A man was shot and killed when he broke into his ex-wife's Laguna Hills, Calif., home for the second time in several days and tried to force their 10-year-old daughter to drink an unidentified, caustic liquid. Eric Kiefer had been arrested for violating a restraining order when he broke into his ex-wife's home and assaulted her and their daughter. He broke in again only days later in the early morning and tried to force his daughter to drink the liquid. He then attacked the girl's grandparents with a hatchet when they tried to intervene. That's when the young girl's grandfather fatally shot Kiefer in the neck with a shotgun. (Press-Telegram, Long Beach, CA 11/01/02)
A newspaper carrier saved the day, and a man's life, when he shot a man holding a gun to the head of a Birmingham, Ala., convenience store clerk during a robbery. Sam Harper was outside a Chevron convenience store filling newspaper racks when he saw a man put on a wig and burst into the store, screaming at clerk Tom Burnett and pointing a shotgun at Burnett's head. Harper acted immediately by drawing his own gun, entering the store and firing three times at the gunman. The wounded robber dropped his shotgun but ran toward Harper, who shot him twice more. "l just reacted," Harper said. "It was total chaos, and it was pretty terrifying." Burnett credits Harper with saving his life. "I was looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and a shotgun don't miss," he said. (Dothan Eagle, Dothan, AL, 10/10/02)
Mack and Wanda Crawford were awakened about 1:40 a.m. by a thump in the night. When Mack Crawford grabbed a 9 mm handgun and went looking for the source of the noise, he encountered a masked man in his kitchen. The masked intruder demanded Crawford's prescription for OxyContin and then pulled a weapon. Crawford reported that he thought it was a gun. A struggle ensued and Crawford fired his gun several times, hitting his assailant twice in the torso. Crawford then removed the man's mask and discovered it was an acquaintance of his. The intruder was taken to the hospital where he was listed in critical condition. During their investigation, police took into evidence a straight-blade knife that Crawford said did not belong to him. (Kingsport Times News, Kingsport, TN, 10/15/02)
A Berwick, Penn., convenience store owner's stepfather shot a man when he attacked the owner with a claw hammer. Owner Barry Masick was waiting on a "customer" who wanted to buy a soda and chips, but didn't have enough money. The man left the store and went over to a truck and then returned with a claw hammer and struck Masick on the side of his head. Masick shouted for Albert Evans, his stepfather and partner who lives with him in a house next to the store. Evans came running in with a handgun loaded with birdshot. When the assailant saw the gun, he raised the hammer toward Evans, who shot him. The suspect fled the store, holding his neck. The suspect later turned himself in to receive medical treatment and was charged with felony robbery, theft and simple assault. (Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg, PA, 10/26/02)
A man was fatally shot when he broke into his ex-girlfriend's Algiers, La., home and attacked her boyfriend. Bryan Parent entered the home through a pet door at the back of the house about 5:30 a.m. and began to choke Jeff Dorson, who was sleeping. Dorson struggled with the intruder and then pulled a .357 Mag. revolver from his briefcase and shot Parent once in the chest. New Orleans Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Accardo said the suspect's ex girlfriend had a "stay away" order against Parent, who had a history of violence against her. (The Times Picayune, New Orleans, LA, 10/25/02)
A man was shot in the buttocks by an armed Las Vegas homeowner when several men broke into a home in an attempted burglary. The shot sent the would-be burglars running; one suspect jumped from a second story window. Police arrested four men, including the wounded man, and charged them with burglary with use of a deadly weapon and home invasion. North Las Vegas Police Lt. Victor Dunn said the suspects were going through the neighborhood knocking on doors, looking for an empty house. (Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas, NV, 10/08/02)
Three men forced their way into a Wilmington, Del., nightclub in an apparent robbery attempt that was foiled when the owner fired on the intruders and they fled. An employee of Larry's After Hours Club had started to lock up the bar when the three men burst into the club. One of the intruders grabbed the employee, using him as a shield as they confronted the club owner. When the owner drew his gun, the would-be robbers exchanged fire with him and then fled. No one was injured. (The News Journal, Wilmington, DE, 10/22/02) |
The impersonal terror-murders they are accused of committing are not normal events. In the entire history of the United States, nothing like this has ever happened. There are 65 million peaceable, law-abiding gun owners in this nation. None of us has any connection with serial murderers. But for the daily exercise of our Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms, each of us is being blamed by the likes of Chuck Schumer, Sarah Brady and the big media. With those who would destroy the Second Amendment, the acts of terrorists, serial murderers or mass killers are always seized as opportunities for pressing the scheme of the day. When the insanity of the Columbine school killers shocked the nation, gun-control groups, politicians and the media demanded that innocent gun owners give in to a scheme that amounted to gun-owner registration. We stood up to that lie and prevailed. We saved Freedom. When the 9/11 terrorists crashed fully fueled airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, gun control groups, politicians and the media demanded new schemes to alter the Second Amendment Freedom of innocent Americans. You and I were supposed to take the fall for international terrorism. We heard lots about gun shows and terrorists, but it was all a lie of opportunity. We stood up to that lie and prevailed. We saved Freedom. Today, we are facing a new lie of opportunity. Rep John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) could not wait to demand that gun owners give up their freedom in the wake of the "sniper" murders. They now demand a variation on gun-owner registration-which they call "ballistic fingerprinting." If truth in labeling were applied, this latest scheme should be called-a universal gun owner registration database. Make no mistake, this is simply an attempt to create a national list of law-abiding gun owners. It would first cover those people who buy new firearms. Those guns would be test fired and forensic information stored on a huge computer network, all tied to permanent personal information on the purchaser. The