragedy in Connecticut affected Virginia, where gun owners “watched our pro-gun agenda go up in smoke.”
Virginia anti-gunners exploited the Newtown massacre and threw out all kinds of gun control legislation to see what they might get passed.
But gun owners fought back, he recalled, and all of those anti-gun measures were defeated. With mid-term elections coming up, the fight is far from over.
Tom Bolioli, a director with Commonwealth Second Amendment in Massachusetts, filled in for an ailing Jim Wallace at GOAL. He described the situation in Massachusetts as challenging, but noted that the state still has not seen a post-Sandy Hook measure passed by the legislature.
Some lawmakers toured the state, trying to get people to support measures that are already on the books.
Global gun control
Canadian Sheldon Clare, president of the National Firearms Association of Canada, opened the panel discussion about Global gun control, noting sarcastically that he can mail order a firearm via the mail, and that Canada had not signed the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.
He lauded the U.S. delegation to the United Nations for doing a good job, yet the Obama administration signed the document. He encouraged gun owners to contact their U.S. senators and “make sure they don’t ratify” the treaty.
“Be vigilant,” he said, “it’s important.”
Clare said there are strong indications from his government that Canada will not sign the treaty, and he said that treaty will affect firearms rights in this country.
“There’s no such thing as a bad gun,” he stated, “just bad behavior.”
Sylvia Gentile, legal counsel for Federazione Italiana Storia Armi Tiro, an Italy-based gun organization, discussed the problems with gun control in Europe. She stressed the importance of making sure people understand that self-defense is a human right, and that this right must be defended.
Gentile also discussed the problems that arise because government bureaucracies refuse to recognize the distinctions between military weapons and civilian look-alikes. This is a problem that is not unique to the U.S.
Julianne Versnel, vice president of the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights, said it was a busy summer, with various meetings concerning the treaty. She said there had been details about the treaty that had not been discussed, and that a bureaucracy will be created.
Retired Maj. Gen. Allen Youngman, executive director of the Defense Small Arms Advisory Council, concurred with Gentile that self-defense is a human right. He said the US may be the only country that recognizes this, noting that “it doesn’t exist in the rest of the world.”
He said it should not be surprising that Secretary of State John Kerry signed the treaty, but he offered an assurance that “at this point it is not likely to ratify this treaty.” He also said that if President Obama sends it over to the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid “may not want it.”
“Most of the major arms producers are not going to sign it,” he said.
While the treaty is not “a direct assault on the Second Amendment in its present text,” Youngman said that down the road, “it could mean other things to other administrations.” It could affect the price of ammunition, and many of the things that the US delegation managed to keep out of the treaty could be brought back at a later date.
“This will be a generational challenge,” he warned.
Youngman cautioned activists to refrain from engaging in rhetoric about things that are actually not in the treaty. At that point, he explained, gun owners lose their credibility.
“There are some people out there saying things that are not true,” he noted.
Stand Your Ground
Three experts on self-defense provided insight into what can happen when you stand your ground. Massad Ayoob, author of In the Gravest Extreme and nationally-recognized firearms authority, explained the legal aspects of “duty to retreat” and “no duty to retreat.” Noting that critics of the Stand Your Ground concept misrepresent it as allowing people to kill anyone.
He blasted a Brady Campaign billboard that warned foreign tourists they might be legally killed, which he said was “totally bogus.”
He also discussed the “reasonable man doctrine,” which considers self-defense legitimacy on the grounds that faced with the same set of circumstances, knowing what a person knew at the time, what would any reasonable person do?
Ayoob told the audience that ultimate, “self-defense is the highest of all human rights. Stand your ground on it.”
Author Chris Bird noted that New York Mayor Bloomberg owns a mansion in Bermuda and that when he visits there, he has armed personal security. That’s on an island where gun ownership is strictly regulated.
