Brace yourself for a tough year, because 2014 could be remembered as the turning point in the loss of your Second Amendment rights.
This year’s elections will decide whether we stop the Barack Obama-Joe Biden-Michael Bloomberg gun-ban machine and save the right to keep and bear arms—or lose much of our Second Amendment freedoms for generations to come.
That’s no exaggeration. So I urge you in the strongest possible terms to renew or upgrade your NRA membership today. Because your NRA membership may be the only thing that can stop the Obama-Biden-Bloomberg gun-ban bulldozer.
But first, let me tell you exactly what we’re up against:
Right now, President Obama is on the verge of putting together a royal flush—an unbeatable, winner-takes-all hand in poker—in his drive to “transform” American society by disarming the American people.
This year’s elections could give Barack Obama a blank check to ban your guns.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask Michelle Obama. At a lavish fundraising dinner in New York City last year, the First Lady asked anti-gun donors to write a “big old fat check” to help elect Senators who will pass Obama’s extreme gun-ban agenda. “Sadly, that [anti-gun] bill failed by just six votes in the Senate,” Michelle told the crowd. “So make no mistake about it: The midterm elections, they matter. They matter.”
It’s true. By winning just a handful of Senate and House seats in November’s elections, Obama could effectively wield all the levers of federal power—executive, legislative and judicial—to gut the Second Amendment that protects our families and defends our freedom.
Long-Game Strategy To “Transform” America By Disarming You.
How did this nightmare situation arise? It’s a story that’s been unfolding for five years.
In his first term, Obama kept silent on guns. He claimed to support the Second Amendment. He tried to reassure hunters by promising not to take away anyone’s guns. And his re-election campaign spent millions to convince you that suddenly, for the first time in his life, Barack Obama didn’t want to ban your firearms.
But having won his last election, now the truth is coming out.
Since then, Obama has exploited one tragedy after another to deceive and frighten Americans about firearms, and to call for a wide variety of new anti-gun laws.
In fact, the Obama White House has been holding weekly meetings with all the major players of the gun-ban lobby, planning a campaign aimed at your guns.
The White House meets weekly with the gun-ban lobby.
And what they can’t win through legislation, they’re imposing through executive actions, regulation or whatever scheme they can think of.
In fact, Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill have even gone so far as to change the rules that have governed the U.S. Senate for more than 200 years—to give themselves nearly limitless power to approve Obama’s judicial and regulatory nominees.
Once they get that rubber-stamp approval, those judges and bureaucrats are free to issue verdicts, set precedents and make up rules of their own that will cut the heart out of your right to keep and bear arms—even decades after Obama has left office.
It’s not hard to see what’s happening here. Obama and his allies are consolidating power. They’re short-circuiting the Constitution’s checks and balances on government. And they’re abusing their authority to wage a full-frontal attack on your freedoms.
And their primary weapon in that campaign? Lies.
Obama Attacks Your Rights With Lies.
In his 2013 State of the Union speech, Obama described your semi-automatic firearms as “weapons of war” that should be banned. At a San Francisco fundraiser, he told high-dollar donors that the Sandy Hook murders were committed with a “fully automatic weapon.”
But Obama knows the difference. Fully automatic firearms are what the Secret Service uses to protect him. In contrast, the semi-automatic firearms you own—and that Obama wants to ban—are not “weapons of war.” They are not “fully automatic.” They don’t spray bullets. They fire once, and only once, each time the trigger is pulled. They are no more powerful than common rifles traditionally used for deer hunting; in fact, most are less powerful. They’ve quickly become the most popular rifles for sport in America. And they are rarely used in crime: According to the FBI, rifles of any kind are used in only 2.5 percent of all homicides. Twice as many people are murdered with fists and feet!
But these truths don’t fit with Obama’s fundraising agenda. So he ensured these truths were “transformed.”
Obama and company want to fundamentally transform American society. They want us to give up the American values and virtues we were taught—individual rights, personal responsibility, the right to own a firearm for the protection of self, family and freedom—by making those ideas seem outdated, abnormal or wrong. They try to shame you, ridicule your values and stigmatize your beliefs, hoping to make Americans more passive, more dependent and, in the end, less free. And they’re more than willing to lie to do it.
Everywhere you look, anti-gun politicians and their media enablers are telling lies about firearms, lies about crime, lies about your freedom to own guns and lies about how to make the American people safer.
They’re trying to trick America into thinking your semi-automatic firearms are machine guns, that your owning a firearm makes you a threat to society, and that crime is increasing when it’s actually decreasing. In fact, the only thing disarming good people will do is to give criminals, deranged killers and terrorists a blank check to murder at will.
