NEWS
Ben Blevins of Pulaski County High School scored 296 points and Raven Krampie of Henderson County High School scored 288 points to win the overall competition at Kentucky’s National Archery in the Schools state tournament March 18 in Louisville.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department Outdoor Expo will be jam-packed with outdoor fun and adventure for the whole family on Saturday, March 29 and Sunday, March 30 at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility, just west of I-17 on Carefree Highway. Shooting sports enthusiasts can try out some of the latest firearms from Sturm, Ruger and Co., Smith & Wesson, GLOCK, Marlin and Benelli. Interested in trying your hand at cowboy action shooting or black powder muzzleloading? Then you will want to visit the Specialty Shooting Range section of the Expo. You can even shoot a Gatling gun.
Wiley X. Eyewear announces their "X-Factor" sunglasses, featuring fashion, function and protection.
More than 140 JROTC cadets representing 62 JROTC units in 25 states and one Department of Defense high school in Germany qualified for the 2008 National JROTC Air Rifle Championship that will take place at the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit's Pool International Shooting Complex March 27 to 29.
Beretta team shooter Anthony Matarese, Jr. won the first ever Browning/Briley Mardi Gras Open held in Jennings, Louisiana. His score of 192/200 bested his next closest competitor Gebben Miles, who shot a 190/200. Matarese’s winning performance was accomplished while using a Beretta Urika 2 Gold Sporting semi-automatic with a 30” barrel.
LATE NEWS: The village of Friendship, Indiana, home of the Walter Cline Range and the headquarters of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association, was severely impacted by floodwaters this week, as were other parts of the Ohio River Valley, where rains measuring between six and ten inches fell during a two-day period. Major portions of the range, camping area and commercial row of the NMLRA facility were under several feet of water Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the organization. A damage assessment will be forthcoming. Photos of the flooding may be viewed at the NMLRA Web site: http://www.nmlra.org/press.asp?Media=Photos&gallery=13.
FEATURE
Major ImpactEditor’s Note: Today’s feature was written by Tom Gresham, gun writer, host of Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk radio and several television programs about shooting and firearms.
Certain events impact our lives in clear and immediate ways, changing things -- if not forever -- certainly for many years. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the attack upon the U.S. on September 11, 2001 come to mind.
Those who believe gun rights are vital to the continued existence of the United States as we know it are about to witness a pivotal event which will, I believe, change the direction of the gun rights movement. It also will redefine the players.
The "D.C. Gun Ban Case" as it is known, or just "Heller," will, I think, take on an importance that even the 1939 case, known simply as "Miller," has never achieved. There will be serious short-term effects -- the presidential election -- as well as waves which will crash against the shores of the gun rights movement for decades.
In the unlikely event you haven't heard of Heller, here's the quick recap. Richard (Dick) Heller is the named plaintiff in a carefully-orchestrated lawsuit challenging the long-standing ban on owning handguns in the nation's capital. Last Tuesday it was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. If you want to read the transcript or listen to the actual audio recording of the arguments (I recommend having the transcript in hand while listening), you can pull them down from the Gun Talk Radio web site here.
The question in this case was simple. Do individuals have a right, under the Second Amendment, to keep and bear arms? Some who watched or listened to the arguments offered that Alan Gura, the attorney for Mr. Heller, missed opportunities when justices asked questions about machine guns. The machine gun crowd feels as though they were thrown under the bus, as Alan offered no defense for the ownership of full-automatic firearms. While I personally think full-auto guns should have no more restrictions than semi-auto guns, that wasn't the question. The justices were laying traps before Gura, practically daring him to step into them. He did not. The lawsuit was designed to be narrow, and he resisted the temptation to broaden it in a way which would have allowed any justice on the fence to fall off on the side of repressive gun control laws.
I had Alan Gura on my radio show "Tom Gresham's Gun Talk" a couple of weeks ago, and we spent an entire hour talking about the case. As someone who began fighting for gun rights as a high-schooler debating the "Dodd Bill," (which became the Gun Control Act of 1968), and who has been active in it for 40 years, I was especially impressed with Gura's understanding of the issue. In short, he did an impressive job in his first appearance before the Supreme Court.
