Augustus C. Alzona

Augustus C. Alzona, a CPA,   from Bethesda, MD  is the CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month Awardee for May.
 CCRKBA Public Affairs Director John Michael Snyder, noted that Alzona, of Montgomery County, has played a unique role in the politics of Maryland and the nation.
 Noting that many of Alzona’s neighbors “are anti-gun rights in the extreme,” Snyder called Montgomery County “unfriendly territory” for people who believe in the individual Second Amendment civil right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
 “One of the people in this area who does believe in the right and, who, against all kinds of odds, has had the courage over the years to stand up and fight for it, is Gus Alzona,” Snyder stated. “Gus recently underwent severe public attacks for his defense of this traditional American freedom. He refused to back down under withering pressure. A stalwart, he certainly is most deserving of this award.”
 Local politicians want Alzona removed from certain public and party positions because he distributed a flyer suggesting that a proposed gun registration and owner licensing scheme requiring gun buyers to submit to fingerprinting and mug shots is “Hitlerian.” The flyer shows the faces of three anti-gun politicians digitally imposed onto photographs of Nazi soldiers.
 Critics said this flyer constitutes “hate speech” and is even “anti-Semitic.” They tried to get Alzona to resign from the local Republican central committee and to remove him from the Montgomery County Hate-Violence Committee. 
 Aaron Zelman, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, himself a CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month Award winner, defended Alzona. “The Nazis,” Zelman wrote, “initially using laws of the Weimar Republic, required registration of firearms. Hitler then used these laws to confiscate all firearms from Jews,  making it more difficult to fight back against the Final Solution. The flyer Alzona distributed is accurate in implying that ‘gun control’ advocates have something in common with Nazis.”
 Blair Lee, another Alzona supporter, wrote a column in The Montgomery County Journal stating that “Alzona’s heavy-handed attempt at parody sends a political message about gun control, not Nazism. He’s advocating gun ownership, not the Holocaust…in America, Gus Alzona can express himself freely, even if it makes politicians act like Nazis.”
 Alzona is a naturalized American citizen born in Pasay City, Republic of the Philippines. During a public hearing on a proposed Montgomery County “gun free zone” bill,  he told the audience that, “Our local public school children are more often victims of sexual abuse by county employees or a failing educational system than they ever have been of firearm abuse. If ‘protecting our children’ truly motivates you, then you should consider more severe sanctions for those who commit unspeakable acts against our children and up-to-date public postings of convicted sex offender lists.”  
 Alzona completed his college studies full-time at night while maintaining full-time employment and raising a family. He holds an A.A. degree from Montgomery College and a B.S. in Business Management and Accounting from the University of Maryland, and has done graduate studies toward an MBA from the University of Maryland.
 He is a financial information systems and tax management consultant as producer/manager of Trademark Entertainment.
 Alzona is a Director of the Montgomery County Philippine American Association. He served as an NRA Election Volunteer during the 2000 Presidential Election.