| Know
Where Your Candidate Stands
By Frank Miniter
The scene was common enough in American politics:
500 people seated in a ballroom at the Capital Hilton in Washington,
D.C., television cameras glaring at a podium, and a full cast of
2008 presidential candidates set to speak. Only the event wasn’t
common at all. The candidates came to a first-ever symposium where
they would affirm their support for the Second Amendment of the
Constitution before a crowd of National Rifle Association members.
Just a few election cycles ago political pundits might have deemed
the event poor presidential politics.
Or so Vice President Al Gore thought. In 2000,
Gore licked his index finger, held it in the political winds, and
decided being anti-gun was smart national politics. He thought a
post-Columbine nation was poised to pass sweeping gun control. He
was sure the Million Mom March was pure populist genius. Then America’s
80 million gun owners taught him a hard lesson: Americans cherish
their constitutional rights. In fact, the NRA-inspired rebuke of
Gore’s anti-Second Amendment stance cost him his home state
of Tennessee. As a result, in 2004, Senator John Kerry tried a more
deceptive strategy. He went hunting. But, thanks to the NRA, no
one was fooled. Kerry had received a 100-percent rating from the
anti-hunting Humane Society of the United States and had backed
legislation that would have banned the firearms and ammunition most
hunters use. Thanks in part to the nation’s gun owners going
to the polls armed with all that information, Kerry became a victim
of his own hypocrisy.
Because of the experiences of Gore and Kerry,
the 2008 presidential candidates know that the Right to Keep and
Bear Arms is as mainstream as baseball in America and so, unless
they have something to hide, they’d be wise to make their
positions clear. To give them a forum to do so, NRA Executive Vice
President Wayne LaPierre and NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox
hosted “A Celebration of American Values” on September
21-22, 2007, the first event in what will be a national tour. The
results were clarifying. Politicians spelled out their views on
the Second Amendment before the primaries and caucuses take place,
thereby allowing voters to pick their party’s candidates effectively.
And the crowd was animated. Print and television reporters gave
the event unprecedented ink and airtime. C-SPAN aired the event
live—and has rerun it several times since. A New York
Sun op-ed by Kenneth Blackwell accurately summed up the importance
of the event: “In each of the last four even-year general
elections gun owners have had a massive impact. And the National
Rifle Association has proven to everyone that if you want to win
the presidency, earning the support of gun owners and Second Amendment
defenders might be the deciding factor. … The NRA is in a
stronger position than ever to influence the 2008 elections. ”
With that goal in mind, ILA Executive Director
Chris Cox said, "This forum was not intended to serve as the
springboard for an NRA endorsement in the presidential campaign.
As we have historically done, we will carefully weigh every candidates
past actions and future commitments on all issues affecting the
Second Amendment before making an endorsement decision."
NRA members came to hear and question Senator
John McCain (R-Ariz.), former Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), former
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Arkansas Governor
Mike Huckabee; in fact, before the end of the Conference, they heard
from Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Mississippi Governor Haley
Barbour, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Representative John
Dingell (D-Mich.), former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, Senator
John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), former Representative
Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), and former Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich. And there were taped messages from California Rep. Duncan
Hunter, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
By the end of the day America’s gun owners
found out if their candidates believe that the Second Amendment,
as former Governor Mike Huckabee declared, “means what it
says and says what it means,” or if their candidates would
work to take away Americans’ unique Right to Keep and Bear
Arms under the guise of some historically twisted, collective-rights
interpretation of the Second Amendment.
The event received phenomenal media attention
because the presidential race is already in full swing; in fact,
the race could be solidified with primaries this winter and gun
rights could be a defining issue. As a result, the NRA is moving
fast to make sure NRA members have the information they need to
choose candidates who will respect the Second Amendment. But the
NRA can’t succeed without its members’ support. To make
this point clear, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre urged
NRA members to make sure their friends, neighbors, or spouses who
believe in a true reading of the Bill of Rights become NRA members
and register to vote.
