24th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference
'Challenges Ahead'

by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Our GRPC 2009 report is divided into sessions for easier reading.
Click on the desired section to read.

September 26, 2009
September 27, 2009

“We have to change these anti-gun people out one at a time.”

State update
The next panel zeroed in on state legislative affairs, with Tennessee state Sen. Doug Jackson (D) noting that Tennessee has had a concealed carry statute since 1997, and that legally-armed citizens with permits “have an exemplary record.”

Jackson sponsored Tennessee’s “restaurant carry” legislation this year that was passed despite massive media opposition.

“I think the Second Amendment is our most precious amendment in so many ways,” Jackson stated. “I really think it is sort of a hinge that holds the Bill of Rights together.”

He said the country needs both political parties to protect rights, adding that “we need to build a base of support in both parties.” Jackson criticized the press for portraying gunowners as monolithic, when they are actually diverse and they are not just puppets of special interest groups.

He noted that lawmakers need facts, and they “respond to information.” That’s how he pushed the restaurant carry bill thorough the legislature. He provided statistics and facts.

Permit holders in Tennessee have a very good track record, and by providing the data to back that up, he won the day. Predictions of death and carnage that seemed to dominate the news have not come true, he added.

“I have never seen such a media reaction,” he recalled. “I’ve never been berated and never been treated in the news media the way I was treated on that bill.”

But the legislation got through, giving gunowners a valuable lesson on rough and tumble politics.

Jackson’s advice to grassroots activists is to “Be sure to contact state lawmakers.”

“Don’t preach to them,” he said. “Just make your point. Be precise, be very articulate and make your point and lawmakers will respond.”

Former Kansas State Sen. Phil Journey, who now sits as a district court judge, followed Jackson to the microphone. He told the conference audience about the history of the “collectivist theory” regarding the Second Amendment and how it was started in Kansas in 1905 as a state Supreme Court case. Next year, he said, the state constitution is going to be amended to “take care of that little problem.”

Journey, who pushed concealed carry in Kansas almost from the moment he was appointed to the state Senate in 2003, is also a former member of the NRA board of directors. He went through the history of concealed carry, and how gun rights activists struggled through the legislative process beginning in the late 1990s.

A bill that went through the legislature in 2004 was vetoed by former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who now has joined the Obama Administration as secretary of Health and Human Services.

He affirmed what Jackson told the group moments earlier about reaching out to both political parties in order to get legislation passed.

Eventually, the legislature passed a new bill that Sebelius also vetoed, but the legislature overrode that veto with a preemption bill and right to carry bill.

Last year, Journey said, he went to all of the gun clubs and told them the state was going to legalize machineguns, and ultimately that bill was signed into law.

California situation
 Attorney Chuck Michel then came to the podium to offer greetings from “the People’s Republik of California.” He likened the state to a petri dish of gun control bacteria.

Michel, who has successfully argued several gun cases in the Golden State, provided an overview of the legislative bombshells now facing California gunowners. For openers, at the time he spoke, legislation was already on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk that would require registration of all handgun ammunition purchases. This would include a requirement that dealers take a thumb print from purchasers, he said.

Michel, who has been involved in several lawsuits against the city of San Francisco, said the next hurdle will be to pass legislation that provides for the restoration of gun rights for people who are slapped with bogus protection orders. They lose their guns, even though they have not been charged with a crime.

He also mentioned efforts to prevent the expansion of lead-free hunting zones, and to stop the state from banning unloaded open carry.

Michel does see some signs of change, however. His former law partner just won election to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, despite heavy media blasts that tried to link him to the gun lobby. Carmen Trutanich beat City Councilman Jack Weiss in the race.

“The gun control argument did not work in Los Angeles,” Michel said. “If you can’t hang gun control around a candidate’s neck and win in liberal Los Angeles, where can you? The answer is nowhere.”

Tim Oliver, vice president of MissouriCarry.com and director of Learn to Carry LLC, recalled the history of concealed carry in Missouri. It took 13 years for gun activists to push through a concealed carry law, and the effort required the work of many gunowners. Today, he said, there are some 65,000 Missouri residents who are licensed to carry, and more who hold licenses from other states.

Missouri honors all concealed carry licenses, one of a handful of states that allow full recognition rather than a patchwork of reciprocal agreements with other states.

Oliver praised the GRPC, telling the audience that “this is where you get the ammo to defeat anti-gun laws.” Referring to stacks of books that are given away to each person attending the annual event, he said “The literature that you take from here today can be used to change laws in your states.”

In Missouri, he continued, state lawmakers “have learned to listen to us.” Not only has Missouri passed concealed carry, but also has a Castle Doctrine law, and it happened only because gunowners have been able to forge alliances with pro-gun Republicans and Democrats in the legislature.

“We have to change these anti-gun people out one at a time,” he observed.

Oliver said hard work will prevent anti-gunners from taking away gun rights.

Rounding out the state panel, Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA)—only days away from learning that his group’s lawsuit against the city of Chicago would be accepted by the US Supreme Court—reminded the audience that Illinois is “a target.” He predicted that concealed carry will ultimately come to the Prairie State, but that it may take two more years.

