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The anti-free speech DISCLOSE Act stalled in the Senate yesterday, thanks to your phone calls and emails.
Don’t let some punk Senate staffer tell you differently; your phone calls and e-mails are making a difference.
Keep them up!
Because of pressure from you and thousands of other members of the National Association for Gun Rights,
anti-gun Democrats were unable to muster the votes necessary to begin the final debate on the DISCLOSE Act.
But, the battle is far from over.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continues to play the despicable Beltway games he’s famous for.
At the last minute, Reid voted against cloture.
That means he can bring it up for a vote at any time.
And insider sources tell us Harry Reid and his allies plan to bring it up again in September to use as a campaign
issue in the elections.
Continue reading You did it! DISCLOSE Act stalled
URGENT UPDATE
DISCLOSE Act on the move
Dear gun rights ally,
The fate of free speech is being debated in the U.S. Senate RIGHT NOW.
Harry Reid’s midnight skulduggery has the DISCLOSE Act on the fast track to passage TOMORROW afternoon.
That’s right; Harry Reid and his anti-gun allies in the Senate are scheduled to shred the First Amendment tomorrow at 2:45pm EST.
And unless the American people stand up and say NO, they will succeed.
I need you to call your senators immediately and demand that they vote AGAINST and publicly oppose the DISCLOSE Act.
As you know, the DISCLOSE Act was written to protect the anti-gun Establishment in Washington, D.C.
If passed into law, it could silence virtually every state and national conservative organization in the country, including the
National Association for Gun Rights and any state level gun rights organization you belong to.
The DISCLOSE Act is a direct attack on your First Amendment right to petition Congress and mention legislation or voting
records during the election season.
You and I both know that election season is the best time to hold politicians accountable for their anti-gun votes.
The DISCLOSE Act is designed to silence grassroots activists LIKE YOU and protect the Establishment politicians in Washington.
The DISCLOSE Act will affect every political organization you belong to, on any and every issue.
To make matters even worse, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has joined an unholy cabal of liberal special interests like the
Sierra Club, the AARP and countless labor unions.
Together they’ve managed to gain exemptions from the onerous restrictions the DISCLOSE Act would lay on the rest of us.
I strongly encourage you to contact the NRA at 800-672-3888 and demand that they stop the backroom deals and come out
strongly in opposition to the DISCLOSE ACT.
In fact, Capitol insiders say that a special relationship between Harry Reid and the NRA may be the driving force behind their exemption.
Reid is facing a very tough re-election race in Nevada and is relying on the NRA to paint him as a pro-gun candidate. If he’s held
accountable for his anti-gun votes, he will almost certainly lose.
So making a deal with the NRA while simultaneously silencing all of the pro-gun groups who would take him to task is Harry Reid’s
perfect political move.
And it seems to be working. The NRA has all but endorsed him (see the June 2010 issue of the NRA magazine, with flattering pictures
and flowery praise of Harry Reid) and he’s scheduled a final vote on DISCLOSE for tomorrow.
We are right in the middle of this battle! Reid’s pulled every trick in the book to ram through the DISCLOSE Act.
But there is a chance we can stop this monstrous violation of our Constitutional Rights — if you ACT right now.
Please, call your senators and demand that they vote against and publicly oppose the DISCLOSE Act.
Tell them that any vote to restrict free-speech will be considered a vote against gun owners.
You can also help the National Association for Gun Rights by chipping in $5 or $10 to help keep up the fight against the DISCLOSE ACT.
Click here to contribute.
For Liberty,
Dudley Brown
Executive Director
National Association for Gun Rights
Simple: they both want Gun Owners in jail!
Jane Norton (R – CO) claims to be pro-gun.
And though we’ve been skeptical of Jane Norton — especially considering she was recruited by one of the leading anti-gun Senators in the U.S. Senate — we decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
She even joined her opponent, Ken Buck, in filling out the National Association for Gun Rights 2010 Federal Candidate Survey 100% pro-gun.
But right now, Jane Norton is acting more like radical gun-banner Sarah Brady.
In her radio and TV advertisements, Jane Norton is vocally advocating for the legal persecution of law-abiding gun owners – against an active member of Colorado’s largest gun rights group, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO).
To prop up her faltering campaign, Jane Norton’s operatives have been pushing the liberal media to talk about the malicious prosecution of a gun owner in a positive light.
Norton is trying to curry favor with the media elite and the anti-gun Establishment types, since it plays on their anti-gun sentiments.
Really, she’s just using the anti-gun hysteria of those who hate freedom to attack her opponent.
It’s desperate, for certain.
It’s also flat-out wrong.
Continue reading NAGR-PAC: What do Jane Norton & Sarah Brady have in common?
As we previously mentioned, the McDonald decision changes very little about the legal landscape facing gun owners. Your right to keep and bear arms is fundamentally guaranteed so long as you abide by the state and federal laws which restrict those same rights. Make no mistake, the McDonald decision is not a magic bullet that will reverse generations of gun control legislation.
