Editors' note: This exclusive piece from NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre first appeared in the March 2009 issue of Townhall Magazine. Click here to subscribe and receive your free copy Mark Levin’s new book, “Liberty & Tyranny.”
Americans don’t need the NRA to tell them that the Barack Obama-Joe Biden administration could spell oblivion for their freedoms: Americans are telling us!
Even during the poorest holiday spending season in almost 40 years, with consumer con?dence in a freefall, Americans bought guns like they were going out of style—or going to be banned.
The month Obama was elected, FBI background checks for firearm purchases increased by 42 percent over 2007, setting an all-time record for purchases in a month. Right-to-carry permit applications soared from coast to coast.
It’s easy to see why.
After spending millions of dollars to convince Americans they would never take their guns, Obama and Biden, just three days after winning the election, posted a Web page detailing how they planned to do just that.
Their preliminary agenda included:
• “Making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent”—despite the fact that even after 10 years, the Clinton-Reno Justice Department couldn’t spin it as anything more than a total failure;
• Opening sensitive federal gun-trace data for abuse by politicians seeking to sue the firearms industry out of business for the criminal acts of third parties; and
• “Making guns childproof” through government mandates requiring nonexistent, unworkable or prohibitively expensive technologies, ultimately leading to bans on non-“childproof” firearms.
If gun bans are their goal, Obama and Biden have plenty of experienced players to run with the ball.
The leader of Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, where he helped mastermind the strategy of using frivolous lawsuits to bankrupt America’s firearms industry through “death by a thousand cuts.”
Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a key Clinton administration strategist on gun bans before he went to Congress, where he introduced the very gun ban that the administration now admits it seeks.
Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, also served in the Clinton administration—as Attorney General Janet Reno’s lead salesman for various gun bans.
Last year, Holder signed a “friend of the court” brief defending the Washington, D.C., gun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court in the historic Heller case, arguing that “the Second Amendment does not extend an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
Now, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under his control, Holder will have the power not only to suppress gun sales through increased fees, regulations and harassment of dealers—just as Bill Clinton did when he drove 80 percent of gun dealers out of business—but also to bring suit in federal court to prevent the landmark Heller ruling from being applied to cities and states, or to quash it altogether.
For more than a decade at the United Nations, dictatorships have been working with global gun-ban groups funded by billionaire ?nancier George Soros to impose a gun ban treaty upon the United States.
In 2010, the United Nations convenes a major gun-control conference. But you can bet that, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. delegation won’t oppose the U.N.’s gun-ban dictates, as it did in the past, but will now embrace American gun bans in the name of “international law.”
Under Obama, hunters may be as much of an endangered species as gun owners.
Obama’s pick for EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, held a similar post in New Jersey, where, in 2006, she shut down the state’s bear hunt—even after overabundant bears had begun killing livestock, invading homes and attacking kids. Could she shut down shooting ranges and hunters nationwide by regulating lead bullets out of existence as an “environmental toxin”?
If so, she surely won’t meet much resistance from Cass Sunstein, Obama’s choice to head the Of?ce of Information and Regulatory Affairs. “We ought to ban hunting if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun,” Sunstein has said. “That should be against the law.”
In fact, in his book “Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,” Sunstein wrote, “Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives.”
It’s easy to laugh, but this is no joke. Anti-gunners now control every lever of federal power. With the White House, nearly veto-proof majorities in Congress, and the ability to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal bench and the vast federal bureaucracy with anti-gun extremists, they can attack your rights from every direction—executive, legislative, judicial, regulatory, even international.
If you agree with us, then join us. This is no time for silent assent or passive agreement. We must let those in power know we’re watching and we’re listening. We must stand with deeper ranks and broader strength and more resolve than ever.
So that if it becomes necessary—and I believe it will—the NRA will have the size and strength to swiftly act with the formidable unity and dogged resolve that have proven us the singular and most potent guardian of this freedom so essential to a free state.
Editors' note: This exclusive piece from NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre first appeared in the March 2009 issue of Townhall Magazine. Click here to subscribe and receive your free copy Mark Levin’s new book, “Liberty & Tyranny.”