GRPC – Informed Voting Is Key

 By Nicki Fellenzer
nicki_f@verizon.net

 September 26, 2004

KeepAndBearArms.com -- If there is one message with which Chairman of the Citizens Committee of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation wants gun owners and gun advocates to leave this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference, it is “Know and understand for whom you cast your vote this year.”  Yes, the theme of this year’s conference is “Ban Gun Bans!” But Alan Gottlieb asserts that in order to ensure the continued demise of unconstitutional gun control laws and downfall of gun bans, Americans must understand the importance of this year’s Presidential elections. 

That is why every theme – every speech – every presentation at the 2004 Gun Rights Policy Conference, held at the Crystal City Mariott in Arlington, Virginia September 24-26, tied in inextricably to one simple message:  Election 2004 is crucial.  John Kerry and his anti-freedom allies are a danger to gun owners.  They are a danger to the Second Amendment.  And they are a danger to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. 

The list of speakers and panelists reads like the Who’s Who of the gun rights battle.  Dr. John Lott spoke of media bias.  He emphasized the central message of his latest book, “The Bias Against Guns” -- the concerted media effort to “spike” pro-gun facts and ensure that the anti-gun message tugs at the heartstrings of the general public pushing them inexorably toward an emotionalist anti-freedom stand. 

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre recounted his debates and encounters with United Nations gun banners, the audacity of those who never experienced freedom in America and who rely on the state not only to protect them from the criminal element, but to grant them what should be theirs in the first place –- their rights –- and who condemn Americans who treasure their freedoms and cherish their rights as “selfish and arrogant.” 

A panel of well-known writers and gun rights advocates, such as Independence Institute’s David Kopel and Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman discussed Michael Moore and the media, their lies, their propaganda, their misrepresentations and their mission to support those who would relieve you of your rights for “the common good.” 

The agenda also includes a forum on the 2004 Election, domestic security and individual liberties and discussions on the right to carry. 

But ultimately, everything goes back to the vote.   

Anti-gun politicians such as John Kerry are successfully using the media to falsely promote their image as a protector of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.  United Nations organizations are promoting lies about the effectiveness of gun control and misinformation about firearm deaths.  Sarah Brady and her political minions are effectively diverting the issue from the Second Amendment, natural rights and the ability to defend those rights, without which the existence of those rights is hollow, to hunting and conservation, which they superciliously and falsely claim is the Second Amendment’s intent. 

Informed gun owners and gun rights advocates know better. 

We know that the Second Amendment is not about hunting. 

We understand that the rights to life, liberty and property are fundamental rights, and that the ability to defend those rights is their natural consequence. 

We further realize that having a firm philosophical grounding about the importance of our vote is paramount to ensuring that politicians do not continue killing the Second Amendment. 

And we appreciate that in order to be truly informed this election season, we have to look beyond the propaganda, beyond the media’s feeble attempts to obfuscate the truth and beyond the shrill, hysterical shrieking of Michael Moore and the talking heads of the media.  

Only the informed, educated and rational vote of every gun owner and gun rights advocate will help the demise of gun bans.