“If you call for a pizza, a cop,
and an ambulance, who will arrive
first?†That’s a tough question from
Tim Schmidt of the U.S. Concealed
Carry Association (USCCA). “A
responsible, trained and armed citizen
is not someone to be feared,â€
he responds. “People who carry a
concealed firearm believe that if their
life is threatened there is no one else
they can count on to protect them.
A responsible, trained and armed
citizen is an asset to society. This is
an unpredictable world we live in. At
any moment any one of us could be
the victim of some criminal. Our right
to self-defense is critical because
criminals will not stop and wait while
you call the police. Every time a
violent crime is reported in the news,
sales of firearms go up. People do
not feel safe, and they know that the
job of the police is to clean up after
the fact. If you are not prepared to
defend yourself, then unfortunately
you will become a victim.â€
Mark your calendar now! The
2005 national Gun Rights Policy
Conference, the 20th in the series
cosponsored by CCRKBA and the
Second Amendment Foundation, is
slated for September 23, 24 and 25
at the Los Angeles, California Marriott
(LAX Airport). The theme for this
year’s conference is “Expand Gun
Ownership.†It’s a must for hundreds
of gun rights activists from around
the country. Call the LAX Marriott at
1-800-228-9290 for the special $94
room rate, and be sure to mention
GRPC 2005. For further information
on the conference itself, call (425)
454-7012 or fax (425) 451-3959. You
could email your registration, which
is free of charge, to GRPC2005@saf.
org.
“Despite dire predictions that
the streets would be awash in
military-style guns,†wrote Deborah
Sontag recently in The New York
Times, “the expiration of the decadelong
assault weapons ban last September
has not set off a sustained
surge in the weapons’ sales, gun
makers and sellers say. It also has not
caused any noticeable increase in
gun crime in the past seven months,
according to several metropolitan
police departments. The uneventful
expiration of the assault weapons
ban did not surprise gun owners,
nor did it surprise some advocates
of gun control.â€
When The Washington Post
claimed that the solving of a single
murder was facilitated by the
existence of Maryland’s ballistic
database and that that warranted
maintaining it, Robert A. Levy of
Naples, Florida, a Senior Fellow in
Constitutional Studies at the Cato
Institute and holder of a CCRKBA
Gun Rights Defender of the Month
Award, called the solving “a modest
threshold.†He wrote in the newspaper
that it would be wise to “continue
‘ballistics imaging’ to link multiple
shootings or tie a recovered gun to
a particular crime. But that’s quite
different from a database on all guns,
or even all new guns. Among the
obvious problems: A database is not
reliable because ballistics markings
change over time; markings can easily
be altered; an effective database
that covers resales, thefts and existing
guns – in short, the guns used by
criminals – would be too costly; and
a database is equivalent to a registry,
a slippery slope toward prohibition,
which is the acknowledged goal of
many gun prohibitionists.
After Nebraska State Senator
Ernie Chambers proposed that violators
of a concealed carry measure
up for consideration have their trigger
fingers shot off, CCRKBA condemned
the lawmaker for injecting
a serious debate with what amounts
to “the ravings of someone who has
overdosed on self-aggrandizement.â€
CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb
said that, “it appears Ernie’s
chambers are empty. If this was intended
as a joke, the Senator needs
a different hobby because he’s no
comedian.†CCRKBA Executive
Director Joe Waldron commented
that, “childish behavior should
be reserved for children,†noted
that Chambers “has been around
the Legislature a long, long, very
long time,†and suggested he has
wasted his constituents’ time with
this “sophomoric amendment.â€
