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Armed Citizen

When a woman knocked on the door, Donald Kaighn-an NRA member, World War II veteran and gun collector-opened it. Her car had broken down so Kaighn allowed the woman inside to use the phone, a favor she returned by spraying the 84-year-old's face with lighter fluid and hitting him in the head with the can. Kaighn grabbed a Colt .32-cal. pistol while his assailant ran upstairs. He confronted her. "She said something like 'Stop or I'll shoot;" Kaighn explained. "I immediately fired the gun." The woman briefly returned fire before leaping from the second story window with some of Kaighn's possessions. "I'm a member of the NRA and I subscribe to its policy of not being a victim," Kaighn said. "I don't want to hurt anybody." (WPVI-ABC6, Philadelphia, PA, 12/01/09)

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Police say 91-year-old Robert Thompson and his Rottweiler mix, Rett, were alarmed when they saw a prowler on the back porch trying to get into their home." I started to let [Rett] out the door, and he was so anxious he got caught in the door," said Thompson, a Purple Heart World War II veteran. Rett pounced on the suspect and held him down. Thompson ran inside to call 9-1-1 and get his gun. Upon his return, Rett released the suspect, who tried to get up and charge Thompson. The suspect changed his tune when the veteran fired a shot, narrowly missing him." I think the guy was scared to death. He was screaming," said Thompson, who held the suspect for police. "If anyone violates my home they better be careful, that's all got to say," he said. (News-Herald, Panama City, FL, 11/19/09)

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Four days after the Deadmon family experienced a home invasion, the robbers returned. Police say two of the suspects confronted the son, John Ross, in the garage. They told him they were after his father and dragged him inside the home. John-Ross broke free . as his father, Randy, arrived with a gun. 'They told my husband they had come back to kill him because we had reported [the robbery],"Sherry Deadmon said. John-Ross grabbed a shotgun the family kept ready since the first invasion. Father and son fired several shots, wounding one of the suspects. The intruders fled the home and were arrested by police. "This time they were ready for them," said Detective Chad Moose of the local sheriff's office. (Salisbury Post, Salisbury, NC, 10/31/09)

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It was just after 5 a.m. when Graham Ricks awoke to loud noises and realized someone was breaking the back door. "I always wondered, 'Was I going to be able to do what I needed to do if someone came in the house?'" Ricks recalls. He was about to find out. Police say he called 9-1-1, obtained a firearm and crouched behind a wall as the intruder jostled the door open. "He turned towards me and I saw he had a gun and I fired," Ricks said. The suspect fled the home, possibly injuring himself as he jumped from the porch. (WKYT-CBS27, Lexington, KY, 11/01/09)

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Dave Strickland arrived home to find his belongings in disarray and an unknown vehicle in his garage. He quickly retrieved his handgun and shouted for anyone in the house to identify themselves. What happened next is truly bizarre. According to police, a man came around the corner wearing only Strickland's boxer shorts. Strickland told the intruder he was going to call police and the "guy started ranting about him being the owner of the home and how he was going to come down here and kick me out of the house." The suspect made an aggressive move toward Strickland, who fired a shot and held the suspect for police. (KCNCCBS4, Denver, CO, 11/17/09)

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Nathan Brown remembers, "I heard three distinct bangs like someone was kicking in my door. It wasn't like a knock, it was emotion- ally charged. It scared me." Brown was especially frightened for his 2-year-old daughter, who was sleeping in a back room. Police say Brown got his gun and ordered whoever was on the other side of the door to go away. Two men shouted back and one of them broke the door's lock and charged inside." I said, 'Stop, I'll shoot you!" Brown recalls, but the men pressed on. "That's when I shot." Both intruders fled. Police found one of them nearby suffering from a gunshot wound. A full-time student and single father, Brown recently bought his first firearm out of security concerns." I don't feel safe here, which is why I bought the guns in the first place," he said. (KPTVFOX12, Portland, OR, 11/27/09)

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Standing Guard


Wayne LaPierreThe First Step In Trampling Our Rights

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's enthusiastic embrace of a "binding" United Nations treaty on global control of international trade in firearms and ammunition, the Obama administration has officially become an aggressive participant in what international gun-ban groups have hailed as a "first step" in their march on our sovereignty and ultimately on private ownership of firearms in every nation.