Marty Hayes, president of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network, took the microphone just long enough to cede his speaking time to attorney Alan Gura, to get the agenda back on schedule, which many in the audience thought was a “class act.”
SAF in the lead
When Gura did take the podium, he immediately said SAF has the “leading gun rights litigation team.” However, they have a problem because many courts still do not take the Second Amendment as seriously as they should.
Many federal courts continue to resist the two Supreme Court rulings – Heller and McDonald – on the Second Amendment as protective of an individual civil right. He referred to at least one case where a lower court tried to judge a case using “intermediate scrutiny,” when that had already been rejected as an option by the high court.
Perhaps not surprisingly, when the afternoon sessions began, the first panel consisted of attorneys who discussed taking gun rights cases through the courts. First up was David Hardy, who followed Gura’s discussion of the standard of review. He said there are now three standards: rational basis, intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny.
Hardy also lamented that the lower courts do not seem inclined to favor strict scrutiny when discussing the Second Amendment, though some circuits are better than others.
California attorney Don Kilmer went back over the history of a case in Alameda County that has dragged on for 13 years, the somewhat infamous Nordyke case. This is a gun show case, and authorities in the county have tried all sorts of strategies to discourage or prevent gun shows, the latest being a prohibition on ammunition sales.
He was followed by David Jensen, a New York litigator who has handled SAF cases including Kwong v. Bloomberg. He told the audience, “When you sue government and say your laws are unconstitutional they don’t just roll over and agree with you. They fight.”
He noted that cases can get delayed, and that government can throw up all sorts of arguments which require responses, and that further delays resolution.
Dan Schmutter, who represents the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, briefly explained that group’s challenge to carry permit issues. He said most people cannot meet the state standard of justification for receiving a carry permit, which “severely limits” the right to get a permit.
Attorney David Sigale from Illinois, who has also worked for SAF on various cases and said the organization is on the leading edge of gun rights litigation. He briefly detailed the history of challenging Chicago gun laws, noting that he personally filed the McDonald case more than five years ago.
The city, he said, has repealed certain restrictions on guns, but the fight goes on. In the recent victory in Moore v. Madigan, which forced the legislature to adopt a carry statute, the court made it clear to the city that one cannot simply argue that something “might” happen as grounds for preventing the exercise of a constitutional right.
SAF general counsel Mik Tempski detailed the group’s preemption project, under which SAF has notified several municipalities in various states that their local gun ordinances are in violation of state preemption laws. The effort has been successful in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, getting about 60 gun laws off the books so far.
“By the time we’re through,” he predicted, “our score will be in the hundreds.”
He said the project is now extending into Oregon and Oklahoma, and so far, the effort has gotten SAF a fair amount of good press coverage.
Guns in the District
Author and Washington Times Senior Opinion Editor Emily Miller offered a brief presentation on her experiences in getting a gun permit in the District of Columbia. That led to her new book Emily Gets Her Gun…but Obama Wants to Take Yours.” She criticized the volume of necessary paperwork just to get a permit to have a gun in the home, noting that there are 22 pages of requirements and 17 steps that must be taken.
The entire process took four months and cost Miller $435.
“Honest people can’t get a gun, but criminals are still shooting each other,” she lamented.
Miller said President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg have been “pretty successful” pushing for new gun control measures. Gun owners will have to counter multi-million dollar advertising campaigns that Bloomberg is financing, she added, noting that “there has never been any gun control law that has reduced crime.”
While gun laws may be tough in the District, out in Colorado it appears that sheriffs are tougher. Weld County Sheriff John Cooke is a leader in the sheriffs’ lawsuit against the state over this year’s package of gun control measures.
Recalling that Bloomberg game $350,000 to thwart September’s recall of two Democrat lawmakers that supported the gun control laws, Sheriff Cooke said he wears accusations that he has gone rogue as “a badge of honor.”
“I’m not going to do a darn thing to enforce the gun laws,” he said. “I think they’re unconstitutional.”
