By Joe Bartozzi
Last week, from the Democratic primary debate stage, former Vice President Joe Biden said we were the enemy.
“Our enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA, the gun manufacturers,” Biden said.
Not a single candidate on stage that night, or the night before, condemned the remark. Their silence is tacit agreement. Not a single candidate had the courage to name the violent criminals as the problem or the fortitude to stand up to those who prey upon the vulnerable in our society. Instead, they are blaming us as an industry and the law-abiding gun owners we serve.
This is what we’re up against in the coming election season. It’s indicative of how much the landscape has changed and the lengths elected officials will go to score points.
Firearms Industry is America
National Shooting Sports Foundation®’s members need to know what their trade association is up against and what we’re doing. It’s going to be a struggle and there’s no room for anyone to be on the sidelines. We will need all member companies to be engaged and ensure our industry is able to conduct the lawful business of providing firearms to the more than 100 million law-abiding American gun owners in every state for legal use, including recreational shooting, hunting and self-defense.
Every Democratic candidate is now gunning for an industry that supports 312,000 jobs earning $15.7 billion in wages and has a total economic impact over $52 billion. The firearms industry is an integral economic contributor, having paid more than $6.8 billion in total taxes in 2019 alone.
The firearms industry is the fabric of America. These are American jobs in every corner of the nation. Our industry is the “Arsenal of Democracy,” a phrase coined by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt, supplying the firearms that our armed forces and brave men and women of law enforcement use to protect our nation and keep our communities safe.
Confiscation Rhetoric
Candidates on the stage, including former Vice President Biden, agreed with the far-fetched notion of mass confiscation of firearms, a plan first proposed by Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). Biden said, “I would buy back those weapons.” That plan would use the tax dollars paid by law-abiding gun owners to confiscate the more than 16 million modern sporting rifles in private ownership today under threat of criminal penalty for noncompliance.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) defended firearms confiscation as legal. “That’s not confiscation,” she said. “You would give them the offer to buy back the gun,” without reference to criminal penalties.
But we already have a template of what it looks like when a government would make criminals of lawful citizens because they don’t like the guns they own. New Zealand is attempting confiscation now and just 37 of the 1.2 million semiautomatic firearms were surrendered because gun owners there don’t trust the government to protect them or pay them fair market value.
Failed Technology
Biden’s firearms industry animus went further. He would bar all firearms sales, except those equipped with “biometric” authorized-user technology.
“No gun should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could pull that trigger,” he explained.
Here’s what most forget. NSSF was at the table with Vice President Biden when he sought these answers before. He was named by President Barack Obama in 2012 to lead a gun control task force that proposed 23 executive actions, including exploring “gun safety technologies.” The National Institutes of Justice studied the technology to “unlock” guns and after investing $12.6 million for research over 15 years, “none were successful.”
In fact, a recent survey found just five percent of gun buyers would consider buying a “smart-gun.” A further 70 percent said they would never consider it for fear of failure when it’s needed most. A gun, especially when used defend lives, must work as intended without fail or flaw. This technology doesn’t exist.
In the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s President and CEO Steve Sanetti met with Vice President Biden who singled out NSSF’s Project Childsafe® program that has distributed over 38 million gun safety kits including gun locks through 15,000 police agencies in every U.S. state and territory.
He said then, “You guys are doing a lot of good things, including the gun lock thing, and this isn’t just Joe Biden blowing smoke. I mean it.”
NSSF in Action
We know now today’s reality is every Democratic candidate views firearms ownership as unacceptable. The lines are clearly drawn.
NSSF is ready. We refuse to stand by while politicians smear the very industry that provides the means to exercise the freedoms. The firearms industry is among the most- highly-regulated industries and we won’t be a convenient punching bag for misleading talking points.
We are aggressively pushing back in the media. We are not ceding an inch of ground whether that’s on the national debate stage or special sessions called by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to push his gun control agenda that’s already been rejected by the state’s General Assembly.
We are also informing our members of what the candidates are saying through our #GUNVOTE voter education program. Anyone is able to follow the updates on Twitter and Facebook to learn about the issues, stay informed and know how to register to vote. Get involved. Don’t risk your rights.
Lastly, NSSF’s Political Action Committee is engaged. We are working to support candidates for office who appreciate our industry, value our contributions to our communities and respect Second Amendment rights.
It will take all of us. Members need to get involved. Subscribe to NSSF’s alerts, get plugged in with the PAC and read up on what the candidates are saying through #GUNVOTE. Invite your family and friends. Our livelihood and our way of life depend on it.
