Tames Saiks was awakened about 2:45 a.m. by noises outside his Port Sulphur, La., home. He picked up his pistol, went | out to investigate and found a man breaking into his truck. The man ran toward Saiks holding something shiny in his J hand. Fearing for his life, Saiks shot the would-be assailant, who then ran into the woods. Police arrested a man identified as Jonathan Williams, who sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Williams was to be charged with aggravated burglary upon his release from the hospital, according to Maj. John Marie of the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office. (The Times Picayune, New Orleans, LA, 11/19/02)

The owner of Borla's Service Station in Waterbury, Conn., couldn't believe his eyes when he glanced at the closed-circuit security monitor in his of fice. He saw a man threatening his cashier with a crowbar and demanding money. James Borla watched the scene play out on the monitor as the clerk, who'd only been on the job two weeks, became flustered and failed to open the cash register. It soon became apparent the clerk was in imminent danger as the man became agitated and slammed his crowbar against the counter, demanding she open the register. Borla grabbed the .44-cal. handgun he keeps in his office and came up behind the suspect, ordering him to drop his weapon and lie down on the floor. Borla held the suspect at gunpoint for police, who arrested the man and charged him with first-degree robbery. (Republican-American, Waterbury, CT, 11/ 16/02)

A Naples, N.Y., man shot and killed an intruder who broke into his house in the middle of the night and threatened him. Michael Wojtowich was awakened by his 11-year-old son, who told him someone was in their house. Wojtowich loaded his 12-ga. shotgun and started down the steps to find out what was going on. He was confronted by Brian Dibble, who had previously dated Wojtowich's girlfriend. Chief Deputy Don DeSmith of the Ontario County Sheriff's department reported, "We're not sure exactly what was said, but apparently Mr. Dibble threatened Mr. Wojtowich with bodily harm." After being threatened, Wojtowich shot Dibble once in the chest. The intruder was pronounced dead at the scene. Prior to the incident, Dibble was said to have broken into his old girlfriend's home next door. (Finger Lakes Times, Geneva, NY, 11 /26/02)

A 19-year-old Midtown, Md., man was shot and killed when he opened fire on two motorists stopped at a red light. The man in the second of the two cars drew his own gun and shot back. Andre Lamont Hill approached a car stopped at a red light in Baltimore at 10:20 p.m. and fired multiple times, hitting that car and a car directly behind it.When the second car was sprayed with bullets, the driver, who had a permit to carry a gun, fired back, striking Hill several times in the head. The motive for the attack was unknown, according to Baltimore police. (The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD, 10/20/02)

From the moment two young men walked into Gary Lee's Market one afternoon, the owner's wife, Cathy Lee, knew they were trouble. She noticed the pair avoided eye contact with store employees and the hooded jackets they wore were too warm for the season. Her fears proved right moments later when one of the men pulled a gun and aimed it at a store clerk. Cathy had alerted her husband that there was trouble, and he emerged from the back of the store with a 9 mm pistol. He aimed in the direction of the robbers and fired. The pair of would-be bandits flew from the store, empty-handed. Three Brunswick, Ga., men were arrested in connection with the attempted robbery. Store proprietor Lee said he felt he had to stand up to the gunmen. "When they had the gun, they were in control, but that changed when I came out with my gun," he said. (The Brunswick News, Brunswick, GA, 11/20/02)

A Marion, Ohio, pizzeria owner heard a noise at the back of his restaurant early one morning and thought it might be one of his employees. When he heard another noise like someone stumbling, he went in the back to investigate and discovered a strange man in the kitchen. The owner ran to his office, retrieved a gun and pointed it at the interloper. "I was very angry that there was some guy in my store," said owner John VanBuskirk. He ordered the intruder to the floor and called 9-1-1. Police arrived quickly and took charge of the situation. When interrogated by police, the suspect, Ernest Wesley, Jr.' claimed the owner had invited him in for free pizza. "It's as ridiculous as it sounds," VanBuskirk said of Wesley's claim. He said he would certainly not invite someone in for free pizza at 4 a.m. (The Marion Star, Marion, OH, 11/02/02)

