CCRKBA URGES GUN OWNERS TO OBSERVE ‘NAT’L EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS DAY’ TUESDAY

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) today encouraged all gun owners to stand up for their firearms rights tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug. 28.

“Jesse Jackson, the Brady Campaign and other anti-gunners are launching a series of protests and so-called prayer vigils against our individual Second Amendment rights on Tuesday,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “and firearms owners have the same rights of free speech and assembly.

“We encourage gun owners to visit gun ranges, gun stores and sporting goods shops, especially if these facilities are singled out for protest activities,” he continued. “What better way to show our appreciation for the First Amendment than by exercising it to defend the Second Amendment?

“Mr. Jackson has been searching the landscape to find an issue that will restore his relevance,” Gottlieb observed. “How ironic that a man whose reputation was built as a civil rights activist would promote a nationwide campaign of social bigotry against firearms owners.”

“National Exercise Your Rights Day” is designed to counter anti-gun activities scheduled in at least 28 cities on Tuesday by Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH coalition and the Brady Campaign. This effort grew out of anti-gun protests outside of a suburban Chicago-area gun shop earlier this year. Jackson and a Catholic priest, Father Michael Pfleger, were arrested outside of Chuck’s Gun Shop in suburban Riverdale at one of those events.

“The individual right to keep and bear arms,” said Gottlieb,” is just as important as the right of free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion because, contrary to what Jesse Jackson evidently believes, the Bill of Rights is an all-or-nothing package. You cannot cherry pick civil rights you support while campaigning to have others quashed.

“Rev. Jackson fought to secure and protect voting rights in the 1960s,” Gottlieb concluded. “How hopelessly hypocritical of him to now fight to crush another civil right, and encourage the treatment of gun owners as this nation’s new ‘second class citizens’.”