Joe Bartozzi is the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“I will not comply…”
About 40 years ago or thereabouts the head of the Socialist Party of America announced that his party was withdrawing from active participation in American politics inasmuch as their efforts were redundant because the Democrat party “is already accomplishing all of our goals”. Keep in mind that Karl Marx said that Socialism is the same thing as Communism, the only difference being in how they are arrived at: Socialism by political means. Communism by military conquest. Therefore, a vote for a Democrat is a vote for Communism. Fact: During the 20th century, over 300 million people were murdered by Communist rulers who first disarmed their people. In “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzinitzen said that while he and his fellow prisoners were freezing and starving to death in the Siberian prisons, they realized that they would have been much better off if they had resisted arrest and the confiscation of their weapons when the soldiers came to their doors, hopefully killing some or many of those soldiers, rather than meekly submitting to authority. He said that even if we had been killed ourselves in the struggle, an honorable death defending hearth and family would have been preferred over slowly dying from exposure and starvation. I think we all had better start taking his words to heart.
It would please me if The Republicans, The KKK, the White supremacy and the Nazi stop using the Democrats and SOME of the gun rules they propose to get votes. The Democrats have no intent to fight against the gun community or purchasing firearms. The 10% who are preaching against guns do NOT speak for the 90% who oppose their fight against us. They are fighting about the Mentally defective and criminals being able to purchase gun. Like all the White Supremacy who have shot up schools, churches, theaters, shopping centers, and places of work. These people have no business buying guns. I am a Democrat and i have a house full of guns, 12 as a matter of fact, no one will take my guns. If you had the right ot the true information, you would stop using these topics to get votes out of the Shooting, hunting and sport shooting community. I’m just asking you to tell the truth
Perhaps you need to go back and really listen to what your party is saying.
Don’t be a useful idiot!
You may not own an AR15, but don’t let the Democrat Party lead you like a sheep. They want them all and that includes all of yours.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Declaration of Independence,
July 4, 1776
White Supremists?? You clearly are a racist and buy in to the propaganda spewed by the state run media.
NSSF & NRA are the true enemies of our 2A rights. They encouraged the BS Ban, appointment of anti gun judge Mark Bennett to the 9th District Court of Appeals, anti gun Chuck Canterbury to lead ATF and anti gun Bill Barr who is in favor of the NFA and told the SCOTUS to not hear the Kansas Suppressor case.
The Damocrats are the biggest enemy of this country. Their socialism will be the destruction of this Great Nation. They are worse than any enemy outside of our country. Always remember all the great nations of the world fell because of those inside who were the destroyers.
If anyone thinks we are safe with Trump in office, make no mistake about it, we are not! No one stood up to the most tyrannical move by any president in office, with the standing president banning a gun accessory, the bump stock. No one stood up until he mentioned banning suppressors on Pierce Morgans show. Hypocrisy screams even from supposedly second amendment supporters. You just let a president open the door to any and all banning of any firearm part on the market the standing president wants to make, no matter what political party they represent. You are not prepared for what awaits!!
I would think most dems would demand to have a gun while Trump is in office. You know, in case he does something “crazy”
“the most tyrannical move by any president”
Talk about over the top.
We should also recognize the losses when BATFE arbitrarily changes definitions and makes criminals out of law abiding citizens in so doing. NSSF (and NRA) need to be far better inline with ALL infringements upon our UNALIENABLE right to keep and bear arms being WRONG, and unacceptable.
No real talking points as if all the Democratic brains are connected to one computer they’re all robots. it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers going on.
The “democratic” reference is incorrect as there appears to be NOTHING democratic about democrats.
Attempting to bring-down a sitting President? Creating an election “insurance policy”? They may fire full-auto the term, “democratic” all they wish and they sure will but their actions remind me of the high price a man named McCarthy paid for standing-up against the democrats and their weaponized fake news organizations.
As for their identifying as opponents of the 2nd Amendment, tell us something new. Their purported hatred of firearms and firearm owners is, me thinks, another way to rake-in election bucks. They pander and puff to, and seemingly incite any group sufficiently naive to give them money.
At the start of each new Congress, all Members beginning a new term of office (the entire House of Representative and one-third of the Senate) take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Apparently, that means nothing to them because they are rarely defending the constitution, but instead attacking it. Any of them the even suggest changing our 2nd amendment rights should be jailed, or worse, for treason!
For over two years I’ve been writing and very politely asking various gun and ammunition manufacturers if they have been contributing to any pro gun politicians and how they ensure that they are truly for the 2A. Wasn’t it Hornady who took a stand a few years ago? They all need to do it. They need to punish those state and local governments who are only out to shut them down, and don’t BS me, they know who it is. I think they should follow the BCM lead. These companies deal with the enemy because of money. Well, are they going to say they didnt see this coming? BS. Fascists and communists always turn on those who help them.
Look, time for talk is over, these people want to destroy us, and you. Why would you have anything to do with them? Better wake up.
Well at least the democraps are finally showing their true colors on a public platform, displaying their total hatred for the 2A . Except for when it fits their needs of course like body guards / paid security ect. Oh I get it, anything for a vote!
Too bad they don’t address the real problem and leave the law abiding citizens alone. Oh, I forgot , it’s do as I say, not as I do.
Democrats are ENEMIES OF THE REPUBLIC, and should be treated with the loathing and disdain they deserve for it!
Revolution is the only solution.