In announcing the radical shift in U.S. policy, Clinton proclaimed, "The United States is committed to actively pursuing a strong and robust treaty that contains the highest possible, legally binding standards for the international transfer of conventional weapons."

In her terse statement, Clinton did not mention the Second Amendment or U.S. sovereignty. Her silence on those seminal elements of our freedom stands in stark contrast to the audacious defense of American liberty by President George W. Bush under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton.

Bolton stunned the United Nations' gun-ban machine in July 2001 by announcing fundamental opposition to any binding global civil disarmament treaty, proclaiming, "We do not support measures that prohibit civilian possession of small arms .... The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures abrogating the constitutional right to bear arms."

Bolton's bold presence at that key U.N. gun-ban conference continued with his role as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.-giving Americans eight years of safety from global attacks on our Second Amendment rights.

The world gun-ban axis, created and funded by globalist billionaire George Soros, was outraged. But they were beaten. For eight years the U.N. and Soros' International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) were held at bay by the Bush administration's adamant stand.

But with the election of Barack Obama and his appointment of Hillary Clinton, the Bush/Bolton doctrine to protect American liberty evaporated.

President Obama's political mantra of "hope and change" has morphed into a very real threat. Obama's deep curtsy to international arms control has given "hope" to the international gun-ban crowd that they will prevail.

Rebecca Peters, George Soros' protg on the global gun-ban stage, is gleeful. On the IANSA website she proclaims: "Around the world people are suffering because the legal gun market is poorly regulated, allowing these deadly weapons to be misused, whether by police, criminals, terrorists or in the home. Governments must now implement these global principles in order to protect their citizens from the flood of guns.

"The principles ... prohibit international transfers where the arms are likely to be used in serious human rights violations.

"This is also the focus of the Arms Trade Treaty (An) .... "

Details of the Obama/Clinton endorsed treaty-which has not yet been finalized-will surely include international monitoring and control of every aspect of firearm commerce and ownership in the United States.

Ambassador Bolton recently explained in an NRA interview, "The administration is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there's no doubt-as was the case back over a decade ago-that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.

"Many of the implications of these treaty negotiations are very much in their domestic application. So, whatever the appearance on the surface, there's no doubt that domestic firearm control is right at the top of their agenda."

Literally all of the international gun confiscation groups couch their renewed U.N. treaty efforts in terms of what they call "human rights." But in the newspeak lexicon of the U.N., "human rights" doesn't mean the right to self-defense as we know it.

With the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Heller decision upholding the Second Amendment and declaring the District of Columbia's ban on armed self defense in the home unconstitutional, Americans are now acutely aware of this essential individual human right.

Armed self-defense by individual Americans is equally the heart of the Constitutional challenge to Chicago's gun-ban law now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court-a landmark case with essential support from the NRA among a broad coalition of Second Amendment forces.

But armed self-defense by private citizens-of any nation-is specifically not a "human right" under the U.N. charter.

Try this from a key July 2007 report to the U.N.s Human Rights Council entitled, "Specific Human Rights Issues Prevention of human rights violations committed with small arms and light weapons." The IANSA-inspired official U.N. report-shamefully written by an American professor, Barbara Frey, director of the Human Rights Program in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota-argues:

"Self-defense is sometimes designated as a 'right There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation .... No international human right of self-defense is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law or general principles .... International law does not support an international legal obligation requiring States to permit access to a gun for self-defense."

In fact, under the United Nations' charter the report declares, "The right of self-defense in international law is not directed toward the preservation of lives of individuals ... it is concerned with the preservation of the State."

