by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

“If you don’t know what your rights are, you don’t have any."

That message resonated loud and clear over an audience of gun rights activists from across the country when National Rifle Association President Sandra Froman spoke during an awards presentation midway on the first full day of the September conference, held in Los Angeles, CA.

Froman had just received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). First elected to the NRA board of directors in 1992, Froman’s career as a gun rights activist began, she revealed, when she attended a Gun Rights Policy Conference and met leaders in the movement including CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) President Joseph Tartaro.

Her speech later in the afternoon, which closed that day of the conference, stressed the importance of public attention to nominees for federal judgeships, including positions on the US Supreme Court. She urged the audience to become involved in the process, and find out where federal court nominees stand on the Second Amendment.

The second woman to take the NRA helm, Froman is also the first Jewish NRA president. Froman presents an image that has confounded those who would stereotype gunowners as uneducated rednecks, indicated CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron during the presentation of Froman’s award.

Before Froman’s afternoon speech, gun activists were treated to a short presentation by syndicated talk radio host Larry Elder, an appearance by another giant of talk radio, Michael Reagan, and panels that covered issues ranging from using facts to defeat gun control emotion, to reaching out to other constituencies.

Receiving SAF’s James Madison Award, Elder poked fun at himself during brief remarks outlining his career, and then described the background and production of his pro-gun film “Michael and Me,” a response to anti-gun filmmaker Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine.”

“ ‘Michael and Me’ was a labor of love,” Elder said, adding that many of his friends counseled him against doing the project. However, it has turned out to be a success, particularly in revealing Moore to be a zealot shallow on facts.

“When I did confront Mr. Moore for my film,” Elder recalled, “he did say Americans did have too many guns. I asked him how often Americans defended themselves with guns . . . and he didn’t answer. . . . He didn’t know, or he didn’t care.”

Perhaps the greatest single impact the film, which is available on DVD, has had, Elder explained with an anecdote about an e-mail he got from a listener, is how it has changed the minds of some people. The particular listener’s wife had been anti-gun, but after viewing the film, she even called her father in England to argue in favor of gun rights.

Reagan, who arrived late due to a conflicting schedule and typical Los Angeles traffic, received CCRKBA’s Bill of Rights Award for his work as a syndicated pro-gun talk show host. But when he spoke, it was about his father, late President Ronald Reagan, and not as a political leader, but as a man and a father. His remarks appeared to touch the audience deeply.

“My dad bought me my first gun when I was 8 years old,” Reagan recalled. “He taught me how to use it.”

The former president was, said his son, a man who “just loved this nation; he was truly a Boy Scout.”

“Where my father truly got his strength and truly felt close to God,” said Reagan, “all began with the ranch. It all began with the Earth. My father was a man of the earth and a man of God and the finest president this country ever had.”

That observation brought the audience to its feet.

Awards Recipients
In addition to awards handed out to Froman, Elder and Reagan, others were recognized for their contributions to the gun rights cause over the past year

Honored for his work at the grassroots level, author Alan Korwin received the CCRKBA Grassroots Activist of the Year award. Korwin, known for his flashy shirts and flamboyant style, told the audience he was “humbled.” He also asked the audience to recommend gun laws they would like to see passed or repealed

“We need to start pushing for laws that will really support our individual rights,” he said.

Another author, fiction writer C.J. Songer, was recognized as the CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month. Taking the podium, she told the audience, “I’m a Democrat, so guess who gets to vote in all the Democratic primaries? I’m a mom. For a brief while, my son played soccer, so guess what that makes me?”

CCRKBA also honored the San Francisco-based Golden State Second Amendment Council, which is leading the fight against Proposition H, the proposed handgun ban on the ballot this month in that city. That group went away with the award as Grassroots Organization of the Year.

California attorney Chuck Michel was honored as the Gun Rights Defender of the Year, for his work on behalf of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and the NRA.

CCRKBA also recognized Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman as the Journalist of the Year.