Fifty-five of the state’s sheriffs are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
David Kopel, research director for the Colorado-based Independence Institute, continued the discussion, noting that the September recalls “were absolutely a grass roots idea.” In the beginning, he said, the state Republican Party was cool to the recall effort, and the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners also disdained the idea.
He said the anti-recall folks outspent the recall effort about 7-to-1, he estimated.
“I was particularly happy to see the Bloomberg folks lose,” he said, “they’re the nastiest folks I’ve met.”
He also criticized the activities of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ Dudley Brown.
“Dudley Brown and his organization…are the one of the most serious problems we have for protecting gun rights in the state of Colorado and in the country,” Kopel asserted.
Statistical truth
Prof. John Lott, author of The Bias Against Guns, predicted that with additional funding from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health research, there will be “an avalanche of gun control research.”
Bloomberg contributed millions of dollars to the school, and Lott is convinced that it was for the purpose of essentially buying research favorable to more gun control. Likewise, he noted that President Obama met with other researchers and asked them to focus on gun studies.
The press, he asserted, has not been very critical of these studies. When he releases research, he said the media find someone to challenge his findings.
He also discussed how some of the research measured gun ownership by apparently tabulating firearm-related suicides.
Lott said the firearms community must have a way to quickly respond to such research. He suggested study on how high fees discourage gun ownership. He used New York as an example, relating the high fees for buying ammunition and licensing and registering handguns.
He said these high fees are a way to get around the Heller and McDonald rulings.
“You can’t ban them,” he said, but one can be priced out of the opportunity to get guns for self-defense.ellthe
Victim of the system
Former New Jersey resident Brian Aitken delivered a riveting talk on how he ran afoul of New Jersey gun laws and ended up in prison simply for transporting a gun he legally bought in Colorado while living there.
Aitken was given clemency by Gov. Chris Cristie, but he still does not have his gun rights back.
Aitken was sentenced in 2010 to seven years in prison for the gun offense, and in the process of fighting the charge, he lost his house, job, car and the court “took my son away from me.”
“My son turned five this year and I haven’t seen him in four years,” Aitken said.
He said this is what can happen with a patchwork of state laws that criminalize something that might be legal in another state. His trouble began with his move back to New Jersey from Colorado to be closer to his son, but a gun he bought in Colorado was in his car.
Carrying firearms was also discussed by attorney David B. Moseley Jr. in relation to having guns in hotels or at places of business. He said gun-related crime has gone down since the concealed carry law was adopted.
He advised armed citizens about the effort to tell businesses that you will not patronize businesses that declare themselves gun-free zones.
Moseley said hotel chains may have a policy that prohibits guns in their hotels, but this apparently is not enforced and is only to placate anti-gunners. He also talked about the Starbucks controversy that erupted when the coffee chain would not prohibit armed citizens, especially open carry activists.
He noted that activists “thanked” Starbucks by turning out in numbers and that may have been an error. However, Starbucks still has not banned guns, they just asked people not to carry them, but if they do, nobody will be challenged.
Bloomberg’s billions
CCRKBA Communications Director Dave Workman discussed Mayor Bloomberg’s political activities and noted that while several actors have played Texas Rangers in films or on television, nobody has wanted to play Bloomberg.
He noted that the billionaire mayor believes he can buy public policy and peoples’ votes, but those things are not for sale. He also cautioned the audience that Bloomberg’s current attempts to influence gun policy in other states should be a warning that he will eventually try to tell Texans how to live as well.
Phil Watson, SAF projects director, discussed the projects he has launched, including one that exposed members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns for crimes they have committed. He has also asked for documents under New York law that might reveal how Bloomberg’s office may have misused city-owned computers to support MAIG activities.
Watson said that no matter how much money Bloomberg has, he should not be allowed to buy policy or the law.
