Leon and Eleanor Cash were spending a quiet evening in their Natrona Heights, Pa., home when they heard suspicious sounds coming from the kitchen. When they went to the kitchen to investigate, a man dressed entirely in black forced his way into the house by pistol whipping Mr. Cash. When the intruder pinned Cash against a kitchen appliance, holding him down by his throat, Cash called to his wife for help. She responded by grabbing their shotgun and shooting the intruder. Ras-Saleem Hudson died at the scene and no charges were expected to be filed against Mrs. Cash. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh, PA 09/26/04)

A Jackson, Ohio, man was not going to let the fact that he was in a wheelchair stop him from protecting himself or his home. So when two men pulled into his driveway and one broke into the garage from the back door, Roy Lundy, Sr., fired a shot at him. The intruder retreated and, shortly thereafter, Lundy saw the men drive away. When police arrived they found that, in addition to the garage being broken into, the robbers had broken in through the kitchen, although it was not immediately clear whether anything had been stolen. (The Jackson County Times-Journal, Jackson, OH, 10/11/04)

Muskegon, Mich., store owner Michael Moore was working late one night in his office when he heard strange noises that he thought were probably animals. But when he heard the doorknob jiggle, he retrieved his gun and went to investigate. Seeing an armed man jump over the counter, Moore demanded that the intruder freeze. When he did not, Moore fired once, hitting the intruder in the shoulder. Moore immediately called 911 and waited for police and an ambulance to arrive. (Muskegon Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, 09/30/04)

When you are a judge, angry defendants come with the territory, but Judge Calvin Shields never expected he could lose his life over it. Shields was letting his dogs out late one evening when he saw a man looking into his house. He grabbed his gun and went outside to trigger the motion detector light. At that moment, Michael Tinervia opened fire on Shields who returned fire, fatally wounding Tinervia. Shields was only grazed in the knee. It was later discovered that Tinervia had been found guilty of reckless driving and interfering with a police officer in Shields' court and was awaiting sentencing by Shields. According to Shields' wife, Tinervia had called the house at 6:30 p.m. that night and asked for Calvin. When the judge answered, there was no one on the line. "It was to check if Calvin was home," she said, adding, "I had a bad feeling about it." (The Daily Times, Rio Rancho, NM 10/13/04)

An unwitting Shelby County, Ala., homeowner unknowingly helped in the capture of four inmates who had escaped from a Georgia prison. When the citizen arrived home early one morning, he found four men attempting to rob his house. The homeowner retrieved his gun and fired, hitting one in the face. The men fled but dropped off their injured conspirator at a nearby store so that he could get medical attention. Shortly thereafter, the three other men were apprehended in the area without incident. The home- owner was not charged, according to the local district attorney, because, "If we as a society ever get to the point where people are not entitled to defend themselves in their own home, then the law has totally lost its perspective." (Birmingham News, Birmingham, AL, 10/13/04)

A 64-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., man was having his regular night out at a seniors social club when two armed, masked men approached a card table and demanded money. After a round was fired from an assailant's shotgun, the intended victim, thinking his friend who had fallen to the floor had been killed, pulled out his handgun and shot and killed one of the robbers. As the robber was hit with the bullet, his shotgun went off and hit his accomplice in the arm. The accomplice fled the scene but was later apprehended at a local medical center and charged with first-degree burglary. (The Buffalo News, Buffalo, NY, 09/26/04)

A Jacksonville, Fla,; man got the surprise of his life after he came home to find a knife-wielding teenage girl inside demanding his car keys. When the girl headed to another room to retrieve the keys, the homeowner, Richard dark, ran to retrieve his gun. Moments later the two faced off in the house, and the teen charged at dark with the knife, dark shot once, hitting the teen in the face. She was charged with aggravated battery and armed burglary. (The Times-Union Sampler, Jacksonville, FL, 10/14/04)

The resounding election victory for President George W. Bush and the creation of an even more solid pro- Second Amendment majority in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives marks not the end of a political battle, but the beginning - the opening of a campaign to regain lost ground and to re-secure liberty for America's firearm owners. In the months ahead, as NRA members, we have critical work to do.

We have freedom's mandate to fulfill.

And there is much unfinished business before us.

Until Congress enacts a clear prohibition on malicious, punitive lawsuits against the firearm industry, gun owners will see an escalation of endless, costly court actions by a devious axis of gun-ban special interests and trial lawyers-all designed to bleed the firearm industry and the Second Amendment to death. This is the year we can see decisive action to end this back-door gun ban.

In the last Congress, tort-reform legislation supported by NRA cleared the U.S. House of Representatives by a 285 to 140 vote, but was withdrawn in the Senate after a series of poison-pill amendments was added. Among the very active key supporters of the killer amendments was Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who had originally co-sponsored and pledged support for the reform legislation. But in the November elections, Daschle paid the ultimate political price for his double-cross of South Dakota's firearm owners. In January, when the new Senate is sworn in, Daschle won t be there, having been replaced by solidly pro-Second Amendment Congressman John Thune.

The significance of Daschle's retirement by the South Dakota electorate should not be lost on many of his former colleagues, who are very likely to have Sarah Brady whispering in their ears once again.

The seating of a new Congress, in itself, guarantees little. Each of us-as we did last session-needs to keep pressure on our individual senators and members of congress to enact the long overdue firearm industry tort reform legislation. President Bush is dedicated to signing it into law. But we must work to assure that in the Senate we do not have a repeat of the poison-pill scenario, which torpedoed the bill last year. The likes of Sens. Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer will no doubt be carrying water to protect unfettered lawsuits, and NRA members must press hard for a clean up or down vote.

Among other unfinished business is lifting the decades-long gun ban in the District of Columbia and giving back the right of armed self-defense for law-abiding residents in the nation's capital.

The good citizens of the District of Columbia-a city that consistently garners the shameful title of "murder capital" of the nation-have for too long lived under the heel of the oppressive D.C. gun law that bans handguns and makes it a criminal offense to possess an operable, registered long gun in the home. Forcing people to keep firearms disassembled or otherwise inoperable is clearly a ban on armed self-defense. The only thing the D.C. law has accomplished is to make the District of Columbia a living laboratory demonstrating the total failure of "gun control" in reducing violent crime.

Also high on the freedom agenda is repealing the onerous speech ban in the federal campaign finance law, which makes any paid issue advocacy broadcast that refers to a federal candidate a crime if it is aired 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election by groups such as NRA.

Although the mainstream media ignored it, I have no doubt that a singular issue for firearm owners in the presidential election was the future makeup of the United States Supreme Court-a court that will doubtless be asked to rule on the Second Amendment in the near future; a court that will see several vacancies within the next four years. Nothing in the coming months and years is more important than confirmation of appointees who "look at the Constitution as sacred," in the words of George W. Bush.

I have never been so proud to be among NRA members as during the long and grueling campaign to defeat the chameleon candidacy of John Kerry and reelect President Bush.

Armed with the truth-the cold hard facts of John Kerry's 20-year record of assaults on our Second Amendment freedoms in the U.S. Senate-NRA members were at the vanguard of efforts to counter the media's big lie, which falsely painted Kerry in blaze orange, and repeated his outrageous claim that he was a hunter who supported the Second Amendment.

Without your untiring one-on-one, day-in and day-out individual efforts, I am certain the election would have gone the other way.

Each of you-your friends and family deserve our heartfelt thanks.

And I must tell you, that in campaigning with President Bush, one thing is clear: He knows what you have done for the country and for the future of freedom.