To be sure America’s gun owners are not
caught snoozing, the NRA has launched an ambitious membership drive
in cooperation with hundreds of businesses small and large to recruit
new NRA members. In a major announcement at the event, Mike Golden,
CEO of Smith & Wesson, explained that because of this new industry
initiative “all America’s gun owners should wake up,
look around and see they must join the NRA, the civil-liberties
organization defending their Second Amendment rights.”
Doug Painter, president of the National Shooting
Sports Foundation, told readers of SHOT Business, whose
primary audience is firearm industry retailers and wholesalers,
“We should never underestimate the bedrock value of the voting
bloc represented by our customers, the millions of gun owners across
the country who place a high political value on their firearm freedoms.”
In that same article, former NRA President Sandy Froman said, “We
must start building the NRA membership immediately, so that we have
a large grassroots army trained and in place for the next election
cycle.” (Logon to www.insureyourgunrights.com to
see what you can do to help.)
Senator John McCain
Arizona Senator John McCain has been widely criticized
for fighting for and passing the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform
Act of 2002, a law that prohibits organizations, such as the NRA,
from running issue ads that name a federal candidate within 30 days
of a primary or caucus or 60 days of a general election. The NRA
was in the forefront in its opposition to the law’s free-speech
ban. McCain addressed such disagreements in his speech by saying,
“Over the years, we’ve not agreed on every issue. We
had differences over my efforts to standardize sales procedures
at gun shows and to clean up our campaign finance system. I understand
and respect your position.”
 |
Throughout his address McCain won applause with
declarations such as, “The Second Amendment is unique in the
world and at the core of our constitutional freedoms. It guarantees
an individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms. To argue anything else
is to reject the clear meaning of our Founding Fathers.” He
also said, “I oppose devious efforts to use lawsuits to bankrupt
our firearms manufacturers.”
Later in his speech McCain announced, “The
citizens of the nation’s capital do not enjoy the Right to
Keep and Bear arms. That’s why I’ve co-sponsored legislation
repealing the ban on firearms possession for law-abiding citizens
in the District of Columbia. The Second Amendment is not just for
rural Arizona; it’s for all of America.”
McCain also feinted at Senator John Kerry’s
attempts to overshadow his anti-gun legislation by going hunting,
pointing out that there’s a hunting myth in national politics:
“If you show your bona fides by hunting ducks or varmints
or quail, it makes up for support of gun control. This myth overlooks
a fundamental truth: The Second Amendment is not about hunting,
it’s about freedom.”
 |
Senator Fred Thompson
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson was the
next high-profile candidate to address the audience. He did so after
a video on his accomplishments titled “The Hunt for Red November”
aired. He won the crowd with: “I do remember a relationship
from way back, from the time that Charlton Heston came to Tennessee
in 1994, and I formed a friendship with that great American and
watched him hobble across the state with me on a bad hip and go
through pain to help me win my first election in the United States
Senate.”
Then Sen. Thompson got to the basis of his philosophy
by saying, “I never subscribed to the notion that it made
our country safer by infringing on the Second Amendment rights of
law-abiding citizens. I think back to the ‘A’ rating
I got from this organization and the endorsements that I was proud
to receive. So it’s not just a matter of promises made, as
far as I’m concerned, it’s a matter of commitments that
have been kept.”
Later he pointed out, “My philosophy does
not depend on my geography.” And he told the assembly, “I
never subscribed to the notion that it made our country safer by
infringing on the Second Amendment.” In answer to a question
on the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment,
Thompson said, “…the Constitution does mean what is
says and is not restricted to protection of militias.”
 |
Governor Mitt Romney
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s
taped speech was played on screens in which he said, “Let
me speak very directly and candidly about where I stand. I support
the Second Amendment as one of the most basic and fundamental rights
of every American. It's essential to our functioning as a free society,
as are all the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I’ve
been proud to have the support of pro-Second Amendment and sportsman’s
groups in my previous runs for public office. I’d be proud
to have your support again as I campaign for president.”