Plus side of Amnesty
Author Alan Korwin discussed the “big tent” philosophy and the importance of using the right words in discussion. Someone who is pro-gun should be “pro rights” and that wins arguments because it frames anti-gunners as anti-rights.
Instead of “concealed carry” use “discreet carry,” and “sidearm” instead of “handgun.”
But his primary message was about the potential benefit to the gun rights cause that amnesty might provide. People who become citizens get to exercise their Second Amendment right, and that will ultimately favor the gun owner side of the Second Amendment debate.
He praised immigrants as being “hard working, decent people” but he warned that amnesty is about permanent control of Congress by Democrats.
“That’s what amnesty is about,” he said. “They’re licking their chops…but the Republicans have an ace in the hole.”
That hole card is the Second Amendment, and he said Democrats “hate that; that’s Republican territory.”
Organizing victories
Gottlieb was back at the podium for an afternoon discussion on winning the 2014 mid-term elections. He said there are five specific things to watch as the election draws near, and gun rights is not one of them. He listed the president’s approval rating, consumer confidence, Obamacare, Democrat and Republican favorability ratings, and the Congressional ballot test.
If the president’s ratings are down, Democrats will do poorly. If the economy is weak, Republicans could gain ground. If Obamacare troubles continue, Democrats will be adversely affected. Depending upon which party has higher favorability ratings in 2014, that will also help determine who controls Congress. Lastly, how well Republicans do on ballot testing will signal which way the elections will go.
He said governor races will likely be a “dead heat” with no real change in the makeup of governors.
Gun owners, Gottlieb noted, will have a significant influence on the elections even though guns are not a central issue.
CCRKBA Legislative Director Joe Waldron recalled what happened after Columbine, where gun control passed in the Senate but stalled in the House because there was no agreement on background checks.
He also said Michael Bloomberg is losing members of his Mayors group because they are tired of being used to help push his anti-gun agenda.
“Our strength is grassroots,” he said, “but we have to get out there…Get your friends out, your families out.”
Waldron noted that former Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, formed a new organization Americans for Responsible Solutions. They have amassed more than $6 million and that will be spent to help influence elections.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said “you have to build a base.” His message was to organize and get people out to vote. While Bloomberg has money, gun rights activists have people they can contact and encourage to vote.
He counseled the audience to work on districts where the vote may be thin, but it is important to get activists out anyway. These districts can be identified and that helps people organize where their efforts should be spent. Margins may be built one or two votes at a time, he said.
“One of the things we are always looking for is the pure, perfect candidate,” he observed. “They don’t exist. If you have the pure, perfect candidate and he can’t get elected, you’ve got nothing.”
Strategic partnerships
Tartaro was back at the microphone for the final panel of the day, noting that gun activists often don’t realize how many neighbors and co-workers “share your values about self-defense and their right to own firearms.”
He offered tips on enlisting these people in the gun rights battle, and his first suggestion was that it is up to gun owners to get them started and keep them interested. He noted that “we are competing against youth activities and video games” when dealing with young shooters, and maybe even older ones.
He visits with neighbors during block parties and other activities, and he finds that they are interested in getting started but they do not know how. He learned from years in advertising that the key is to satisfy a need. Get them shooting first, he advised, and then start selling them on gun rights. Democrats may not switch parties, but they will start asking questions, and that can have an impact.
Michael Saporito, general counsel for the Civilian Marksmanship Program noted that when he first got involved in the program members of the audience were supposed to be the future.
The task is still the same, he said. Get youth involved, and many times when their parents come along, they get involved with shooting as well and “they become pro-gun.” He said they become spectacular citizens and don’t break the law. It is another way to develop grassroots.
He also tipped people about how to get into political circles by becoming committee persons, and working their neighborhoods and precincts. He told a story about one man who did that and worked his way up the ladder and eventually became a committee chairman, with the ear of politicians.