That is stunning. So there you have it. This is the heart, the essence of the United Nations attack on our Second Amendment and our sovereignty.

No matter what the gun-ban crowd says, any U.N. arms treaty boils down to one thing: The power of the American people-of individuals-is crushed by the power of the international super-state.

Each of us must work to stop this bowing and scraping by the Obama administration to those evil principles.

Write, call, e-mail and meet with your elected representatives to deliver a simple message: No U.N. arms treaty not under any circumstance or for any reason-not now, not ever!

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The President's Column

Ronald L. Schmeits

Beat Winter Boredom With Some Safe Shooting Fun

With the holidays over and hunting season wrapping up for many of us, winter is a time when there's not much happening.

What better time than now to take advantage of the many recreational shooting, gun safety training and marksmanship competition opportunities available to us?

No matter what kind of shooting you enjoy, no matter what kind of gun you own for whatever reason, the NRA has a wide variety of gun safety, skills training and marksmanship competition programs to meet your needs.

If you want to chase the winter doldrums with some wholesome fun for your entire family, why not make plans to get involved in some of those programs now?

Many Americans gave firearms as gifts during the holidays. So now is a perfect time to get the training to ensure that every new gun owner is a safe gun owner.

Many of us found during the past hunting season that our trigger squeeze with a rifle, or our smooth swing and follow-through with a shotgun, could use some practice.

So why not get a jump on next hunting season now by brushing up on those skills in the off-season?

One great thing about recreational and competitive shooting is that, unlike so many other sports, they're year round activities.

What's more, size, strength and stamina aren't factors in marksmanship-which means a 15-year-old, 90-pound woman can compete equally with an NFL running back.

And teaching young people to shoot instills self-discipline and personal accountability-virtues that are vitally important for them to become mature, responsible members of society.

Today, with so many interests competing for young people's free time-and with anti-gun groups and politicians seeking to discourage or deter young people from participating in the shooting sports-I believe it's important that we keep those options available.

On March 2,2010, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, a case that could protect the Second Amendment from state and local government infringement in the same way the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller protected that freedom from federal government infringement.

But let's face it: Even if the Supreme Court declared every anti-gun law null and void-which is unlikely in any event-the Second Amendment can never be safe unless it's relevant and of value to each succeeding generation of leaders and voters.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." That's just one reason why the NRA does so much to ensure Second Amendment freedom is safe, accessible and valuable to all lawful Americans like you. Here are just a few of the ways.

NRA Youth Programs-from shooting sports camps and the NRA Marksmanship Qualification Program to gun safety and shooting programs conducted in cooperation with several national youth civic organizations give more than a million young people every year an opportunity to experience the shooting sports in a safe, supervised environment.

The Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program teaches pre-kindergarten through third grade children a simple plan of action in case they see unattended firearms: "STOP! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult." Over the past 20 years, the program has reached more than 20 million children, and gun accidents among children have fallen to record lows.

NRA Women's Programs offer a wide array of services specially tailored for women of all ages, from special women-only hunts and instructional shooting seminars to women-only competitions and the Refuse To Be A Victim program, which teaches personal safety strategies both with and without firearms.

To find shooting ranges, NRA affiliated clubs and state associations, gun shows, Law Enforcement Firearms Schools and other NRA events near you, just visit www.nra.org/nralocal.aspx and enter your ZIP code for a full listing.

To find NRA-certified training programs-for everything from rifle, shotgun and pistol shooting to muzzle loading, reloading and personal protection-visit www.nrainstructors.org.

Whenever I hear someone in the media call the NRA "the gun lobby," I shake my head because much of what the NRA does has nothing to do with lobbying or legislation.

The truth is, the NRA does more than any other public or private group to teach Americans to own and use firearms responsibly and safely.

So take advantage of the many programs and services we offer you and your family to become safer, more proficient shooters-and have a lot of fun in the process!

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