Panicked residents reported a man running through their yards as police chased a county jail escapee through several neighborhoods in Manteca, Calif. That is, until the suspect jumped a fence and entered the yard of a citizen armed with more than a telephone. The citizen-NRA member Richard Soares-heard his dog barking and retrieved a firearm to investigate. He encountered the suspect, who claimed to be jumping fences for a school project. Soares ordered the suspect to the ground where he was apprehended without further incident. (Manteca Bulletin, Manteca, CA, 06/11/07)

According to authorities, a homeowner in a gated community was awakened by noises and, to his horror, found an intruder choking his wife. The homeowner quickly ran for his gun and returned to discover two additional intruders. The men, at least one of them armed with a gun, held the homeowner's wife hostage and demanded cash and jewelry. Fearing his wife would be killed, the homeowner opened fire and at least one of the intruders shot back. The suspects fled. Two were sought by police; one died in the backyard. (The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas, NV, 08/15/07)

Nathaniel Evans was leaving for work when two men confronted him with a gun and ordered him back inside. The men threatened Evans and another occupant, Evans' girlfriend. "[The suspects] kept yelling 'Where is it?'" said Sheriff Greg Champagne. "When they couldn't find what they were looking for, they shot [Evans]:'That's when Evans' girlfriend, who'd been ordered into a bedroom and forced to the floor with her 5-year-old child, came out firing a AO-cal. pistol. One suspect died at the scene. The other was found nearby and will be charged after his release from the hospital. Evans is expected to recover. (The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, LA, 08/23/07)

Edward Franklin was unloading his vehicle when a young man accosted him with a gun and demanded money. Franklin instinctively knocked the gun's muzzle away and ran into his house, where he retrieved a firearm. Franklin's assailant followed him inside. "He told [Franklin] he wasn't afraid to die,” Columbus, Ga., Police Lt. Mark D. Starling said. "He pointed his weapon at Mr. Franklin, at which point Mr. Franklin shot him:' The suspect will face charges after his release from the hospital. (The Ledger-Enquirer, Columbus, GA, 08/24/07)

Having had his home burglarized three times in a week, 85-yearold Alton Tillman was tired of being victimized. So, the next morning he left home at his normal time, but quietly returned. Once inside, he found signs of a burglary in progress. Even more disturbing, according to police, two feet were sticking out from below his bed. Tillman ordered the intruder to come out and called 9-1-1. He kept a handgun trained on the burglar until police arrived. Several of Tillman's missing items were found at the suspect's home a block away. (The Associated Press, 08/10/07)

A concealed-carry permit holder left a restaurant and stopped for a red light. According to police, that's when an attempted carjacker stuck a knife through the window and demanded the car. "The victim pulled out his handgun and he last saw the suspect running,” said Warren police detective Sgt. Michael Torey. (The Macomb Daily, Mount Clemens, MI, 08/21/07)

Check this out, fool!" announced a masked intruder as he burst through the door of Allen Van Arsdale's antique shop. But police say Van Arsdale, a 46-year-old rock collector, was not about to comply. He dropped to a knee, drew a .45 Colt revolver and fired a shot, missing the bandit by inches but causing him to flee. "Whatever drugs he's doing altered his brain chemistry and he did something he probably didn't want to do,” Van Arsdale said. "When somebody points a gun at me, it alters my brain chemistry and makes me do things I don't normally do.” (The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, UT, 08/08/07)

Fairness Doctrine Tyranny

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Reagan, Laura Ingraham, Mike Gallagher, G. Gordon Liddy and Ollie North, among other top broadcasters, daily reach a combined radio audience of 50 million Americans. And when the Second Amendment is threatened, these leaders of talk radio are there for us, out front, spreading a near-instant message of freedom to millions of Second Amendment supporters who are beyond the ranks of NRA's membership.

But if the White House is taken in the 2008 elections by Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama, or John Edwards-and if they hold control of both the u.s. Senate and House of Representatives-then expect a massive federal government effort designed to choke off those pro-Second Amendment voices.

The attacks on broadcast freedom will come on two simultaneous fronts.

First, an effort, both in the federal bureaucracy and in Congress, to break up current talk radio networks and syndications by tightening government control over ownership and programming.

Second, application of the Fairness Doctrine, a 1949 Federal Communications Commission rule abandoned during the Reagan administration that required broadcasters to provide air time for opposing views on matters of controversy. A new Fairness Doctrine tyranny has been demanded by NRA-haters like u.s. Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Durbin, D-1I1.

Radical political forces for these attacks on the First Amendment-many bankrolled by globalist gun-ban billionaire George Soros-are already being massed.

Chief among them is the Center for American Progress (CAP), headed by former President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff,. John Podesta, who created and ran White House task forces pressing Clinton gun ban initiatives, especially those designed to circumvent a pro-Second Amendment Congress. (Also involved in the creation of CAP was Podesta's former deputy, Harold Ickes, credited with masterminding Hillary Clinton's first Senate race, and a major "shadow" player in John Kerry's doomed presidential run.)

CAP has produced a bizarre June 2007 paper titled, "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” The manifesto was co-published with another Soros-backed "media reform" group, Free Press.

The report rails about the success of conservative talk radio and totally discounts any notion that such success is based on the free market of ideas.

Try these samplings of what CAP decries as "the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio":

"Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.

"Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk-1 0 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.”

That sounds to me like Americans making a free choice as to whom they wain to listen. Every day, millions of us-especially during drive-time-vote with our radio dials. What could be more fair?

And there has been an alternative-Air America-the talk network launched on March 31,2004, accompanied by incredibly heavy media hype. Air America, with commentators like rabidly anti-gun, anti-rural, anti-hunting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and AI Franken, had audience numbers so low that they couldn't even be measured in places like Washington, D.C. It filed for bankruptcy on October 12,2006.

With Americans free to make their choices on the radio dial, "progressive" talk radio-with all its hatred of gun owners-totally failed.

But if the George Soros-backed crowd takes power in a future administration, that freedom would be removed by a bureaucratic reshuffling of the airwaves based on political leanings of new licensees. Broadcast licenses would be limited.

Ollie North or Rush Limbaugh could be heard on just a handful of stations.

Here are the criteria the Podesta/Soros group would apply:

" ... we believe that minority and female owners, who tend to be more local, are more responsive to the needs of their local communities and are therefore less likely to air the conservative hosts because this type of programming is so far out of step with their local audiences. Additionally, minority-owned stations are more likely to be found in areas with high minority populations-areas that also report high percentages of progressives and liberals.

"Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.”

No doubt if this ever comes to pass, it will be called Collective Radio or People's Radio. But then we have that already with National Public Radio.

All of this is a cheat. They can't win in the free market, so they destroy the market. This threat is real and we can do something about it. We can vote in the coming elections to make sure nobody will abuse power this way. We can make protection of the First Amendment as important an issue as protection of the Second Amendment. It is. Either way, without one, the other perishes.             "