After finding a muddy footprint on her back porch and hearing glass break, Susan Buxton was convinced that someone was in her home. According to police, she searched each closet until, finally, as she pulled open the one nearest her front door, she saw a man's face peering out from underneath a coat. "Shh," he pleaded. Buxton told her granddaughter to call 9-1-1 and ordered the intruder to lie flat on the floor, or she'd shoot. The home invader then did something he likely regrets: He reached for the 66-year-old woman's .38-cal. revolver. She fired once, hitting the intruder's leg. "Ow, you shot me!" he cried out before fleeing. The man, whom police say eluded them by hiding in Buxton's home after stealing a pickup truck, was apprehended on a balcony a few houses away. "If I didn't have a gun to protect myself, I probably wouldn't be here," Buxton said. (Fort Worth Star- Telegram, Arlington, TX, 11/10/05)
Harry Carpenter suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and wears oxygen tubes for much of the day, but that didn't stop him from fending off two knife-wielding burglars. Police say two young men barged into his home, one forcing him at knifepoint to sit on a couch while the other demanded money from his wife, Jackie. When Jackie pretended to faint, Harry's captor went to investigate. Harry sneaked into the laundry room where he kept an unloaded .22-cal. rifle he's owned since his youth. "I shot many a squirrel with that thing," he said later. The intruder returned before Harry could load his firearm, but Harry racked the bolt home as if it were loaded. "He yelled out, 'Let's go, he's got a gun!'" Harry recalled. The suspects fled the scene and were being sought by police. (Savannah Morning News, Savannah, GA, 11/19/05)
George Swita, who served in Gen. Patton's Third Army in World War II, brought back a German Luger that was on a truck full of captured German arms. Though he kept the pistol clean, he no longer used it for target practice. He began carrying it between his home and vehicle, however, after an assailant hit him in the face and stole $60 from his wallet. It was a decision that may have saved his life. Police say an attacker grabbed Swita around the neck as he unlocked his front door. Swita fired two shots, hitting the crook in the head and killing him. "Was I scared? You bet, both times!" Swita said. (The Vindicator, Youngstown, OH, 11/01/05)
Police say three men broke into a couple's residence with baseball bats and a gun in search of prescription drugs, but all they left with was a lesson from an armed citizen. Two of the men allegedly ordered the couple and their visiting family members to the floor while a third suspect stole the medications. Meanwhile, a family member in another room heard the commotion and armed himself with a firearm. He entered the room and fired several shots at the intruder who was holding the victim's relatives at gunpoint, hitting him once in the torso. Two men fled in a car and were apprehended by police. The wounded man was found collapsed in the street. The trio faces charges of home invasion, robbery and kidnapping. "They were very threatening to the family," said St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar. "[The man who was shot] had the gun to the wife's head." (The St. Augustine Record, St. Augustine, FL, 11/05/05)
After an armed burglar stole $100 from his home. Angel Benitez took a self-defense class and obtained a concealed-carry permit. "This year, I'm going to prepare myself," Benitez recalled saying to himself. And, according to police, he did just that when he heard the screams of his friend, Carmen Ramos. Benitez found a man pointing a gun at Ramos. "When I saw the gun, I fired," said Benitez. "He could have killed my friend." Ramos' daughter, who was watching television, thought her mother had been shot, but then saw the burglar stumble out the door. "He was yelling 'Ow, ow!"' she recalled. A man with a gunshot wound later arrived at the hospital, but police were still investigating whether he was the intruder. (The Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, 11/18/05) |
You type in the URL for the National Rifle Association-www.nra.org-and you get an error message: "Host not found." You type in www.nraila.org. This time you get the message "site unavailable." When you type the Web address of a civil liberties think tank-a known, proven source for accurate information and analysis-you find yourself looking at a screen saying "content blocked." You can access the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign. But every pro-gun site is filtered. Nothing is coming into your inbox from any of the pro-Second Amendment online newsletters you always get. Their sites are blocked as well. So you send an e-mail to your congressman and U.S. senators telling them about the Internet blackout and urging . them to vote against the gun-ban legislation, and you CC your e-mail to friends and family and co-workers. Your e-mails are blocked, while the voices of those hyping the bans on speech and gun ownership sail through. Your inbox fills with returned mail with cover messages saying "action failed." As a hedge, you send your congressional letters through the U.S. Postal Service-but the bill is up for floor action in three days-and you know your message in opposition won't arrive in time because of federal mail screening. You go to another pro-gun site, and it is there, but wait a minute-the headline on the main page says they support the gun ban. The site has been hacked, the original content dumped and fraudulent material added. You try again to reach the site of your activist state association and you get a new error message: "ACCESS FORBIDDEN BYTHE UNITED NATIONS INTERNET GOVERNANCE AUTHORITY. Your attempted access has been recorded." All of these things-all of this censorship, including replacing site content-are already a worldwide reality for millions of people today. A chilling account of Internet repression-including some of the error messages I cite-was published in the November 16,2005 edition of The [London] Independent. Author Daniel Howden writes, "... China remains the benchmark in censorship. Beijing has cajoled major U.S. players such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo into adapting their sites and services to suit the censors. A Chinese Web surfer typing the word 'democracy' or 'freedom' or 'human rights' into their server will probably receive an error message announcing: 'This item contains forbidden speech.'" If you have friends who might scoff at this scenario playing out here in America, let me lay out some recent headlines: "China Again Tightens Control of Online News and Information ..." or "China shuts