Case in point: It’s unlawful for gun shop owner Joe Franzese to open any gun shops in the City of Chicago. Franzese and a former U.S. marine have filed suit against the City of Chicago, as well as city officials, for this absurd and unconstitutional ordinance.
“I filed the lawsuit because I want to sell a legal product and you can’t outlaw a legal product,” said Franzese.
The ordinance that bans gun shops in Chicago, as well as other recently passed ordinances, essentially maintains a gun ban in all but name.
“By banning gun shops and the sale (of) handguns, Chicago and Mayor Daley currently maintain and actively enforce a set of laws, customs, practices and policies under color of state law which deprive individuals, including the plaintiffs, of their right to keep and bear arms, and engage in commerce by selling them, lawful products, in violation of the Second and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit alleges.
Franzese would like to open five gun shops before the end of the year.
“I have unlimited financial backing, unlimited time and I’m not going anywhere anytime soon,” said Franzese. “The ball’s in (Mayor Daley’s) court. We haven’t heard anything yet, but all odds of this going through are few and far between, I guess.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “I’ve got 15, 20, 30 years. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Franzese is seeking monetary damages through the lawsuit, including loss of profits and attorney fees.
Click here for the Libertyville Review article.
In Iowa, Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber was reprimanded by a federal judge for refusing to issue a concealed weapons permit to conservative activist Paul Dorr. The reason? Many Osceola County residents were putt off by Mr. Dorr’s conservative opinions.
Sheriffs should be upholding the Constitution, not passing judgment on political free speech. It’s outrageous that Sheriff Weber denied Mr. Dorr’s right to self-defense for exercising his First Amendment rights.
It was wrong for Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber to deny Paul Dorr of Ocheyedan a permit to carry a concealed weapon three years ago, according to a court ruling issued Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett also ordered Weber to successfully complete a court-approved course on the U.S. Constitution within five months.
“In denying (Dorr) a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections,” Bennett wrote in the ruling.
Anger over the sheriff’s denial of the gun permit was a factor in inspiring some grass-roots activists to push for changes to Iowa’s weapons law. Starting Jan. 1, a new law requires sheriffs to issue gun permits except under a narrow set of circumstances.
Bennett ruled that Weber’s denial of Dorr’s gun permit in 2007 trampled his free speech rights because the sheriff was retaliating against Dorr for publicly protesting, passing out leaflets and writing letters to newspaper editors on a variety of topics.
“The court finds a tsunami, a maelstrom, an avalanche, of direct uncontroverted evidence in Sheriff Weber’s own testimony to conclude beyond all doubt that he unquestionably violated the First Amendment rights of … Paul Dorr,” Bennett wrote in the decision.
“This is a great reminder that the First Amendment protects the sole individual who may be a gadfly, kook, weirdo, nut job, whacko and spook, with the same force of protection as folks with more majoritarian and popular views,” he added.
Click here for the full article.
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is a serious threat to our gun rights. Call your senators ASAP and urge them to filibuster Kagan.
From examiner.com:
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be filibustered.
We have learned a lot more about Elena Kagan and her views on the right to bear arms since the last time she appeared in this column, and what we have learned is not pretty.
A nominee who does not believe that the right to bear arms is a fundamental right, like free speech and the free exercise of religion, should not be permitted to sit on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has declared rights to be “fundamental” that are not even mentioned in the Constitution, like abortion, travel, and procreation. A right expressly written into the Bill of Rights that has been described as the very “palladium of liberty” cannot possibly occupy a lesser status.
Yesterday, when asked by Sen. Grassley whether the Constitutional right to bear arms created a right or merely protected a right that pre-existed the Constitution, Elena Kagan looked puzzled and answered,
“Senator Grassely, I’ve, uh, I’ve never really considered that question.”
Click here to read the full article.
Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the City of Chicago’s handgun ban was unconstitutional and the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to the Constitution.
Many have called this a stunning victory, but before you pop the cork on the champagne you’ve been saving for a special occasion, let me warn you: the devil is in the details.
This decision does not fundamentally change our continued need to fight to preserve and advance our right to keep and bear arms.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stated, “We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 54–55). We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms.
What Justice Alito and the court is saying is simple: your right to keep and bear arms is fundamentally guaranteed so long as you abide by the state and federal laws which restrict those same rights.
In the end, some of the worst gun control may be struck down. In some cases, it may only take a few months. Other cases will grind through repeal after repeal. More supreme court cases in 2-5 years are all but guaranteed.
Meanwhile, anti-gunners will seize on every upheld state law as an opportunity to pass new gun control and they will respond to every defeated gun control law with new legislation designed to continue their anti-gun crusade (as congress did with the gun-free school law after it was struck down and the District of Columbia after losing in the Heller case).
Even anti-gun groups like New Yorkers Against Gun Violence are trumpeting the ruling and pointing out that wording of the ruling means, “your [Second Amendment] rights can be restricted.”
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is already plotting to pass a host of new restrictions on handgun ownership in Chicago, which may follow the letter of the Court’s decision, but will make the requirements for ownership so onerous that the ban will remain in all but name.
