Arizona Gun Rights/Liberty Meeting a Success

by Angel Shamaya
Director, KeepAndBearArms.com

Arizona gun owners and liberty advocates are organizing. And if the meeting in Tempe on Wednesday night (9/20/2000) is any indication of what is to come, Arizonans who love their freedom can expect a breath of fresh air on the horizon. Not only are AZ free citizens organizing, we're creative, energetic, determined to be heard and recognized, and willing to set aside differences in a common commitment to end the assaults on Liberty being waged against We The People.

At least 125 people showed up at the first Arizona TUG (The Unorganized Group) meeting. Representatives from groups with opposing viewpoints sat in the room - and spoke together and to the crowd - sharing ideas, information, insights and the common thread that binds us all: commitment to restore full firearms freedom and all other liberty rights to our society. When some disagreement was expressed about one group's approach to gun activism, an agreement was offered to keep our differences aside for future meetings to focus on the goal of the group: unified activism, sharing of ideas, and collaboration on specific projects. Several wonderful ideas were offered, and people interested in participating in these suggested activities allied themselves toward the stated objectives.

Included in this mixed bag of freedom lovers were representatives and/or members of all of the following organizations (alphabetized): Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association, Arizona Trappers Association, Armed Females, Bloomfield Press, Brassroots, Inc., Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Friends of the NRA, Free American, Grassroots of North Carolina, GunLaws.com, Gun Owners of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, KeepAndBearArms.com, LegacyOfGunControl.com, Libertarian Party (Arizona), Maricopa County Libertarian Party, Mothers Arms, National Rifle Association, Second Amendment Is For Everyone, Second Amendment Sisters, Single Action Shooting Society, and Tyranny Response Team. (If I missed anyone, the omission is purely the fault of this writer and in no way intentional.)

TUG as a concept was explained to the group and, while people ate from a buffet of pretty decent food, one-by-one, various leaders or representatives of their respective organizations came to the front of the room and shared their organization, many of them offering specific activist campaigns for immediate or near-immediate deployment. Following are a few of the suggestions that were born in the first TUG-AZ meeting. The next TUG meeting will be held in the same location, on October 18th at 7pm. See previous TUG announcement for details.

Rick DeStephens (Brassroots Vice President and TUG organizer) and Tim Weaver (Brassroots Phoenix coordinator and TUG organizer) started the meeting with an explanation of the goals and objectives of this and future meetings. Alan Korwin, author of the best gun laws books you will find anywhere, started us off with a brainstorming exercise to inquire as to why we were all attending this meeting and what we would like to achieve by combining forces. The entire group seemed to get into it (save one or two fuddy duddies :-), and a sense of commonality and purpose was established nicely.

I introduced the concept of 5 Minute Activism and asked the group for a commitment to invest 5 minutes each day in a simple action step as presented on this website. Though I didn't study every last hand in the room, at least 95% of the hands were up. Good. That means at least 100 people now have their state and federal legiscritters' contact info on a piece of paper next to their phone or computer - according to today's Action Step.

Alan then introduced his ingenious American Freedom Essay Contest, soon-to-be-deployed via his website (and on this website and many others, I'm sure). Alan and Mike Anthony - a local attorney who also spoke on the essay contest - developed this program for deployment in schools. The goal is to enlist teachers and principals in schools to have their students write essays on the topic of Freedom. "Though it's no longer acceptable for our children to discuss guns or the second amendment in their classrooms," said Korwin, "they can, thank God, still talk about freedom. And guess what they'll find out when they begin thinking and writing about freedom..." Rick urged us all to do a search on the web on the word "freedom" to quickly realize how many Thomas Jefferson-oriented and gun-related websites these kids will find. And several people said they'd take it to their children's teachers for consideration. Expect to see more on this pilot program later.

Alicia Wadas, founder of Mothers Arms, once again reminded us of her wonderful, mother-supportive approach to educating women about self-defense. Her approach is to first broach the subject of self-defense - of any kind, up to and including firearms training - and then to proceed gently along the path to discussions of freedom and the political ramifications of being disarmed vs. keeping our guns. Her reminder to us guys bear repeating, paraphrased in essence: "Stop scaring women by pushing shooting on them forcefully. Take it slow, gentle and easy, and you'll have a much better chance at producing the desired result. If they've never even touched a gun, you might reconsider handing them a .45 on your first outing, and be patient while they find their bearings." Thank you, Alicia. Alicia found her way into the self-defense rights movement by realizing how our freedoms have been slowly eroding; she wasn't even a gun owner, and now she's a trained firearms instructor and a national spokesperson with members in 22 states and growing.

Craig Lindsay, webmaster for MothersArms.org and quite the activist himself, introduced the billboard campaign being deployed in Arizona right now. For as little as $125 a month, 6x12 billboards are sprouting up around the city of Phoenix, and these signs are available for use nationwide. You can see a sample on the ASRPA website, and we'd be happy to work one up with KeepAndBearArms.com on it if people would like to help fund it. The total fee including all setup costs and the 6 month commitment comes in under $1,000. Alan Korwin and Craig launched this campaign in Arizona and have done a great deal of work to bring the project to fruition.

Rick & Tim discussed their strategies for dealing with Gun Buy-ups. Having created what they humorously dubbed "No smelter shelters," we listened and considered the fun we will have dealing with the next local government-funded scheme to strip guns out of the hands of free citizens.

These energetic activists also described how we can collectively push the city of Glendale to comply with the law regarding their no firearms policy. The city has a NO GUNS sign posted at their local library, and they tell gun owners they must either leave their firearms in the car or call the police to come pick them up during their stay at the library. (So much for our pre-emption law.) We'll save the strategy until after it is deployed; we wouldn't want to spoil the fun and surprises for Glendale's city manager.

A representative of FIJA-Arizona attended and passed out pamphlets in support of our education process regarding appropriate use of a jury should we find ourselves on one. Very good stuff. Visit their website.

A call was made by Alan Korwin and attorney Mike Anthony for help writing legislation that favors firearms ownership and usage, and a drafting committee raised its hand. More on that project will likely take place in future meetings.

Ken Rineer of GOA and Charles Heller of JPFO offered their thoughts on why to support these organizations and how to go about supporting Liberty through activism.

Clay Douglas provided free copies of his monthly magazine, Free American. He and his wife drove all the way out from New Mexico to attend. Go to http://www.FreeAmerican.com to see what they've been up to for the last 7 years. I just subscribed to the magazine myself.

Alan passed out his Liberty Poll. If you haven't yet read this great work, read it. He and a few like-minded liberty lovers collaborated on a list of questions to pose to political candidates and to media types. Great stuff.

And I provided copies of 31 Questions for Anti-gunners, for use as anyone sees fit.

Again, the next TUG-AZ meeting will be held on October 18th and 7pm, same place. If you'd like to receive future emailings about future TUG-AZ events, you can sign up on our Arizona state email list.

As for setting up an event like this in other states, go for it. All we did was JUST DO IT, and so can you.