by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

For the first time in history, an American-based gun rights organization has opened an office on foreign soil, as the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) has set up shop in London, England.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb traveled to London in mid-March for the event. The London office will be operated by long-time British Conservative Party activist Greg Smith. He is also the executive director of the Young Britons’ Foundation.

Immediate reaction to the announcement from American gunowners and CCRKBA members was mostly positive. Support came also from John Burtt with the Fifty Caliber Shooters Institute, a US organization devoted to long-range target shooting and study of .50 BMG rifles.

One CCRKBA member urged the organization to “not stop there, go to Canada and Australia.”
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Extremist gun control measures have disarmed the British people,” Gottlieb observed, “leaving them vulnerable to criminal assault. Incredibly, if they do defend themselves, they can be prosecuted and imprisoned. Since the United Kingdom banned most privately owned cartridge handguns in 1997, gun crime has nearly doubled. What more appropriate place for the Citizens Committee to be than in the middle of this battleground, offering whatever help we can to British citizens in their efforts to take back their neighborhoods and make their communities safe once again?” (See related report on Page 4 of this issue.)

While in London, Gottlieb met with several members of Parliament.

He told Gun Week that the London office will serve as a headquarters to address gun control issues all over Europe, and not just the British Isles. The London project, he said, is being funded by European gun rights supporters.

“British citizens and gunowners from other European countries will be funding this effort,” Gottlieb explained. “Just as with America’s war against international terrorism, we are taking the fight against international gun control to our enemies. With the attack on gun rights becoming global, it is important to fight these battles on every continent before we find ourselves isolated from an important human civil right.”

“The British example,” Smith said, “is conclusive proof to anyone who proposes gun control that it simply does not work. You can take guns away from law-abiding citizens, whose only desire is to protect their homes and families. However, our experience has proved that you cannot stop criminals, who are reportedly bringing guns into the country illegally, while honest citizens find it nearly impossible to even own a sporting shotgun.”

Gottlieb concurred.

“Gun control zealots in the United States contend that America should follow the British model,” Gottlieb observed. “Now law-abiding British citizens are telling us that doesn’t work. There is no more credible a source about the consequences of British disarmament than the citizens who have become the victims of their government’s policies, and the criminals those policies have unleashed.”