NRA’s Froman ?If You Don?t Know Your Rights, You Don?t Have Any’
Date: Oct 31, 2005 7:09 AM
The New GUN WEEK, November 1, 2005
Page 2

Froman Tells GRPC: ?If You Don?t Know Your Rights, You Don?t
Have Any?
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 progun 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.

Lott Logic

John Lott, author of More Guns=Less Crime and The Bias
Against Guns, offered scathing observations about how the
rhetoric of anti-gunners frequently collides head on with
fact. Pointing to citizen use of firearms following
disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Rodney King riots in
Los Angeles, Lott noted that in both situations, it was
often citizens with guns who kept order amid chaos.

Armed merchants in Los Angeles banded together to protect
their property from being destroyed or looted, he noted.

?The notion of wishing to have guns in disasters is nothing
new,” he said.

Lott recalled autumn of 2004 when antigunners were railing
about the sunset of the ban on so-called assault weapons,
and about their predictions of ?blood running in the
streets.” He quickly went to work demolishing those
forecasts with fact.

?They say the gun debate issue is so emotional that facts
just don?t matter and I think that?s wrong,” he said.

So much data, Lott observed, is lost in what amounts to an
ocean of statistics and facts, so it is up to gunowners to
focus on certain facts so they are prominent.

?One of the nice things about the gun control movement is
that they are not very bashful for making very extreme
statements about things,” Lott said. ?The things they say,
the predictions they make. Hopefully, you can hold people
responsible for the type of predictions they make.”

He said that one year after the ban ended, it has become
?pretty obvious” to everyone that violent crime and murder
rates didn?t go up, but actually declined in most places.

Noting that the ban was ?the cornerstone of the American gun
control movement,” Lott said the shrill predictions from
people like Sarah Brady and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
were steeped in ?extreme emotion.” He also said that there
have now been a number of academic studies about the effects
of the Brady Law, and none of them shows any discernible
proof that the law is responsible for crime reduction.

He noted that last year, murders declined by about 3.6%,
although the murder rate declined less in states that have
adopted their own semi-auto bans than in states without such
laws.

?In three of states with bans you actually saw number of
murders rise,” he said.

Reaching Out

Following Lott?s address, a panel discussion on Reaching Out
to Other Constituents convened, with authors Songer, Paxton
Quigley and Debbie Ferns joining Randall Herrst, president
of the Center for the Study of Crime.

Quigley, author of Armed and Female and Stayin? Alive, said
not enough women are involved in the gun rights battle.

?According to the Department of Justice, 27% of American
women keep a gun in the house and 37.6 million females
either own or have rapid access to guns,” she said. ?In my
mind, that?s not enough.”

She contended that changes in gun laws and policies will
only come when more women get directly involved in the gun
rights movement. The same goes for recruiting new shooters
from the next generation.

Ferns, author of Babes with Bullets,revealed that she had
never handled a firearm until she was 46 years old. She
said it had never occurred to her that gun and hunting
rights ?would ever be in trouble in this country.”

She also questioned where the ?multitude” of young shooters
and hunters were.

Ferns took the women?s sports editor for The Arizona Sun in
Phoenix on a shooting jaunt and was then offered an
opportunity to write a regular column on women?s shooting
sports. She said it is important to invite women shooting
because ?very few women I know will crash a party.”

She became an instructor, processed more than 200 ?moms and
kids” through the firearms course in a year, and became a
gun rights activist in Arizona.

Herrst told the audience that he reaches out with a somewhat
different strategy.

?At every public speaking appearance I make,” he said, ?I
bring this up. Gun control increases violent crime by
shifting the balance of power to favor criminals while it
disarms helpless victims.”

He said activists need to understand that when they speak to
an audience, they must address the self-interests of the
audience, and not themselves. They must also learn how to
overcome emotions with facts, and how to deal with arguments
on the emotional level. He also said they must learn to
deal effectively with the media.

Rounding out the panel, Songer acknowledged coming from a
non-gun-owning family in New York. But then, ?I had my
brain washed, and here I am,” she joked.

Her husband was in law enforcement, and she accompanied him
to firearms training camps.” Now her family has had to
acknowledge that ?not all people who own guns are gun nuts.”

Songer suggested inviting a non-shooting friend or neighbor
to a gun range. She also suggested the same thing with
reporters, to get them familiar with firearms.

Finally, she implored gun organizations to put some money
into television programming, and not just lobbying efforts.

Bill of Gun Rights

The next panel brought together attorneys David Caplan, a
constitutional scholar who is a member of the NRA board of
directors, and Michael Sabbeth, an activist lawyer from
Colorado, with noted firearms author and instructor Massad
Ayoob.

