Expand Gun Ownership
20th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference

by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Our GRPC 2005 report is divided into sessions for easier reading.
Click on the desired section to read.

September23, 2005
September 24, 2005

“The doorway to freedom in this country was framed by those muskets that first defended it at Concord Bridge,”

LaPierre Speech
Saturday morning’s session reached its peak with LaPierre’s address that was interrupted by applause several times, and brought the audience to its feet. His appearances have become a conference tradition, and this year’s speech was over the top.

Beginning on familiar themes, LaPierre noted that the United States is “the first country in history that was founded not on a race, not on a royalty, not on a religion but on a set of God-given unalienable rights and freedoms.”

“The doorway to freedom in this country was framed by those muskets that first defended it at Concord Bridge,” he said.

He touched on the boycott by NRA of ConocoPhillips, in reaction to a lawsuit that energy giant filed to derail a new Oklahoma law protecting gunowners from being fired for having firearms in their cars on company property. That boycott was immediately joined by SAF and CCRKBA.

Several employees of the Weyerhaeuser Company in a small Oklahoma town were fired when guns were found in their cars on the eve of a hunting season. The Oklahoma legislature reacted swiftly, passing two laws. One statute allows those former employees to sue to get their jobs back and the other—the one being challenged by ConocoPhillips in federal court—clarified the legality of having a firearm in one’s private vehicle.

He also once again warned about a United Nations gun grab, noting that the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) has called a conference next summer for the purpose of writing a treaty aimed at banning small arms ownership by private citizens around the world.

“The UN issue is going to be critical to the future of firearms freedom in the world but also in the United States,” he said. “We have to stare down the UN in this country; we have to go after their funding.”

LaPierre also suggested that IANSA may try to postpone their 2006 conference for a couple of years, “in the hope that Hillary Clinton gets elected president in 2008.” That would, he suggested, create a far more favorable political climate in this country to accept global gun control.

‘Remember New Orleans’
If LaPierre hadn’t already fired up the audience, he ignited emotions by turning the subject to New Orleans. Alluding to the gun grab that prompted the NRA-SAF lawsuit, and touched a raw nerve among American gunowners, he predicted that the “intellectual exercise” that has been waged around the gun rights issue for so long “is all about to change in the United States.”

Describing in grim detail the scene in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the city’s dikes, LaPierre called the city “a hellish nightmare of hopelessness.”

Out of the despair, armed citizens emerged, he related. Some formed neighborhood groups to try and bring some semblance of order and security.

“You band together to protect those who can’t protect themselves,” he said. “You realize all of a sudden you’re once again part of the militia in the truest historic sense of the word.”

But then came the police, he said, and incredibly they start confiscating firearms. Yet, LaPierre revealed for the first time that among those law enforcement and national guard contingents were people who reported these gun grabs to the NRA, and helped the organization find plaintiffs to make its case.

He described some of these disarmed citizens, whose guns were sometimes seized at gunpoint, as “brave people who simply refused to obey orders given by authorities in one of the most politically corrupt cities in the United States of America.”

“That’s New Orleans as you know it,” he said, “the first place in American history to disarm peaceable citizens house by house at gunpoint, and it must be the last! Is this law enforcement? No it’s not law enforcement. It’s tyranny plain and simple and it must not happen again in the United States of America ever.”

He said New Orleans “is proof that the right to keep and bear arms is as necessary on a colossal scale as it is on a personal scale. . . . No matter the scale, the equation is always the same. Where there are good people and bad people only armed good people prevail.”

In the wake of the New Orleans case, LaPierre promised that NRA is “going into every state that has emergency power laws that even mention the word firearm. We’re going to amend every one of those state laws to say that never again when they declare a state of emergency can they confiscate one single firearm from a law abiding citizen.”

He further promised to go to Congress and change every federal disaster relief law “to say that all government is prohibited from confiscating one gun from law abiding people.”

“When all is said and done,” he predicted, “the scenes from new Orleans I promise you are going to be the worst nightmare for the gun banners here in our country. Never again, can the anti-gunners claim that honest citizens don’t need firearms because the police and the government will be there to protect you. I promise you that we’re going to make sure New Orleans sets the anti-gunners back to the stone age.”

He closed his rousing speech by launching a new slogan that appeared to signal a new NRA public relations campaign: “Remember New Orleans.”

He told the audience that the next time they are asked by a reporter, “Why do you need a gun,” the response should simply be “New Orleans.” If asked why anyone needs to carry a concealed firearm, why anyone would want a high capacity magazine, what’s wrong with a 15-day waiting period, and what would make anyone think that the government would ever confiscate their guns, or whether they really believe the Second Amendment is still relevant in the 21st Century, the answer would be the same: “New Orleans.”

In the next installment, Gun Week will detail panel discussions on reaching out to other constituencies, the Bill of Rights, who is funding the anti-gun movement and special addresses by Prof. John Lott and NRA President Sandra Froman.
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