next logical step will come with the claim that the purchaser database is not sufficient to cover guns already in private hands. Then all law-abiding firearms owners will be required to produce their guns for testing and registration. You can bet that in Chuck Schumer's world not complying will be a criminal offense. (Keep in mind that under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Haynes v. US., criminals will be exempt from submitting their guns and their names because it amounts to self-incrimination.) This ultimate "gun fingerprinting" presents an unthinkable waste of public resources. Assume there are 250 million privately owned firearms in peaceable hands. Handling, cataloging, and test-firing each of them would take an impossibly massive effort by government over years and cost billions of taxpayer dollars. All for an end that is considered highly suspect in the eyes of law enforcement organizations like the Fraternal Order of Police, which said, "With such small chances it will be used to solve a firearm crime ... these are law enforcement dollars best spent elsewhere." (See ILA Report, p. 78.) Chuck Schumer claims his "ballistic fingerprinting" is not gun registration, but many in the media are getting it right. Newsday published an anti-gun-rights commentary that touched all the bases and made all the arguments as to where "ballistic fingerprinting" is really leading. The piece opens with an extraordinary statement clearly defining the lack of discrimination between good and evil that marks the gun control movement in everything it proposes: "The gun-owning classes run the gamut of respectability from honest hunters to the drooling maniac- or maniacs-now terrorizing the District of Columbia and two adjoining states." The Newsday commentary continued, asking what it called the "obvious question." "What fresh outrage and what sort of body count would it take for voters to conclude that at some point the constitutional right to bear' arms must be abridged in new and more imaginative ways?" (emphasis added) That's "ballistic fingerprinting." The Newsday rant continued to connect the dots. "America's tolerance for gun violence doesn't seem to have been severely tested even by the sniper. This is at curious variance with experience in other civilized nations. When, in 1996, 16 children and a teacher were shot dead with a pistol in Dunblane, Scotland, the parliament of the United Kingdom reacted by virtually banning handguns throughout Britain. In Australia, there was a similar political reaction in the same year, when a maniac shot and killed 35 people in Tasmania. Since then, the Australian government has purchased over a half-million privately owned guns and destroyed them." Thank you, Newsday. In the months and weeks to come, we wil1 be hearing a lot about "ballistic finger printing. "We must stand up to this lie and save Freedom once again. We must inform our friends and neighbors-especially those who might buy into this "imaginative" abridgment-as to what this really is-another step toward making America "civilized" like England-where armed criminals rule over disarmed citizens. |
Of all of the people who live in America today-or who have ever lived on our soil-there is only one John Allen Muhammad, only one John Lee Malvo. The two men accused of the serial murder spree that terrorized the Washington area and held the nation captive are aberrations. They are not normal people. They are not like us in any way.
Once the ashes had settled on Election Day, that observation proved true yet again. Because, once again, the American people stepped forward to defend their freedom-and once again those anti-gun candidates went down in flames on Election Day. In race after race, from Maryland to Oregon and from Minnesota to Texas, voters defeated anti-gun incumbents, elected pro-freedom challengers, rejected gun-ban political posturing for the fraud that it is and voted freedom first. In the two weeks prior to Election Day, I traveled with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox to "Vote Freedom First" rallies in a dozen key states. And if there was anything that stood out to me in those rallies, it was this: The only reason our freedoms survive is because of freedom-first voters like you. You weren't cheering for me-you were cheering for each other. You knew what was at stake, and you knew what you must, and would, do to defend it. You won those elections! You spread the word. You posted the bumper stickers and yard signs for pro-freedom candidates. You registered to vote and got others to do the same. You wrote the letters-to-the-editor and the personal checks to support pro-gun campaigns, NRA-ILA and the NRA Political Victory Fund. You kept your eye on the one real issue that matters-freedom- and on Election Day, you did your duty to protect it. As a result:
Immediately after Election Day, pundits credited President Bush for Republican gains on Capitol Hill, and to be sure, that was key. But what's interesting is that in a significant percentage of the few races that Democrats did win, they were won by Democrats who claimed to oppose anti-gun laws. In Arkansas, for example, Mark Pryor won his U.S. Senate bid by proclaiming his support for gun owners and sportsmen. (For more on the results of the 2002 elections, see p.50). Republican or Democrat, politicians who tried to capitalize on tragedy and campaign on gun-ban gimmicks were almost invariably defeated. Look at Maryland, where Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ran her gubernatorial bid by trying to exploit the D.C.-area sniper shootings in October. She attacked her opponent's votes against anti-gun laws through ominous television commercials, and her campaign labeled him "the NRA candidate for governor." Yet despite Maryland's two-to-one ratio of Democrat to Republican voters, despite Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's advantage in name recognition as the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and despite her cynical attempts to manipulate voters through fear of the sniper attacks-in one of the most anti-gun states in the nation-her opponent beat her handily to become the first Republican governor elected in Maryland since 1966. Make no mistake, though: The pendulum may have swung in the direction of freedom, but it's also just as sure to swing back before long. So before any of us strains a muscle by patting himself on the back, we had better prepare for the next fight. As always, that job must fall to the few. But as you've shown me over and over again, you will fight-and you will prevail. |
On a television talk show shortly before the 2002 elections, an advocate of Second Amendment freedom commented that some anti-gun Democrats are drawn to the gun-control issue just as moths are drawn to a flame: No matter how many times they're burned, still they return.