At the same time, the media and political class refuse to address the real problems—not a lack of laws, but a lethal lack of enforcement of existing laws. The problem isn’t gun shows—the Justice Department found that less than 1 percent of state prison inmates incarcerated for gun crimes had obtained their guns from gun shows. If they wanted to make us safer, these false-hearted politicians would aggressively prosecute violent criminals. Instead, they try to disarm you.
It’s lie, after lie, after lie.
Because the truth is what Obama and his ilk fear the most: The truth that firearms save lives. The truth that unenforced laws endanger us all. The truth that the mental health system in this country is in shambles. Most of all, the truth that informed, involved, voting NRA members like you are all that stand in the way of his vision of a disarmed America.
Only Your NRA Membership Lets Us Fight Back With The Truth.
In the days after the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., the NRA was the only group that called for that which works when nothing else can: Armed security in schools to protect America’s children.
To back it up, NRA hired some of the foremost experts in school security and developed the National School Shield program, which we offered to schools across the country free of charge. We put our money where our mouth is, and we’re making grants to put the program in effect.
Yet the media and political elite in Washington called us crazy. They wrung their hands and said more armed good guys would make schools less safe—even as they enjoyed armed security to protect themselves and their loved ones.
But Americans saw through this hypocrisy and chose what works. At Sandy Hook Elementary, they stationed armed security, while throughout the surrounding community of Newtown, Right-to-Carry permit applications doubled as parents took steps to protect their families.
Parents all over the country are using their right to keep and bear arms to protect their kids. In the past year, six states have passed laws allowing armed security at schools. Dozens of states and localities are considering doing the same, and
the federal government is finally restoring funds to put more police on the job protecting schools.
The simple truth is that all too often the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Police know it. Criminals know it. You see proof of it every day in the news.
From the Westgate Mall in Kenya, where terrorists used a “gun free” zone to commit four days of torture and murder, to nearly every mass shooting ever committed in the U.S., bad guys know the only thing “gun free” zones do is guarantee defenseless victims.
Even the head of the global law enforcement agency Interpol said recently, “You have to ask yourself: ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’”
You also have to ask yourself, “how many more terrorists and deranged killers are now looking at America’s millions of ‘gun free’ zones to plan their next massacre?”
Even our opponents know it’s true.
From Obama to Michael Bloomberg, Dianne Feinstein, Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of the media-political elite, the whole time they’re attacking your right to own a gun, they’re enjoying armed security for themselves.
Even as he pushed laws that would only disarm lawful, peaceable individuals like you, Vice President Joe Biden readily admitted, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting.”
Then why are they pushing this agenda? Simple: Because they want to ban your guns.
Think about what that means for you. It means that not only are they pushing laws they know won’t work—while refusing to discuss reforms that could prevent the next crime or mass killing—they’re also trying to reduce your ability to defend yourself, even as they retain armed protection for themselves! What hypocrites!
That kind of double-dealing dishonesty demands a response from every American who cares about freedom or gives a darn about their family’s security.
But if NRA members like you don’t lead the fight, there’s nobody else who can.
Election Day, 2014: stand and fight for Freedom.
Like it or not, we stand at one of those decisive moments in history when we must either fight or fail. The enemies of firearm freedom are advancing. They think this is their time to strike.
Anti-gun Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., says the gun-prohibition lobby has a better chance of passing anti-gun legislation than it’s had in 20 years—and that’s now, even before this year’s crucial elections.
If Obama strengthens his hand in November by winning just a handful of key U.S. Senate and House races, he’ll have more power, more leverage, more allies and more opportunity to dismantle the Second Amendment than any president in American history.
He’ll be able to misuse the federal bureaucracy to target, harass and silence gun owners like you, just as the administration has done to journalists at the Associated Press, Fox News and CBS—or by unleashing the IRS, OSHA, the EPA or whoever else they can think of to intimidate their critics.
He’ll have the votes in the Senate to win ratification of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which could set the stage for a national gun registry, to be shared with foreign governments.
And he’ll have the majorities on Capitol Hill to ram his gun-ban agenda down the throats of the American people, regardless of what the American people support.
In other words, unless every gun owner in America gets informed, gets involved and fights for the truth through the NRA, the lies will prevail, Obama will win, and you, your firearms and your freedom will lose. It’s as simple and urgent as that.
If you agree that we should continue to stand and fight, call (855) NRA-2014 or visit www.nra-2014.org to renew or upgrade your nra membership, sign up a friend or family member or make a contribution.
Your firearms and freedoms have never been in greater danger—or needed you more to stand and fight to protect them—than right now.
So please join us. Help us get ready for the fight of our lives: the fight for the right to keep and bear arms.
Note: Wayne’s column appears in the NRA publication America’s First Freedom. Click here to get a discounted NRA Annual Membership for only $25 a year complete with your choice of magazine delivered to your door.