by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

The conference opened with the traditional look back and ahead from SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph Tartaro, and Gottlieb, who is also chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). But this year’s remarks were different than in the past, with both men zeroing in on the lessons taught by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of his usual treatise on how the gun rights movement got to this point, Tartaro told the audience that “experience is one of the greatest teachers” and this year, there was “a bitter lesson taught by Hurricane Katrina.”

“The government can’t protect everyone, and may have trouble protecting anyone,” Tartaro cautioned. “In some cases, it can’t even protect itself.”

He warned the audience about “governments which have been taken over by nit-picking politicians,” and how such governments can resort to disarming private citizens in an environment of panic. He also noted that one speaker, Tom Gresham, host of the weekly Gun Talk radio program and CCRKBA board member, could not attend this year’s conference because he was “acting as a refuge for his relatives” who had been displaced by the hurricane.

Tartaro noted that “no matter how prepared we are, stuff happens.”

“Take care of yourself first,” he advised. “If you can’t survive, you can’t help your relatives, your friends or your community.”

“Having a gun and enough ammunition for it,” he suggested, “is a number-one priority.”

He noted that rifles and shotguns are good to have ready in cases of emergency, but that “a handgun is always with us, no matter where we go.” Tartaro’s last bit of advice: “Be prepared, listen to what’s happening and be prepared to respond.”

Tartaro noted press accounts, even in the traditionally anti-gun New York Times, that told about armed citizens and neighborhood militias providing the only semblance of law and order after the hurricane, when scores of New Orleans police reportedly abandoned their posts and some even participated in the looting.

“Good Samaritans have to be armed,” he said, “in order to deal with these situations.”

He said people who rushed to gun stores to purchase firearms are invariably “new gunowners” who make a decision based on experience.

However, Tartaro cautioned, gun control extremists “are not going to give up. They are going to continue beating the dead horse of gun control.”

Taking the microphone, Gottlieb predicted passage of legislation to protect the gun industry from harassment lawsuits this year, and then suggested that gunowners need to all get together on the issues.

“Anyone you know,” he said for example, “who has ever supported a ban on .50-caliber rifles has helped (anti-gunners).”

Gottlieb suggested that the strategy among anti-gunners has been based on a divide and conquer philosophy, targeting such things as so-called assault weapons in order to lull many gunowners into a false sense of security about their own firearms.

“Their target is guns,” Gottlieb insisted, “and their ultimate goal is control.”

He contended that anti-gunners believe that government will provide security and safety, even in an emergency.

“We believe,” he countered, “that American citizens are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, thank you very much!”

Too Burdensome
Gottlieb hammered on the recent past, noting that anti-gunners have tried all kinds of tactics simply to discourage Americans from being gunowners. Passage of strict laws, like the Clinton ban on semi-autos, has been proven to be ineffective, yet anti-gunners continue pushing for, and defending, such laws. They also fight expansion of concealed carry laws.

“The real motive is to make gun ownership so burdensome, so onerous that they don’t want to put up with the hassle,” he explained.

To counter this, Gottlieb noted that earlier this year, he quietly started a campaign that capitalizes on President Bush’s theme of an “ownership society.”

“In an ownership society,” Gottlieb observed, “people protect what they own. . . . Buy a firearm, own a piece of freedom.”

The idea registered with his audience.

Gottlieb revealed that in the coming months, SAF is going to officially launch the “Own A Piece of Freedom” campaign.

“We want you to help expand America’s gun ownership society,” he said.

Today, there are an estimated 80 million gunowners, and Gottlieb believes that if that number can be doubled, there will come from those ranks millions more Americans who will fight gun control initiatives at every level.

Quoting science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who stated, “An armed society is a polite society,” Gottlieb told the audience, “Heinlein didn’t go far enough. An armed society is a free society.”

He also said the battle can be waged on another front, one launched a few weeks ago by the CCRKBA. It’s the “Control Borders, Not Guns” campaign.

He said the nation must focus attention on keeping violent illegal aliens out of the country. Once inside our borders, Gottlieb contended, illegal criminals commit violent felonies that are used by anti-gunners to clamor for more gun control laws that affect American citizens.

It’s those same anti-gunners, he said, who invariably support amnesty and sanctuary laws for illegals, and even the notion that they should be allowed to vote. Invariably, he argued, these illegal voters support liberals who also believe in gun control laws.