Now more than ever gun owners must be active in the public policy arena. The anti-gunners in Washington D.C. and State Legislatures across the country are sure to be preparing the next round of attacks against our rights.
In D.C. anti-gunners like Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer want to ban all private firearms sales, and Hillary Clinton is working hard to force United Nations gun bans on American citizens.
And in states legislatures many of the little details of our right to keep and bear arms are under assault – and are being compromised – every day.
Make no mistake, the McDonald decision is not a magic bullet that will reverse generations of gun control legislation.
The only way to fight the anti-gunners is to organize grassroots activists and to turn up the heat on anti-gun politicians.
Gun owners like you must continue to organize in grassroots groups like the National Association for Gun Rights. You and I must continue to put pressure on anti-gun politicians both in your local state house and in Washington D.C.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in McDonald v. Chicago, the city of Chicago will continue to be hostile territory for gun owners. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is working to impose some of the most draconian gun control laws in the nation.
CHICAGO (AP) — With the city’s gun ban certain to be overturned, Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday introduced what city officials say is the strictest handgun ordinance in the United States.
The measure, which draws from ordinances around the country, would ban gun shops in Chicago and prohibit gun owners from stepping outside their homes, even onto their porches or garages, with a handgun.
The ordinance, which Daley urged the City Council to pass, also would :
– Limit the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.
– Require residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.
– Require prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.
– Prohibit people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.
– Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.
?Click here to read the full article.
While the Supreme Court’s ruling in McDonald v. Chicago is a step in the right direction, nothing will really change. The anti-gunners will continue to attack the Second Amendment one way or another.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled for the first time that gun possession is fundamental to American freedom, giving federal judges the power to strike down state and local weapons laws for violating the Second Amendment.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right that binds states.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is likely to lead to years of litigation across the country as lower courts decide how far the right to bear arms extends and which restrictions are unconstitutional. Justice John Paul Stevens, in dissent, said the 2008 ruling has already triggered a “tsunami of legal uncertainty.” He predicted more “confusion, upheaval and burden on the states.”
Click here to read the full article.
I’m happy to report that we’ve scored an important, albeit temporary, victory.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had planned to force a vote on the outrageous DISCLOSE Act — which could silence the National Association for Gun Rights and hundreds of other conservative groups not protected by the NRA’s sellout — today.
But over the last three days politicians and the NRA got a thumping from liberty-loving folks like you!
Now Politico.com is reporting that Pelosi has pulled the DISCLOSE Act off the calendar and there will not be a vote today.
This is a sure sign that our grassroots pressure is working.
But we cannot ease up, not even for a moment. Even if you’ve already taken multiple actions, I urge you to contact both your Congressman and the NRA today and insist this rotten deal be buried for good.
Our capitol hill sources say that while the vote on the outrageous DISCLOSE Act may have been pulled for today, Pelosi and her anti-gun, anti-freedom allies will look for the first sign of weakness to force the DISCLOSE Act through Congress.
While we have momentum on our side, we must continue to put pressure on Congress to oppose the outrageous, anti-freedom DISCLOSE Act.
The more pressure we continue to put on Congress, the more likely we are to continue to bog down the DISCLOSE Act.
That is why it’s so important that you call your Congressman and demand that they publicly oppose the anti-freedom DISCLOSE Act.
The DISCLOSE Act is a direct attack on your First Amendment right to petition Congress and mention legislation or voting records during election season.
You and I both know that election season is the best time to hold politicians accountable for their anti-gun votes. The DISCLOSE Act is designed to silence grassroots conservative activists LIKE YOU and protect the fat-cat politicians in Washington.
Without free speech, our Second Amendment rights are certain to perish.
Understand that the DISCLOSE Act will affect every political organization you belong to, on any and every issue. It’s destruction of liberties is without parallel in American history, and sure to lead to tyranny.
Now, until this week, the DISCLOSE Act appeared doomed, but the NRA struck a deal with anti-gunners Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer (the Senate sponsor) and Harry Reid. In exchange for exemptions from the bill’s outrageous and expensive disclosure requirements, the NRA now tacitly supports the anti-free speech DISCLOSE Act.
Even an NRA board member and prominent First Amendment attorney is opposed to their outrageous sellout.
Here’s what you can do to help keep the heat on:
• Please, take a few moments today and call your member of Congress at (202) 224-3121. Demand that he respect the rights of gun owners and publicly oppose the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175).
• Call the NRA at (800) 672-3888 and demand that they knock it off and stop pandering to the liberals. Tell them to denounce the DISCLOSE ACT for what it is, an attack on both our First and Second Amendment rights.
It is vital that we keep the pressure up. We may have won an important, temporary victory, but the DISCLOSE Act is far from dead.
Please call your member of Congress at (202) 224-3121 and demand that he publicly oppose the draconian DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175).
Thank you for your dedication to preserving our rights. Your continued perseverance may be the only thing that stands between us and the anti-gun majorities in Washington.
For liberty,
Luke O’Dell
Director of Operations
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