Several points should be noted. First is that it took 20 years to set up this case. Over the course of two decades, beginning with the publication of Sanford Levinson's article "The Embarrassing Second Amendment" in the Yale Law Journal, constitutional scholarship of the Second Amendment appeared (it was invisible before that) and grew. Almost all law journal articles about the amendment concluded that the widely-accepted (by courts and the media) concept that the right to keep and bear arms is a "collective right" was, in fact, wrong. Eventually, under the weight of this barrage of articles, even noted constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe changed his view, supporting the individual right concept in the latest version of his book, American Constitutional Law," a standard text in law schools.
Two things have changed which also made it possible to reach this point. One is the destruction of the information gatekeepers -- the mainstream media. Twenty years ago the established media could and did prevent any stories about effective use of guns for self defense from getting to the public. The media hammered gun owners in ways that can only be called bigoted. They could get away with it because there was no other way to reach the general public. Enter the internet and talk radio. Talk radio is the end run around the mainstream media, which is why the traditional news outlets hate it so much. When a national radio talk show called "Gun Talk" can reach a audience of some 20 million listeners with simple, reasonable, coherent conversations about gun rights, it rings true to the public. Of course, with the internet, all controls are off, and the validity of any argument must stand up to scrutiny often reaching the level of assault. The gatekeepers are out of business. Additionally, 20 years ago, no one could have imagined a television series called "Personal Defense TV," where we go to gunfighting schools each week!
Through those communication devices, we have been able to make the other major change. We changed the vocabulary. A big tip of the hat to Alan Korwin (www.gunlaws.com) for understanding early on that the words we use make a difference. Alan and I have pushed for a decade to have those on "our" side realize that we aren't speaking to gun banners. We are speaking to the uncommitted public, and that we need to choose our words carefully.
Did you note that the media reports no longer call us "pro-gun?" That's huge. Now, the stories talk about us supporting gun rights, and there are no quotation marks around that phrase. We are not "anti-gun control," but rather, we are "pro gun rights." That puts our opponents in the position of being against rights. "A day long-awaited by gun-rights activists," said the Chicago Times. "To gun rights advocates, the numbers prove a different point," noted the Associated Press. USA Today's story began, "The Supreme Count will hear oral arguments Tuesday in the gun rights case . . . ."
That single change in vocabulary may be one of the most important things to happen to the gun rights movement.
It may be foolhardy to guess how the court will decide in this case, but I'll be stunned if they don't return a decision declaring that individuals in the United States of America have a right to keep and bear arms. Most observers are calling for a 5-4 split. I think we'll have a bigger margin than that.
When that decision is delivered in late June, it will simply change everything in the gun rights battle, and it has the potential to rock the current presidential election. Let's deal with that one first.
To rephrase the Bill Clinton campaign slogan created by James Carville, in this case, "It's the judges, stupid." To this point, none of the candidates has spent much time talking about Supreme Court nominations. After the Heller decision comes down, they will have to. Public opinion strongly supports the concept of individual gun rights. After the initial "sky is falling" reaction from some of the mass media, the public will greet the decision with a "Yeah, we knew we had a right to own guns. So, what's the big deal?" This sets the stage for pointed questions to the candidates (however many there are at that point), about the court. The next president may be in a position to nominate three justices. This will have more impact on the country than the current economy, the war in Iraq, or any other issue now flitting across your television's streaming ticker. No other issue will so greatly determine what sort of country we will live in for the next half-century.
Moving beyond this election, Heller will redefine the players in the gun rights movement. In the excellent article "The Roe v. Wade of Gun Rights," NRA past president Sandy Froman and Ken Blackwell explain that the decision delivered in June is just the start. Froman talked about this last Sunday on the radio with me, detailing how Heller will spawn two decades of court action, all designed to define gun rights. Expect to see dozens of lawsuits challenging the most repressive gun laws throughout the country. The tide will have turned, and we will begin regaining the rights which have been taken from us over the last century.
No longer will the premise be "Of course gun control is good for the country . . . we just have to get as much as we can, and then wait for the next opportunity." I predict that after the Heller decision, each call for more gun control laws (one would think that the 20,000 we have now would have pacified the banners) will be met with challenges by not only gun rights advocates, but by the public, demanding more than "well, we need to try something!" as the justification for stripping people of their rights.
It's the second half. We are putting in our offense, and the anti-gun rights forces will be playing defense for many years to come.
From this point forward, when gun-control groups whine that we are never willing to compromise, we can tell them that we have a compromise to offer. Our compromise is that we will strike down only the worst of the gun laws now. As they like to say, it won't solve everything, but it's a good first step.
-- Tom Gresham
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