Meanwhile, ISRA—which is partnering with SAF on the Chicago lawsuit—has been successful on the legislative front, defeating a proposed statewide ban on so-called assault weapons. In addition, he said ISRA has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a ban on semi-automatic rifles in Cook County, where Chicago is located.

Pearson noted that his organization puts on an annual lobbying day at the state capitol in Springfield. This year’s event was attended by more than 5,000 gunowners, most wearing “IGOLD” yellow t-shirts as they marched down the street to the capitol building.

On top of that, ISRA has established an attorney referral system, much like SAF does on a national scale, to connect gunowners with gun rights attorneys when they have cases that affect their gun rights.

“If we are going to stop these people,” he said, “we need to organize. They have a lot more money than we do, but we have a lot more feet than they do.”

He urged gunowners to concentrate on that single issue to determine whom they vote for.

International threat
A panel detailing the threats against US sovereignty and United Nations treaties kept the audience glued to their seats.

Leading off was Tony Bernardo, executive director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action, something of a counterpart to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. Bernardo warned the audience about efforts to undermine the Second Amendment through international treaty. He discussed CIFTA, the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunitions, Explosives, And Other Related Materials, which is now “awaiting the signature of your government.” The Canadian government has already signed that document.

Such documents are the work of behind-the-door bureaucrats “who have been there for years.”

“They don’t care about your rights or about the Second Amendment,” he said. “They are building fiefdoms.”

While such treaties are promoted by claims that they affect criminals and terrorists, that’s not true, Bernardo said.

“If it doesn’t affect crime, or it doesn’t affect terrorism,” he cautioned, “it’s about affecting you.”

He said gun prohibitionists wanted to collapse the Canadian gun industry.

Treaties will call for record-keeping of firearms and that includes registration, he continued.

Anther threat is against ammunition. He said shortages experienced earlier this year will seem “like a cakewalk” compared to what will happen if the UN has its way. Handloading, for example, would cease because each reloader would require a manufacturing license, and because UN bureaucrats want to serialize ammunition.

His advice is to make elected representatives aware of this threat, and keep reminding them.

Traveling from Italy to participate in this year’s event was Sylvia Gentile, an Italian attorney and representative from the FISAT, the Italian Guns and Shooting History Association. She noted that the US government can have a considerable impact on how European nations deal with firearms.

An anti-gun American administration can push the European Union member states to adopt stricter laws, which in turn will be pushed by the Americans as an example of how guns are regulated by “civilized” European nations, she said.

“When things get bad in the United States,” she said, “they can easily get much worse in Europe.”

On the continent, there are no Second Amendment rights in any nation. Self-defense is not seen as a reason for owning a firearm, and gun ownership is heavily regulated.

“Gun ownership is not considered a right,” Gentile explained.


‘Not your friend’
Candian pro-gun Prof. Gary Mauser, a special envoy with Canada’s National Firearms Association, had stern advice for the audience.

“The UN is not our friend,” he said. “The basic operating principle of the United Nations is disarmament.”

He said the UN considers civilian disarmament “a good thing.” That organization is dedicated to making everyone around the world equal, and if the United States has too many rights, the UN believes it should simply lower the standards here.

Warning of the arms treaty that is slowly making its way through the UN, Mauser said each effort at global gun control sets standards for all “civilized nations” to follow. He said that if American gunowners were to read some of the things other nations are supposed to follow, “you will shake your head wondering who could possibly believe that this will work?”

It is all designed to institute programs with “high-sounding moral principles that have deadly consequences,” Mauser contended.

He rattled off a list of different efforts now in progress at the UN, acknowledging that many of these efforts have overlapping purposes. That does not matter to UN bureaucrats, he said.

Mauser said American gunowners are seen as a threat to political stability, and that their rights are responsible for economic chaos, famine, war and destruction. The philosophy is to regulate, license and control every aspect of civilian firearms ownership.

“If Americans care about their rights, and I know you do,” he said, “you have to help the world stop this stuff.”

It was at this point during the panel discussion that Women & Guns publisher, Julianne Gottlieb, who moderated Saturday’s panels, revealed the existence of a new pro-gun international organization, the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights. There are already members from several countries, and both Gentile and Mauser are involved.

Rounding out the panel was David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute in Colorado, and a veteran gun rights author. He explained the relationship between the US law and UN treaties, noting that while the Constitution may not be over-ridden by a treaty, the wrong bureaucrat can interpret the Second Amendment to conform to a treaty.

He was alarmed that Harold Koh had been nominated to be the State Department’s legal advisor. Koh is the author of a review titled “A World Drowning in Guns.”

Kopel said the arms treaty negotiations currently underway at the United Nations is a genuine threat to American gun ownership. The right to own firearms, he explained, is seen by the international gun control community as a threat to human rights. The United States ranks fifth on a list of nations accused of human rights abuses, with Israel topping that list, Kopel disclosed.

In this country, the New York standard of gun control is seen as too weak.

It is considered a human rights violation to use a firearm for self-defense except in rare cases, he added.

Coming next issue: Bob Barr delivers the keynote speech, and panels discuss the Heller ruling, federalism, campus safety and expanding self-defense and the right to carry.
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