They explained how gun rights are protected throughout the
Bill of Rights, and not just the Second Amendment.

Caplan noted that the concept of the home as castle comes
from the Fourth Amendment, and that if someone comes into
your home to rob you, there are precedents that allow the
use of deadly force against such an invasion. He also said
citizens have a right to use deadly force against would-be
arsonists.

Sabbeth, a Denver attorney and author, observed that ?I came
to the conclusion that all of this gun rights stuff is not
about the gun.” He sees the gun issue in another way, which
is that the underlying ideology of the left is Nihilism.

He cautioned the audience that the government is becoming
more paternalistic, and this was underscored by what
happened in New Orleans following the hurricane. The
government there decided to start seizing guns, he said,
even though ?there was absolutely no evidence that any
legitimate gunowner was causing a problem.”

Gunowners, he suggested, should not tolerate assaults on
their rights.

?Tolerance, at best,” he said, ?is amoral and at worst it is
immoral. It leads to indifference. Indifference leads to
aiding and abetting, and aiding and abetting leads to
fascism.”

He suggested that gunowners ?must take control of the
rhetoric.”

Ayoob?s turn at the microphone provided the audience with a
different perspective on the New Orleans disaster. He noted
that some of the city?s police officers could not get to
work because the floods left them stranded. Most, he said,
had lost their own homes, and did have problems with crime
and natural predators, including snakes and alligators. He
even reported some shark sightings in the flooded area.

However, Ayoob also noted that ?No order was given that I
know of that suspended the Constitution.”

There were reports of police fighting with criminals in
waist-deep water, and of other officers who ran out of
ammunition. Other reports noted how armed citizens defended
themselves against looters. His descriptions, based on news
accounts, reflected a state of anarchy in which citizens
were essentially on their own.

?What has happened in this nation the past few weeks,” he
said, ?has validated everything you all have worked for.”

Follow the Money

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 antigun
physicians essentially began packaging gun control as a
pubic health issue, the media cooperated.

?Public health gun grabbers relied oh 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 some thing 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 finances ?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 at
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.

Froman, who is a practicing attorney in Tucson, AZ, rounded
out the day?s agenda by telling the audience that, ?The
single most important fight for firearms freedom in our
lifetime is not legislation or on Capitol Hill, but the
fight to put pro-Second Amendment judges into our federal
courts, including most importantly our US Supreme Court.”

?Today more than ever it doesn?t always matter who are the
leaders we elect or defeat or what legislation they enact,”
she stated. ?Nothing we do about lawmakers or the laws
matters if the judges who apply those laws don?t apply those
laws as intended.

?There are almost 900 federal judges,” she continued, ?not a
single one of them is accountable to voters because not one
of them is elected.”

?Like it or not, the federal judiciary in this country
represents the Second Amendment?s trump card and its
Achilles heel,” Froman cautioned. ?Given the way some
activist judges have ignored the Constitution and rewritten
our laws, it?s clear that a single federal judge could have
more power than all 435 members of the House of
Representatives, all 100 US senators and the president of
the United States combined.”

Froman turned her attention to the New Orleans mess, and the
joint SAF-NRA lawsuit that brought the gun grabs to a halt.

?In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, honest, peaceful, lawful
people are having their firearms confiscated,” Froman said.
?Government officials can?t protect them, but they also
won?t let them protect themselves. … A lot of people
always say it will never happen here. Well, ladies and
gentlemen, it already has happened right in New Orleans.
… Thankfully NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation
moved quickly.”

She also criticized the ATF for its heavy-handed harassment
of people who attended a Richmond, VA, gun show in August.
Those agents, supported by Virginia state troopers and
officers from Henrico County and the city of Richmond, used
information from Federal 4473 forms to conduct ?residence
checks” of prospective gun buyers at the show.

?Federal law did not give them the authority to do any of
this,” she said. ?But federal law apparently wasn?t enough
to stop them, either.”

?If New Orleans authorities violated the law when they
confiscated the firearms of victims of Hurricane Katrma,
there needs to be consequences for the violation of that
law,” Froman insisted. ?If State and federal officials
overstepped their authority when they harassed and
intimidated the patrons of a Virginia gun show, there need
to be consequences for that kind of conduct. And if San
Francisco voters adopt a ban on all handguns in the city and
if that ban infringes on the right to keep and bear arms,
then there need to be controls to protect the rights of
citizens.

?We need judges who respect the laws of the United States,”
she continued, ?especially the Constitution, not remake the
law to their own liking because they think that another
country is more enlightened than the United States. We need
judges who uphold the Constitution, not as they wish it were
written, not as foreign authorities think it ought to be
written, but exactly as it was written and ratified in 1789
and as the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 and not just
in the Supreme Court but in every courtroom across America.”