down 47,000'harmful'Internet cafes." Then add to that frightening mix these headlines: "China charges U.S. monopolizes the Internet, seeks global control" and "EU Wants Shared Control of Internet." Global Internet control. Think global gun control. They are the same thing. An Associated Press business dispatch-written before the November 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia-predicted, "A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world." "Benefit of the whole world? "That's U.N. speak for what Howden concludes is a battle where "the world's rich and powerful will join battle for control of what they see as a gold mine." In opposition to a U.N. takeover of the Internet, the Bush administration has held its ground. After all, we invented the Internet. It was the sole creation of remarkable American genius. It was and is an integral part of our national defense. And-as an American entity-is shared with the world as the most open avenue for free expression and the exchange of ideas ever created. It reflects America's unique First Amendment, and it serves to protect our equally unique Second Amendment. "Benefit of the whole world?" The United Nations? We've heard those words before-again and again-in reference to worldwide civil disarmament. Were the U.N. to control the most important means of communications in history, you can bet globalist billionaire George Soros and Rebecca Peters would be silencing all Internet access by those who oppose their world vision of a global gun ban. The Internet is still safely in American hands-for now-but this fight, like the global efforts to disarm Americans, will never go away. And neither will our duty to protect the sanctity of the First Amendment with the vigor equal to our defense of the Second Amendment. |
Suppose some day that you are sitting at your computer, ready to take action against a repressive gun ban pending before Congress, a ban the media says is a benefit to society. They are lying. And you want access to the truth so you can convince your friends and neighbors to contact their senators and congressmen.
As a lawyer and former law professor, I care passionately about the judges deciding cases that affect our civil liberties. When I was elected NRA president, I announced that one of my areas of focus would be the United States Supreme Court. Since then we've had two Supreme Court vacancies, the first since 1994. The last time there were two openings on our highest court was 1971.This is the most significant change in the Court I've seen in 31 years of arguing cases. What happens now will change America's laws for generations, and the stakes for the Second Amendment are profound. The qualities that we should all look for in a Supreme Court justice are the same as what the U.S. Senate historically considers in determining whether to confirm a president's nominee: education, experience, character, temperament and philosophy. Judge Alito's educational qualifications are undeniably impressive. He graduated from Princeton in 1972 and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1975 where he was the editor of the Yale Law/Journal. His legal and judicial experience is equally impressive. He has been a federal prosecutor, argued a dozen cases before the Supreme Court, and was responsible for constitutional interpretation as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel under pro-Second Amendment Attorney General Ed Meese and NRA Life member President Ronald Reagan. Alito served for 15 years as a federal appellate judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, a position to which the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed him in 1990. In his lifetime career of public service, there have been no questions as to his character or integrity. He is a quiet, courteous, fair-minded judge of steady temperament who is committed to the rule of law. Based on his published decisions, Judge Alito's judicial philosophy seems to be similar to that of Chief Justice John Roberts. Like Roberts, Alito's opinions reflect his belief that judicial restraint should be exercised in interpreting the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Alito also believes that in construing a federal statute, the words of the statute should be given their plain meaning. In short, Alito believes that legislation is properly left to the lawmakers and that a federal judge's job is to interpret and apply the law as enacted by Congress. The stakes for NRA members-and all Americans-when it comes to who sits on the Supreme Court cannot be overstated. When we look at the gun confiscation by government officials in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the harassment and unwarranted residency checks by some BATFE agents at recent gun shows and now the blanket handgun ban in place in San Francisco, we see the importance of a Supreme Court that will protect our civil rights, especially the Second Amendment. And when we see Judge Weinstein of the Second Circuit declining to dismiss a tort liability lawsuit against gun manufacturers despite the newly enacted Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, we see the need for a Supreme Court to set clear precedent for lower federal courts on the meaning of our laws. As NRA members and Second Amendment activists, we are used to winning elections and passing good legislation. But there are problems that even the best work in these areas cannot solve, because the problem is about how the law, once enacted, is interpreted and applied. When abuses occur, either by a power grab by a leftist politician or a ballot measure in a radical-left city, only the Supreme Court can ultimately protect your constitutional rights. Judge Samuel Alito will likely be confirmed as the newest justice on the United States Supreme Court. While there are no guarantees as to how he might decide a particular issue that comes before the Court, his background, temperament and judicial philosophy suggest a bright future for the Second Amendment. |
The NRA is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in America. You may not think of NRA this way, but it's true. For 215 years, since its ratification in 1789, the Second Amendment has been the civil right guaranteeing your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. And since its formation in 1871, NRA has been the organization devoted to protecting the Second Amendment. Whether it survives the next 215 years may well depend on confirmation hearings in the Senate over the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the United States Supreme Court. Every NRA member should know who this jurist is and what his confirmation means for our constitutional rights.