CCRKBA BLASTS JACKSON FOR GUN SHOP DEMAGOGUERY

BELLEVUE, WA – Rev. Jesse Jackson’s headline-grabbing protest at a suburban Chicago-area gun shop over the weekend produced further proof that Jackson and anti-gunners like him do not understand that even gun owners and retailers have civil rights, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Jackson and Rev. Michael Pfleger were arrested outside of Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale after blocking the door so that customers of the shop could not enter. Jackson has vowed to be back this Friday for another protest. Jackson was quoted by the Chicago Tribune asserting, “I think people have the right to bear arms at a hunting reserve.”

“For a guy who built his reputation as a so-called defender of civil rights,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “Jackson demonstrated a remarkable ignorance on the subject. A civil right is not subject to fences, or specific activities. The right to keep and bear arms is supposed to apply everywhere, just like the voting rights for which Jackson and others fought hard to defend a generation ago.

“If Rev. Jackson truly believed in civil rights,” he said, “instead of getting himself arrested in front of Chuck’s Gun Shop, he’d be getting himself arrested on the steps of Chicago’s city hall, demanding that Mayor Richard Daley and his cronies abolish that city’s handgun ban. That ban has left good citizens at the mercy of criminals for more than 30 years, and everyone, including Jackson, knows it.

“But Jackson,” Gottlieb continued, “like every other far left political demagogue, believes that some rights, particularly the right to bear arms, are subject to politically correct whim. He would relegate a cherished civil right to the level of a privilege, proving that he doesn’t have a clue about what it is he has supposedly been fighting for over the past 40 years.

“It is not okay for Jackson to interfere with a legally-operated private business,” he concluded. “It is no more acceptable for Jackson to block the doorway of a gun shop than it is for a southern governor to block the door of a high school. Jackson has promised to return to Chuck’s Gun Shop this Friday for a prayer vigil. He ought to say a prayer for himself, and offer some repentance for the monumental hypocrisy in which he is engaged.”