Thomas Bolioli, with Commonwealth Second Amendment in Massachusetts said his group has worked quietly with various groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union. The group has built alliances and has done litigation and education, but no lobbying. They have cases in state and federal court.
Two of their current cases are funded by the NRA, one by SAF and one that has already been won was also funded by SAF.
“That’s the kind of alliance-building you need to do,” he said.
It is a waste of resources to try doing everything on your own, he cautioned. Alliances have helped build Comm2A into a solid grassroots organization with 10,000 members and a budget, he said.
Using the New Media
Sunday’s sessions opened with a panel discussion on using the “new media” to advance gun rights. Peter Jay Gould, executive producer of Infringed: Second Amendment in the Crosshairs, told the audience that too many people have “grown complacent.”
He said public opinion can destroy all gun rights victories, particularly with a tragedy like Sandy Hook, after which public opinion shifted on gun control, albeit temporarily. His office is about 15 minutes down the road from the school, he added.
“Wins breed wins and losses breed losses,” Gould stressed. “And public opinion can destroy the Second Amendment…We have to combat anti-gunners with the truth.”
He talked about the gun control playbook uncovered by SAF’s Alan Gottlieb and publicized first by TGM. Soon lots of people were writing about it, and the strategies about how to twist facts to influence the public.
“It is 80 pages of how to misuse tragedy to mislead people,” he said. “It is terrifying.”
He said an educated, knowledgeable public will not elect people they know are lying, and that is the job of gun rights activists.
Eric Reed with Gun Rights Across America lamented that the mainstream press “has so much power.” They reach millions of Americans with a lack of knowledge about firearms, he asserted.
They have been able to portray semiautomatic rifles as “assault weapons” with “high capacity clips.”
However, Reed stressed that “assault is a behavior, not an inanimate object.”
He said the Second Amendment is about protecting yourself, even from the government if it becomes tyrannical.
“Many leaders have forgotten what true freedom is all about,” he said.
Pointing to the Colorado recall election in September, he said the firearms community sent a message to the nation and especially the media, that “if you continue to vote against our freedoms and against our rights, we’ll fire you, get out.”
He said anti-gunners don’t think about the consequences of their attacks on the Second Amendment.
“Call me crazy, but I’d rather see the murderer, the wife beater or the rapist lying dead on the pavement,” he commented.
He said the message to the media is that criminals don’t obey the law, but we do. He said the media should encourage the prosecution of criminals.
Ancrew Sypien, content manager for Cheaper Than Dirt, worked at CBS prior to his entry into the outdoors. He said the “new media” is where gun rights activists will find a new audience.
He further reminded the audience that the younger demographic “is going to replace you in 25 years.” The next generation needs to be cultivated and encouraged.
“To grow, you have to find new blood and change your demographic,” he advised. It’s what Cheaper Than Dirt has done.
He said people need to craft their messages” they send out via e-mail, and make sure that it is factual and will keep them involved. He also said it is important to entertain readers of Facebook pages and other types of messages.
Beverly Zaslow, executive producer of PolitiChicks.TV, recalled that the late Andrew Breitbart understood the new media. She said people should use the new media to their benefit, and they need to know how to use it.
It is a fast-moving media and you can change as you go,” she said.
Calling herself a “political junkie,” Zaslow produced Runaway Slaves, a film about black conservatives in the United States.
Quoting Breitbart, she said politics is downstream from culture. Use Facebook, Twitter, personal websites, a blog or YouTube to reach various audiences.
‘Faces of the 2A’
There are many faces of the Second Amendment, and they must reach out to people, cross party lines and deliver your message. Peggy Tartaro, editor of Women & Guns, described how she discussed gun ownership with people in her own community by noting that she was from the neighborhood.
On the other hand, she told how she could separate her neighbors, who are predominantly Democrats, from anti-gunners by talking about Vice President Joe Biden’s advice on using shotguns for home defense. Her advice is to find some common ground, and build relationships from there.