"[A] representative democracy ceases to exist the moment that the public functionaries are by any means absolved from their responsibility to their constituents; and this happens whenever the constituent can be restrained in any manner from speaking, writing or publishing his opinions upon any public measure, or upon the conduct of those who may advise or execute it."-New York Times v. Sullivan

That commentary came in a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1964 that went back to the birth of the nation to shed light on the intent of the Founders on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Those same issues are central to NRA's challenge to the constitutionality of John McCain's so-called campaign finance reform-the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).

In arguments before a special three judge panel in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, NRA's legal team argued, "At the heart of the Court's unanimous ruling (in Sullivan) was its recognition that political speech is the lifeblood of our representative democracy and that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open." NRA's fine legal team, principally led by Charles J. Cooper, Cleta Mitchell, and David Thompson, eloquently expressed NRA's defense of liberty in legal briefs submitted on our behalf and in appearances before the court.

Though NRA was first among more than 80 organizations and individuals to challenge this oppressive law-including U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO-our single critical thrust is to strike down BCRA's ban on broadcast political speech decreed 60 days before a primary election and 30 days prior to a general election. During the ban period, the broadcast of political speech the government might declare as "electioneering communication"-speech that refers to an identifiable candidate-would be a crime.

Our case, part of a consolidated challenge-McConnell v. FEC-is headed to the United States Supreme Court under a congressionally mandated accelerated schedule.

Before BCRA, there was no such slippery legal doctrine as "electioneering communication." Spending for specific electoral speech came under the purview of the Federal Election Commission only through the narrow and easily understood Supreme Court doctrine rising from Buckley v. Valeo as to what constituted "express advocacy"-paid advertising that directly urged people to vote for the election or defeat of a specific candidate. Such express advocacy was limited to the use of segregated Political Action Committee funds.

Now, under BRCA's bizarre category of "electioneering communication," the content of virtually any paid broadcast that even obliquely mentions the name of a candidate-even uttering the common name of Federal legislation (McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform, for example) would be a forbidden criminal act if uttered during the pre-election ban period. Under BCRA regulations, NRA couldn't use the word "president" in paid broadcasts without committing a criminal offense if the president were a candidate for re-election.

Under BCRA, it is a criminal act for a nonprofit corporation such as NRA or for a union to use any funds except those donated to a separate Political Action Committee (PAC) to pay for broadcasting "electioneering communication" during the mandated blackout periods.

When we started our fight to strike down the BCRA ban on free broadcast speech, there were many inside the Beltway who said, "We can all live with this." To that, we replied by standing first in line at the courtroom door.

To play by unconstitutional rules that make certain kinds of political speech a crime is to abandon First Amendment freedom and endure tyranny. As we told the court, "lf NRA's voice is loud and reverberates through the halls of Congress, it is precisely because the organization is the collective voice of millions of Americans speaking in unison. NRA's court brief nailed the point with the words of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who said such political speech "is not a corruption of the democratic political process, it is the democratic process."

The court was informed that forcing the NRA to speak only through its PAC " ... reduces the NRA's political voice to a whisper when compared to its actual public support in the political marketplace. And that is the measure's true purpose; it cannot be intelligibly understood except as a naked effort to suppress political speech for its own sake."

Before the McCain-Feingold free-speech gag legislation, not one second of the hundreds of thousands of minutes of broadcast time purchased by NRA to educate the public and rally support for Second Amendment Rights was suspect, much less illegal. But now, even a broadcast showing a single inadvertent image or the mention of a Federal candidate would be subject to criminal prosecution.