Then he commented, “I’ll ask Congress
to repeal the McCain-Feingold law which sought to impose restrictions
on the First Amendment rights of groups like the NRA to advocate
for issues we care about.”
Mayor Rudy Giuliani
The next speaker was former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, a national spokesman who advocated for passage of the
Clinton semi-auto ban and supported passage of federal gun-owner
licensing. As gun owners know, he also championed lawsuits to hold
legal firearms manufacturers responsible for criminals who use firearms
to commit violent crime. Prohibiting these lawsuits resulted in
a hard-fought battle led by NRA’s Institute for Legislative
Action that ended with the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce
in Arms Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush.
 |
After his speech, in answer to the question,
“do you still believe that the American gun companies should
be held liable for the unforeseeable criminal misuse of their products?”
Giuliani replied, “I did initiate that lawsuit back in 2000.
Since then, I think that lawsuit has taken several turns and several
twists that I don’t agree with. I also think that there have
been subsequent intervening events—September 11—which
cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment and Second
Amendment rights. Doesn’t change the fundamental rights, but
maybe it highlights the necessity for them more. So I think that
lawsuit has gone in a direction that I probably don’t agree
with at this point.”
In his speech Giuliani stressed his law enforcement
credentials saying that when he took over as Mayor of New York City
crime was out of control. Giuliani said he reduced the murder rate
by 66 percent by holding people responsible for their actions and
that he’d do the same as president. He later summed up his
point by saying, “The bottom line is we need to step up enforcement
against gun crimes and leave law-abiding citizens alone.”
Giuliani explained that he read and analyzed the
Parker v. The District of Columbia decision by the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a ruling
that overturned the D.C. gun ban, a three-decade old prohibition
on the possession of firearms within D.C. Giuliani deemed the Parker
decision “an excellent example of strict constructionism.”
In Parker, Senior Judge Lawrence H. Silberman, joined by
Judge Thomas B. Griffith, concluded that “the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.” The decision
has since been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and Giuliani concluded
that “the Parker decision should be upheld …
to underscore the Castle Doctrine.”
Giuliani’s views on gun control garnered
most of the newscasters’ attention. In fact, later that evening
CNN reporter Carol Costello asked LaPierre: “So, Rudy Giuliani
stood up there and he said, ‘I know you're not going to agree
with some of what I have to say, but you can believe this, that
I will put into place the plan that I have.’ How did that
go over with the NRA?”
LaPierre responded that, “this whole forum
today was the first step in a process of our involvement in the
presidential race. We're going to send this out to our members.
We're going to listen to what they have to say about all the candidates.
And then we are going to do what's right to defend the Second Amendment.”
Governor Mike Huckabee
When addressing the United Nations’ attempts
to disarm law-abiding Americans, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
said, “International law doesn’t have an application
in the appellate process or the adjudication process in an American
court.” And he later commented that, “Frankly, if the
United Nations continues to come at us with such outrageous things,
then we should not be too disappointed if the whole thing were to
break off and float away in the East River, never to be seen or
heard from again.”
Huckabee boasted that he was the first sitting governor of Arkansas
to receive a permit to carry a concealed handgun and criticized
some other candidates by declaring, “I didn’t just join
the NRA last year.”
 |
On the Second Amendment, Huckabee expounded,
“I sometimes marvel that there are people in our country who
will proliferously defend the importance, the primacy and the value
of the First Amendment—our freedoms to speak, to assemble,
to worship, the freedom of the press—and somehow act as if
the Second Amendment is of lesser importance to our freedom than
the first.” He also said, “We have a constitutional
right granted to us, in the wisdom of our forefathers, to protect
our families, to protect them from criminals, to protect them from
whatever might harm them. And it is as much of a constitutional
right as it is the right to speak out against our government ...
. And let me be very clear: I do not believe the Second Amendment
has any geographical boundaries. It does not apply differently on
the East Coast than it does in the South.”
continued
Pg.2 |
NRA
President John Sigler
