When addressing the United Nations’ attempts to disarm law-abiding Americans, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said, “International law doesn’t have an application in the appellate process or the adjudication process in an American court.” And he later commented that, “Frankly, if the United Nations continues to come at us with such outrageous things, then we should not be too disappointed if the whole thing were to break off and float away in the East River, never to be seen or heard from again.”
Huckabee boasted that he was the first sitting governor of Arkansas to receive a permit to carry a concealed handgun and criticized some other candidates by declaring, “I didn’t just join the NRA last year.”
On the Second Amendment, Huckabee expounded, “I sometimes marvel that there are people in our country who will proliferously defend the importance, the primacy and the value of the First Amendment—our freedoms to speak, to assemble, to worship, the freedom of the press—and somehow act as if the Second Amendment is of lesser importance to our freedom than the first.” He also said, “We have a constitutional right granted to us, in the wisdom of our forefathers, to protect our families, to protect them from criminals, to protect them from whatever might harm them. And it is as much of a constitutional right as it is the right to speak out against our government ... . And let me be very clear: I do not believe the Second Amendment has any geographical boundaries. It does not apply differently on the East Coast than it does in the South.”
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson was the next high-profile candidate to address the audience. He did so after a video on his accomplishments titled “The Hunt for Red November” aired. He won the crowd with: “I do remember a relationship from way back, from the time that Charlton Heston came to Tennessee in 1994, and I formed a friendship with that great American and watched him hobble across the state with me on a bad hip and go through pain to help me win my first election in the United States Senate.”
Then Sen. Thompson got to the basis of his philosophy by saying, “I never subscribed to the notion that it made our country safer by infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. I think back to the ‘A’ rating I got from this organization and the endorsements that I was proud to receive. So it’s not just a matter of promises made, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a matter of commitments that have been kept.”
Later he pointed out, “My philosophy does not depend on my geography.” And he told the assembly, “I never subscribed to the notion that it made our country safer by infringing on the Second Amendment.” In answer to a question on the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, Thompson said, “…the Constitution does mean what is says and is not restricted to protection of militias.”
Semi-automatic firearms were introduced more than a century ago. The first semi-automatic rifle, a Mannlicher, was introduced in 1885; the first semi-automatic pistol, a Schonberger, in 1892; and John Browning patented his famous Auto-5 semi-automatic shotgun in 1900. President John F. Kennedy, an NRA Life Member, owned an M1, a semi-automatic rifle used by the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II and the Korean War, and owned by hundreds of thousands of competitive target shooters and collectors today.
Americans own about 30 million semi-automatics--about 15% of all guns. Semi-autos are used for the same purposes as other firearms: target shooting, hunting, and protection. AR-15s, M1As, and M1s are the most popular center-fire target rifles in America, easily outnumbering all other rifles in the annual National Rifle and Pistol Championships. Semi-automatic pistols dominate NRA Bullseye and Action Pistol, Int'l Practical Shooting Confederation, and Int'l Defensive Pistol Ass'n competitions. Semi-automatic shotguns are used for skeet, trap, sporting clays, and hunting. Semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns are also used for protection. Some have historic value and are popular with collectors. Handguns are the type of gun most often used for protection, and about three-fourths of new handguns sold today are semi-automatic.
How semi-automatics operate. Like all guns other than machineguns, semi-autos fire only once when the trigger is pulled. (Only a fully-automatic firearm--a machinegun--fires repeatedly when the trigger is pulled.) Energy from a fired round of ammunition is used to cycle the firearm's loading mechanism. Contrary to the claims of "gun control" groups, semi-autos don't "spray fire" and are not "easy to convert" into machine guns. Easily convertible guns are prohibited by federal law and conversion is a federal felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Semi-autos are not more powerful. Semi-auto center-fire handguns use ammunition comparable to revolver ammunition. All other semi-autos use ammunition also used in other guns. "Gun control" advocates refer to semi-autos as "high-powered," hoping that the expression will frighten the public. However, a gun's internal mechanism (semi-auto, revolver, bolt-action, pump-action, etc.) doesn't dictate the power of its ammunition. The question of "power" is academic, as far as criminals are concerned. A study for the U.S. Dept. of Justice found that of 13 attributes felons look for in a handgun, "large caliber" ranked 9th.1
Semi-automatics are not disproportionately used to commit violent crimes. A study for Congress found that semi-autos affected by the Clinton "assault weapon" ban "were never used in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders," and that the ban's 10-round limit on new ammunition magazines isn't a factor in multiple-victim or multiple-wound crimes.2 A follow-up study found "gunshot injury incidents involving pistols (which use magazi
England's increasingly repressive firearms laws often are praised by those who would restrict the American right to arms, so it is important to realize that those firearms laws, which now prohibit the private possession of handguns, rest heavily on one foundation--the British gun owner licensing system.
Send Message
Add to Friends
Bulletin This
Blog This
Email This
Add to Profile
Save to favorites
Add Comment
Flag as Inappropriate
