Dr. Timothy Wheeler, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Claremont Institute, and SAF’s Tartaro offered a treatise on who pays for the anti-gun movement.
Wheeler offered a bit of history about how anti-gunners in the medical community first got organized. He said anti-gun organizations have grown largely because they have been pretty well-financed by assorted foundation grants, and supported by “sympathetic major media.” When anti-gun physicians essentially began packaging gun control as a pubic health issue, the media cooperated.
“Public health gun grabbers relied on foundation money,” he recalled.He said the physicians who led that charge believe that “guns are a virus that must be eliminated.”
Through it all, Wheeler sketched something of a verbal map linking various foundations, including the Kellogg Foundation, noting that “Tony the Tiger wants your gun,” while explaining “advocacy science” has tainted the gun rights versus gun control debate.
Wheeler asserted that the leaders of the anti-gun Violence Policy Center are “probably the greatest and most effective demagogues against gun ownership.”
However, he noted that despite all the money spent on gun control, “We will increase gun ownership . . . and we will prevail.”
Tartaro continued the theme, noting that it is because of the millions of dollars pumped into the anti-gun movement by people like George Soros, who financed “MoveOn.org,” that gun control organizations continue to exist and can hire “high-priced lobbyists” to present their case.
“The other side is giving (money) out in buckets,” Tartaro stated. “The one thing that we have that they don’t have…is grassroots.” He noted how the pro-gun side of the battle is funded by small donations and membership dues as opposed to the millions doled out by foundations to the anti-gunners. Tartaro also stressed that gun rights activists have the dedication and individual involvement that has helped them defeat the big money manipulators.
He likened Soros to the Wizard of Oz, “the man behind the tent.”
“Let’s tell him to go to Hell,” Tartaro said.
Getting Guns Back
The final panel of the day discussed getting one’s firearms returned after they have been taken, or after someone has lost his or her gun rights.
CCRKBA’s Waldron noted that Democrats are currently battling to restore voting rights to convicted felons, and that the firearms community should counter that movement by insisting that voting rights should be just as hard or easy to restore as gun rights.
After someone has served a prison sentence and paid his debt to society, Waldron questioned, “why shouldn’t their gun rights be restored?”
He noted that funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to do investigations to allow for “relief from disability” so convicted felons could have their gun rights restored has not been approved by Congress for more than a decade. Waldron went through a list of disqualifiers that do not involve a felony conviction. They include a dishonorable discharge from the military, and renunciation of US citizenship.
Vermont attorney Cindy Hill noted that in her home state, there are no permits required to carry firearms. People just do it. She said Vermont residents are happy with minimal law enforcement, and that “We don’t really want more government in our community.”
She has represented dozens of people who have had problems with denials on gun purchase applications because of some technicality in the Brady Law. She said that law was pushed as a means to come after everyone’s gun rights, not just criminals with guns.
Many of the denials are mistakes, she said, citing statistics, and urged lawyers to help appeal faulty denials.
Texas attorney Linda Thomas noted that there are nine federal reasons for gun rights disqualification. They include being an illegal alien, having been a drug addict or user, having been adjudicated insane or committed to a mental institution, being a fugitive from justice, being under a domestic abuse protection order and having been convicted of even a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, in addition to citizenship renunciation and a dishonorable discharge.
Being a fugitive from justice can include having an unpaid traffic citation in another state that you never paid.
California attorney Michel noted that “gun seizures in California have gone through the roof.” He said restrictive state laws have opened the door for police to check gunowners who may get a rejection on a new gun purchase, and learn whether they have other guns that they can seize.
In divorce cases, he cautioned, “every family lawyer wants to get leverage by claiming harassment, and obtaining a temporary restraining order is one way to apply pressure, so that a spouse’s firearms are seized.
In terms of rights restoration, he said, the process must be done in the state where one was originally convicted of a disqualifying crime.