A landlord was horrified 'when his tenant was victimized-raped by a convicted sex offender. In addition to repairing a damaged window and installing security devices, the landlord bought the tenant a shotgun. The latter move probably saved her life. Just a week later, as police prepared to file charges against the rapist, he returned to the scene of the crime. Likely angry his victim had gone to the authorities, the rapist cut the power to the house and crashed through the basement door. But the woman inside was not about to be a victim again. She fired her shotgun for the first time, killing her rapist. "I'm glad I had something to protect me," the woman said. "When your life is in danger, you just do what you have to do." (Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau, MO, 11/01/08)

Dean Woodling was stopping by his father's property when, according to police, he saw a robber loading a truck with stolen items. Woodling, who is a hunter, had a shotgun in the vehicle. "I jumped out with the shotgun as he was coming out of the barn," Woodling explained. "To say he was scared was an understatement." Woodling, who has a concealed-carry permit and likes to keep a firearm handy, held the suspect at gunpoint until police arrived. "The way the world is, it's like American Express," said Woodling. "I never leave home without it. Police cannot be everywhere all the time." (Pocono Record, Stroudsburg, PA, 11/14/08)

Brian Berthiaume was walking his dog when he saw a large man acting suspiciously. The man had entered the neighbor's garage through the garage door, which construction workers had accessed earlier in the day, but Berthiaume decided home renovation was not this man's goal. Police say Berthiaume feared for his neighbor, a woman with two young children, so he ran home for his AO-caliber pistol and told his girlfriend to call police. When he returned, the suspect was carrying away a large saw. He confronted the man, who was already on probation for burglary. After a brief standoff, the 240-pound suspect sprawled out on the ground and waited for police. Berthiaume's neighbor lauded his actions, saying, "One of the reasons my family has stayed in New Orleans [following Hurricane Katrina] is because of neighbors who watch out for you, like Brian." (The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, LA, 11/13/08)

Mark C. Johnson had been arrested 33 times since 1986, including charges of robbery, larceny and battery, according to law enforcement records. Some would suggest he should have been in jail. Unfortunately for sixth-grade reading teacher Juanita Enzor, he hoped to prey upon yet another victim. Police say Enzor, who lives alone, heard Johnson burst through her front door. Grabbing her gun, Enzor hid in the bedroom, and when Johnson entered the room, she shot him. Johnson attempted, albeit briefly, to attack Enzor before falling dead. (St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, FL, 10/24/08)

Alejandro Salinas was paying for his gas when the clerk warned him he'd seen several suspicious men outside. On his guard, Salinas walked to his truck, but before he could close the door, one of the men put a gun to his neck. "Get out of the truck. I'm going to take it and I'm going to kill you," the suspect said, according to police. But Salinas executed a classic tactical move: In a fast, fluid motion, he pushed away his assailant's gun while drawing his own 9 mm pistol and shooting the assailant twice. The wounded suspect fired once into the air as he fell to the ground. His accomplices grabbed him and took him to a hospital, where he died. Salinas has a concealed-carry permit. (The Monitor, McAllen, TX, 11/10/08)

There were about 15 people enjoying a game of bingo at a gaming hall when a masked man wielding a shotgun ran into the room. The armed robber fired a round into the ceiling and demanded money. According to police, that's when bingo hall manager Chad England decided to take action. England retrieved a pistol from an office and shot the masked man, possibly preventing several tragedies. The suspect died en route to the hospital. (Pensacola News Journal, Pensacola, FL, 10/25/08)

One Mighty Voice

Spontaneous combustion. It's a grassroots phenomenon that has occurred at other times of crisis in the modern history of NRA, when gun owners by the millions have simply had enough and, acting on their own instincts, have expressed their will as one mighty voice. Political spontaneous combustion involves massive numbers of individual Americans who might not normally be considered a part of the organized gun rights movement, but who are driven to take action.

Among gun owners, the 2008 election has created a sea change. Americans are speaking with their wallets-buying firearms, accessories and ammunition in quantities never seen before-partly out of fear of President Barack Obama's hostile gun-ban agenda.

The last time we saw such an outpouring of anger and frustration was in the election of 1994, when an anti-gun-rights majority was turned out of Congress as citizens reacted against politicians flaunting arrogance of power and their blatant disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

With those huge Congressional losses, then-President Bill Clinton blamed the NRA, but we were only part of it-the vanguard, the leadership. Our effort to inform the public was the re-agent, but the catalyst in this volatile political chemistry was the Clinton gun ban itself. It capped years of outrageous lies about semi-autos-firearms that the media and gun ban crowd were calling "assault weapons." And it capped years and years of lies about us-about law-abiding Americans who owned or wished to own firearms that fell under their ban of lies.

Then and now, they talk about banning guns "on the streets." But the firearms they would ban are not on the streets, they are in the homes of good and decent Americans-you and me, our good neighbors.

"Guns on the streets?" If they mean guns in the hands of violent criminal predators, you and I know that those firearms-of any description-are possessed illegally. It is a 1 O-year felony for any gun to be possessed by convicted felons or those in the drug trade. Period.

In the 1990s the demand for the so called "assault weapons" ban was a phony. It still is. It was cooked up by the radical who founded the Violence Policy Center (VPC). ln 1988, Josh Sugarmann acknowledged that a handgun ban was impossible because too many Americans owned them. So he settled on a substitute:

"The public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic assault weapons-anything that looks like a machine gun is presumed to be a machine gun-can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

For many politicians who listened to Sugarmann and to Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign), or to U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer or Vice-President Joe Biden, it became the end of their political careers.

Today, in the time since the 1994 ban-which expired in 2004, thanks in large part to the activism of NRA members arid our countless friends-there are millions more of the semi-auto rifles the VPC and the Brady Campaign want to ban than ever before. That's "change." Millions of Americans now own them for millions of personal, lawful and peaceable individual reasons.

The new majority in the House and Senate had better not misinterpret what is really happening.

The tsunami of Second Amendment consumerism, along with a broad rejection of congressional and administration overreaching, will translate into votes in 2010. Congress should be wary, as it should have been in 1994, about embracing the gun ban crowd's agenda as spelled out by the Obama administration-banning so-called "assault weapons" and making now-lawful sales between law-abiding Americans a criminal act (read, "gun show loophole").

These are uncertain economic times. Yet people are spending their hard-earned dollars on firearms and ammunition that they feel are under threat.

Some in the media are pushing the line that a new ban is inevitable. Mark my words, if it is attempted-as in 1994-a change in members of Congress, a massive political upheaval and a change in party dominance is equally inevitable.

We will not lose this seminal battle. Not if each of us does our part, especially in the short days and weeks ahead. As NRA members, we each know perhaps a half-dozen people who, since the election, have spoken out loud and clear as consumers. We must meet them with a simple message: You've got the firearm you want, but to keep it, you need to join with us, with the NRA-the one force in American politics that can stand up and defeat the gun-ban crowd.

Every individual who has spoken with his or her pocketbook should do it again, this time by buying the security of an NRA membership.