 Minuteman Monthly Newsletter Issue 75 October 2007 |
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Welcome to this issue of the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter. This is the monthly communication from my Web site at www.SaveTheGuns.com. Thank you for reading this month's issue and for passing it on to a friend. There have been many new subscribers to this newsletter in the past few months. Many of you aren't aware of the history, core beliefs and basic mission here at www.SaveTheGuns.com. In this issue, I'll spend a little time telling you what my core beliefs are and what my goals are for this effort. Read on... SaveTheGuns.com Quotes of the Month "Where there is no law there is no freedom."
"The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution
was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.
This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects
from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the
reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.
One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and
assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
"Once a matter has become, in one way or another, the subject of regulation by the United Nations, be it by resolution or the General Assembly or by convention between member States [Nations] at the insistence of the United Nations, that subject ceases to be a matter being 'essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the member States...'"
"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and
the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be,
An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws."
"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States....Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America" SaveTheGuns.com Gun Safety Tip of the Month NEVER climb a tree or fence or jump a ditch with a loaded gun. You will have very little control over your firearm during a fall. Unload that firearm before you descend or ascend steep slopes. During an uncontrolled tumble or while sliding down a steep slope, your control of the firearm will be compromised. Unload it first. I would rather see you lose a chance shot at a game animal while doing something physically challenging, than to take a load of buckshot under your chin during a fall! In 2005, in my home state of Maine, a hunter accidentally killed his own young son after an uncontrolled slide down a steep slope while hunting. Before you do anything physically challenging, unload the firearm first. Please hear me on this. If this hunter that accidentally killed his own son could have that day back, he certainly would have unloaded his rifle before doing anything physically challenging. Honor the death of this twelve year old boy by learning from this tragic accidental discharge and unload the gun before attempting a physically challenging climb, jump or descent. For more gun safety rules, please see my comprehensive "Safety Rules" page on the Web at www.SaveTheGuns.com/safety_rules.htm Please contribute this month if you have not done so before.
NRA Membership Recruiter Corner http://membership.nrahq.org/default.asp?campaignid=XR017807 As you may already know, SaveTheGuns.com is one of thousands of NRA Membership Recruiters across America. As an NRA Recruiter, I'm officially a subcontractor for the National Rifle Association of America and not an employee. I make a small commission whenever you join, renew or give an NRA Membership as a gift. Please use the link above for all your NRA Membership needs. If your NRA Membership expires within four months, I encourage you to renew your membership early using my convenient link that lands right on the appropriate page at the National Rifle Association. I have written a Web page with more information on membership in the National Rifle Association. It has a list of benefits as well as membership options and prices. For your convenience the above NRA Membership link is there as well. http://www.savetheguns.com/nra_membership.htm P.S. Remember, my link goes directly to the NRA Membership check out page. Using my special link is a lot more convenient than trying to find the page yourself. As of this issue of the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter, I've recruited 136 NRA Members through this link. I want to be one of the top NRA Recruiters for the nine (9) state northeast district of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Please use my convenient links for all your NRA membership needs and pass it around to others. Contributions to SaveTheGuns.com Please use the following convenient link to securely use a credit card online to give SaveTheGuns.com a voluntary contribution: http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P3GXU3PIEM5ST1
To write me a personal check, it's almost as easy! Write out a personal check made payable to Marc H. Richardson. Sign it and put it into a stamped envelope addressed to: Marc H. Richardson My contributors have kept this informative Web site going for more than seven years. Become a contributor today... please? Active contributors are the only thing keeping www.SaveTheGuns.com online. Thank you very much for your support! A single $25.00 contribution was received since the last issue. Thanks Mandell! The teenager that I helped out with a school paper on the right to keep and bear arms also thanks you. Item of the Month Here is a great baseball-style jersey that says "Self Defense Is A Basic Human Right." It's $21.99 for a limited time!