She said to never turn down an invitation to some function, look for areas where you find common ground and understand that you will not make converts.
Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, said that humor is important when addressing an audience. At the same time, he cautioned against “exceeding fact” when speaking to people.
He encouraged the audience to adopt someone and bring them to a future Gun Rights Policy Conference, and to also take them shooting. He recommended starting beginning shooters with airguns or .22 caliber rifles, to give them a sense of accomplishment and want to get more involved in shooting.
Doug Ritter with Knife Rights discussed his organization’s legislative victories, which are numerous for a group that is only four years old. He reminded listeners that the Second Amendment is about arms, not just firearms. Knives are also arms.
“Four years ago, I told you that it was our Second Amendment, too,” he recalled.
He said even some people in the knife industry told him he would not succeed. But in four years his group has passed 12 knife bills in 11 states.
‘Persistence pays,” he noted, as he explained that it took time to get bills passed over the past four years.
“Failing to pass legislation only means you come back smarter, and harder the next time around,” he advised.
Ritter recounted the legal problems for knife owners in New York City, where the district attorney has been on something of a mission to prosecute people for knife violations. He said thousands of people have been arrested on bogus knife charges.
He said this year has been very successful, with knife bills passed in five states including Alaska, Indiana, Kansas and Texas.
The Rev. Anthony Winfield, chaplain at New York City’s Elmhurst Hospital, followed Ritter and discussed his personal history of getting involved in the gun rights movement. He recalled how Christ told the disciples to carry swords, and nowadays those would be replaced by handguns.
He has educated people about the racist roots of gun control, and how registration lists have been used against gun owners.
Winfield also recalled an incident in which he used a pistol to deter a criminal by striking him in the head with it. The thug and a friend fled after threatening him.
He found that the many people “had an agenda” and that the truth doesn’t matter to them.
Gun rights and Obamacare
Dr. Timothy Wheeler, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of SAF, briefly recounted the history of using public health reasons to attack gun rights.
Wheeler recalled when the Centers for Disease Control was criticized for agenda-driven research, and Congress withheld funding for such studies. This trend began back in the mid-1990s under the Clinton administration with tax money being used for what he called “advocacy research” which amounted to anti-gun advocacy.
Earlier this year the Obama administration showed interest in restoring funding the CDC for more advocacy research, Wheeler recalled.
At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg contributed a small fortune to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, apparently for the same kind of anti-gun research, he asserted.
“Bloomberg has bought himself a school of public health research at Johns Hopkins,” Wheeler remarked.
He said anti-gun researches habitually consider that “any research that doesn’t agree with them doesn’t exist.”
“The bias is clear among these folks,” Dr. Wheeler said.
For example, he suggested these anti-gun academics had either dismissed or attempted to refute such research as that done by Prof. John Lott, who was also at the conference and made a presentation of his own. Lott, according to Wheeler, had not even been invited to a conference of medical professionals discussing firearms research.
Wheeler further criticized agenda-driven researchers for making “character attacks” on gun owners and for essentially dismissing the right to keep and bear arms.
“Constitutional rights are not on the radar screen of these people,” Wheeler observed. “They’re not interested in controlling crime, they’re interested in controlling you and me.”
Wheeler was critical of the veterans of this research, noting that Constitutional rights “are not on the radar screen of these people.”
Americans can win
Next, Richard Feldman, president of the Independent Firearms Owners Association, and Mark Vanderberg with the Gun Rights Radio Network outlined strategies with which people can “win on guns.”
Feldman told the audience that gun control is “about power” and that when the government no longer trusts people with firearms they’ve never misused, “they’re no longer worthy” of the public’s trust.
“Guns are never the problem,” he observed. “Guns in the wrong hands are always a problem.”
Feldman said he traveled to South Africa at the invitation of the Al Jazeera news agency to do a program on firearms. He was able to quote Nelson Mandela who once suggested that people believe liberty and equality are human rights that must occasionally be defended with the weapons of war.