As we informed the court, "[T]he vast bulk of NRA's electioneering communications have nothing to do with getting candidates elected; instead, they serve to educate Americans about political developments that bear on the Second Amendment, to defend the NRA against attacks by the media and politicians, and to generate membership and raise funds."

In their court defense of BCRA, the government, and members of Congress who pressed for enactment of this legislation, now say their purpose was to stop what they claim is grievous public harm through "corruption" of elected officials brought about by broadcast issue advocacy.

As we informed the court, "BCRA's notion of corruption is nothing the Framers would recognize. Although the Framers understood and feared genuine 'cabal, intrigue and corruption' [from the Federalist Papers], their antidote was not less debate and democracy, it was more... If political speech is the core of the First Amendment, then speech about whom to elect is the axis about which that core rotates.

"And the best way for citizens to ensure that candidates for office are informed of the electorate's dispositions and inclinations is for those ordinary citizens to band together to make themselves heard." That's the NRA.

The brief also cited Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America: "Such associations are essential for vigorous public debate, for otherwise government itself would have the only voice loud enough to be heard, and that would be profoundly dangerous to democracy."

NRA told the court that if BCRA is "allowed to justify silencing the political speech of the NRA in this case," then no political activity is safe from congressional regulation.
"One need not think long to grasp that if a candidate's natural gratitude to the NRA for helpful electioneering communications is corruption enough to justify silencing such political speech, then what is to stop the government when it trains its sights on, say, the NRA's speech endorsing a candidate and urging its membership to rally behind him?

"It follows, then, that under Defendants' conception of corruption, advocacy organizations may speak freely through their PACs only as a matter of legislative grace, not of First Amendment right." (emphasis added)

And that is at the heart of what is so evil about this law and about the forces behind it. If government can ban political speech of one entity out of hand because it angers politicians, then it can ban it from another entity- and it can ban it entirely.

We demonstrated to the court that this notion of "corruption" is something new-not part of the legislative history of congressional action on BCRA. "Because defendants lack a legislative record supporting an anti-corruption rationale, they resort to a litigation record of their own making."

In fact, the legislative record demonstrated that the animating force for the blackout and ban on "electioneering communications" was "the threat that negative attack ads' pose to incumbents, rather than to the integrity of the electoral process."

Make no mistake-BCRA is about incumbency protection.

Simply put, to many politicians incumbency protection means silencing NRA. It was clear at the time of the floor debates that NRA was a major target. In both the Senate and the House, NRA was attacked for making our views known through paid broadcasts.

And as the court was told, Scott Harshberger, president of Common Cause, one of the shadow authors of McCain-Feingold, was quoted on the House floor as saying, "We need to make the connection with every person who cares about gun control that there is a need for campaign finance reform because this is how you are going to break their power ... a vote for campaign finance reform is a vote against the Second Amendment gun lobby."

He might as well have added that a vote for campaign finance reform was a vote to increase the power of big national media.

During the past two elections, had NRA been banned from using paid broadcasts to reach the public, the only voices heard would have been those of the big media- talking heads such as Dan Rather and Larry King, who block out any pro-Second Amendment views.

And big media is owned and controlled by gun-rights hating international conglomerates-such as AOL-Time Warner-who cheered BCRA every step of the way. Why? Because they are totally exempt.

Campaign finance reform is like gun control. It is the attempted destruction of a precious individual right-a step at a time.

The attacks on the First Amendment by the enemies of the Second Amendment will only end when the voices who oppose them are silenced. If that ever happened, then we the people would be disarmed of the most potent weapons to control our own political future-the rights to freely assemble and to associate around core causes, and above all, the right to exercise free and open speech to expose those who would govern us.

In a November 15, 2002, speech before the National Press Club, John McCain warned us that the "reform crusade continues," saying, "I often stated that this legislation is just the first step ... [it] cannot stop now."

That's why NRA stood first in line fighting for Freedom. We will always be there for Freedom-not just for NRA members or just the nation's firearm owners, but for every American.