Never Forget-Never Again

Thursday, December 20, 2007

STANDING GUARD

WAYNE LAPIERRE, NRA Executive Vice President

Never Forget-Never Again

or the countless millions of Americans who believe in the true meaning of the Second Amendment-the right to be armed to protect self, family, community, country and our individual liberty-the words "Katrina" and "New Orleans" sharply focus on very real tyranny in our times, on our soil. Throw into those defining words the name Hillary Clinton, and you will see a glimpse of a future she would wish for us all-a civilization utterly transformed.

As you will remember, that Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans tyranny was ordered by a rogue police chief who, in August 2005, issued this unconstitutional edict: "No one will be able to be armed," he declared. "Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns." And that illegal order-in the midst of a natural disaster that produced unbridled anarchy and placed frightened citizens at the mercy of armed criminal predators-was enforced at gunpoint in house-to-house searches.

I remember chaotic scenes of homeowners handcuffed, forced to watch police search for and seize their guns at a time when they needed them most.

I vividly remember a stunning Fox network news video showing a 58-year-old grandmother body-slammed and severely injured by a burly patrolman in SWAT garb because she produced a small antique revolver, innocently saying it was all the protection she needed.

And I remember chaotic scenes of homeowners handcuffed, forced to watch police search for and seize their guns at a time when they needed them most. An ABC reporter explained, "... homeowners had armed themselves ... in the end, police took their weapons but let them stay in their homes."

And then there was a Cox News Service headline that defines what the 21st century Right to Keep and Bear Arms means:

"Armed militia protects its New Orleans neighborhood."

The accompanying news story told of civic-minded residents who banded together in the face of a total absence of law enforcement to protect their community against roving gangs of violent criminals-many of whom flocked to New Orleans because of the news that over 270 local police officers went AWOL during the emergency.

Juxtapose that item with another headline that same week: "New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms ..."

All of that injustice led to NRA's legislative battle cry, "New Orleans-Never Again-Never Forget!"

With NRA taking the lead, harnessing the outrage over the firearms confiscation all across the political spectrum, legislatures across the country enacted prohibitions against any such civil disarmament during times of emergency.

And equally importantly, the Congress acted decisively with enactment of a tough federal measure to forever outlaw such abuse at the national level.

And that brings us back to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who now cynically claims she is all for the Second Amendment.

When Louisiana Republican

Sen. David Vitter's Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006 came to the floor on July 13 of that year, Hillary Clinton was among a handful of senators voting against outlawing the disarming of innocent Americans during times of disaster.

In essence, with that single recorded vote, the leading candidate in her party's bid to take the White House voted to support the gun-ban mandate of the New Orleans police superintendent.

With her vote against Vitter's

"never-again" amendment, Hillary voted to disarm any innocent citizen who has the grit to keep a firearm to provide self-protection against evildoers.

With her vote, Hillary supports every aspect of the civil disarmament that marked the dismantling of the Second Amendment in New Orleans-including the refusal of government to acknowledge the existence of its secret cache of confiscated guns and its refusal to return those guns to their lawful owners once they were unearthed through NRA court action.

And with that vote, Hillary showed that her new phony support of the Second Amendment-which surfaced in an October 23, 2007, Des Moines (Iowa) Register article-is a cynical lie, insulting the overwhelming majority of Americans who know the true meaning of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

In debates and in campaign statements, Hillary Clinton insinuates that she served as the "co-President" to her husband Bill Clinton. On the issue of "gun control," and her singular enmity toward the National Rifle Association, The New York Times once reported:

 

"Mrs. Clinton, who is considering running for the Senate from New York, where gun control is popular, has also been more forceful than the

 

president in directly taking on the

powerful gun lobby ..."

To the prospect of Hillary ever occupying the White House again-this time, not as the ever-influential wife of the most anti-gun president in American history, but as president in her own right, bent on outdoing Bill Clinton's gun ban legacy, we say, "Never again!"

In the coming months, we must do everything possible, use every aspect of Hillary Clinton's anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment record to convince our friends and neighbors-80 million gun owners-to work to defeat her at the polls.