“That shifted the debate from what they wanted to talk about to what I wanted to talk about,” he said
Vanderberg recalled his first visit to a gun rights conference and that when it was finished, he was “inspired to go home and do something.” He became determined to spread the gun rights message and he began gun rights podcasts and worked on organizing the grassroots.
That effort snowballed, he said, and he encouraged other people to do similar podcasts, and that ultimately became a network on the internet.
“But that’s only part of it,” he added. “We need people on the ground doing things.”
He encouraged people to visit their state capitol, find their state representative, recognizer them when they do something right and establish a relationship.
“Anybody can do it,” he contended. “Just get involved.”
Countering Media Bias
The mainstream press is anti-gun, according to experts on the next panel. Malia Zimmerman, editor of the Hawaii Reporter, said the most direct way to overcome this is to “start your own media.”
She said that many times, reporters merely need to be exposed to firearms and gun owners. She encouraged people to establish relationships with reporters and become reliable, available sources when stories about firearms come up, and to offer ideas about other stories as well. This is a way to get the run rights side of the argument presented, and also establish a wider relationship.
Herb Stupp, a CCRKBA director and media professional said that people can see the bias in the mainstream press, and that there are different kinds of bias. He criticized reporters who are “lazy and maybe cocktail party anto-gunners,” for not digging out facts. If a reporter is irresponsible or biased, he suggested speaking to the news editor.
A former editorial director at a New York City television station, he “saw bias up front” from his colleagues. He said “We need to appeal to a sense of fairness.”
He suggested approaching a local newspaper and offering a corrections column or talk to an ombudsman, or contact a competitor, and talk to a local journalism school.
Kevin Price, a talk host on KTEK, told the audience that “the media is the enemy.” Quoting the late Andrew Breitbart, he criticized the “bizarre media culture we live in” that “makes me look like an activist. I’ve always been a journalist, trying to tell the truth.”
He criticized efforts to label the United States the third highest number of murders of any country. If one eliminates Washington, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, this country drops to the fourth lowest in the number of murders, he said. What do all those cities have in common? Tough local gun laws.
Price noted that the Sandy Hook gunman violated scores of gun laws, and he asked, “Do you think six more gun laws would have prevented that?”
He also asserted that “academia hates America.” He said academia and the media are driven by the Left. He contended that the Left “swallowed the media in the 1970s.”
“We’ve got to stop being defensive and take the offensive,” he insisted, warning that there are ideologues in both academia and the media.
Don Irvine, president of Accuracy in Media, assured the audience that “we win on facts.” He said gun owners must use facts in their arguments, because the other side relies on emotion.
“Is there liberal media bias,” he asked. He then referred to a New York Times article that said children are the collateral casualties of so-called “easy access” to guns.
He encouraged people to photograph the “Guns Save Lives” sticker and use that on the Internet and social media.
“This is a fight we all have and this is how we protect our rights and our freedoms,” he said.
Insuring your rights
Ted Grace, senior vice president at Stephens Insurance, told the audience that it is important to have insurance in the event someone must defend themselves with lethal force. He said people might be charged with a crime for using a firearm in self-defense. Later they may also be sued in civil court, which becomes a battle for financial security.
He offered several tips on how to prepare for the battles that follow a self-defense shooting. They include getting firearms training, understanding the law on lethal force and know the state laws, make sure you have liability insurance and have the right protection for use of reasonable force, make sure you are not under-insured and he suggested that $1 million is a reasonable sum, and he also recommended legal defense coverage that pays as expenses are incurred.
David Black, president of Citizens Defense, discussed a program aimed at criminal and civil prosecution. Defenders Choice is a membership program that is insurance-backed and a SAF affiliate.
Based in Little Rock, AR, this program helps reimburse someone’s expenses during the course of trial, Black said.
Next year, the GRPC returns to Chicago.