Minuteman Monthly Newsletter Aiming Point First, for those of you who are new to www.SaveTheGuns.com and the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter, allow me a brief moment to introduce myself. My name is Marc Richardson. I'm an NRA Life Member, NRA Certified Firearm Instructor and NRA Membership Recruiter. I'll first go over a little history regarding my efforts. Then I'll get into my core beliefs and a basic statement on my missions as I see them. About once a year or so, I like to write a newsletter topic that attempts to bring me back to my core mission and reintroduce myself to the latest newcomers. Way back in the early-nineties I was asked by a co-worker to speak to his cub scout boys about gun safety. At the time, I was an annual NRA Member and shot target pistol on the weekends at a local gun club. I agreed to help him out and teach the scouts about gun safety before they actually went out on the firing range. I was under the impression that I would be speaking to a small handful of ten and eleven year old boys for an hour or so and give them the basics on gun safety. Boy oh boy was I mistaken... They put me on a stage, kept all the parents of the scouts there, invited other troops as well and I was on stage for more than two hours, with an audience of about seventy five people. I came away from that meeting happy about the opportunity to speak to scouts and their parents about gun safety, but I knew I could have done a better job and could have been more organized and thorough in my presentation. That's when I decided to become an NRA Certified Firearm Instructor and teach gun safety and firearm education the right way, through the National Rifle Association's Basic Firearm Education Courses. After years of teaching NRA Basic Firearm Education courses, I started a gun safety and firearm education Web site back in late 1998 called Marc's Gun Safety and Firearm Education Web site. I put it up with the free web space provided by my internet service provider. I started it in order to reach more people with a gun safety message and teach them the truth about guns and lawful gun owners. I thought that there was far too much misinformation about guns on the news and in the newspapers and I wanted to personally do something about it. I got top search engine rankings and quickly outgrew my free web space. In January 2000, I started my own domain here at www.SaveTheGuns.com. I wanted to continue to focus mostly on teaching proper gun safety and firearm handling and teach the truth about guns and lawful gun owners. It quickly began to take on a life of its own with an emerging focus on individual pro-gun activism. Now here we are, more than seven years later, I have seen 630,000+ visitors, including more than 75,000 children, 1,250,000 pages viewed and seventy five monthly newsletters. I have helped school children with homework and school projects involving gun safety and Second Amendment issues. I have helped nursing schools distribute real gun safety rules and facts and not the crap they get offered by anti-gun organizations. I have helped countless people who are new to gun ownership get a firm handle on the basics of responsibly owning and handling firearms. What are my core beliefs? I believe that most people who support gun control laws and would like to see more of them enacted are really decent, caring and concerned people who want to do something about violent crimes where guns are used to assault, rape, rob and murder. The only trouble is that these anti-gun advocates really don't have a good firearm education or know what they're talking about. Basically, I believe they're good people who don't have a clue on this issue. They've been seriously misled on the subject of firearms, the Second Amendment and acts of violent crime where guns are used. Most people who seek more gun control laws have never been properly introduced to the shooting sports. They get their gun knowledge from the evening news, the mainstream media and the entertainment industry. They consequently associate guns and anyone who owns them with acts of violence and see all gun owners as miscreants with evil tendencies. In many cases, guns are synonymous with evil in the minds of those who don't know the truth. This gross misperception of the honest gun owner must end.
Remember when guns were not considered to be instruments of evil? Do you remember when we used to blame violent criminal thugs for rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults and murders? Do you remember when guns were viewed as a useful tool, valued for their protective value and when gun ownership was protected by the Bill of Rights? I believe there's a predictable sequence that most anti-gunners go through. It starts out with a complete lack of knowledge about guns and lawful gun owners. The mainstream media and the entertainment industry feed this lack of knowledge with misinformation, half-truths and some outright lies. This lack of knowledge, fed by misinformation, creates an unreasonable fear of guns. Guns get associated with acts of violence because the only exposure these people get to firearms are when they're used unlawfully and immorally in the entertainment industry. When the entertainment industry shows guns performing unrealistic feats it creates an irrational fear. Television viewers and movie-goers see a snub-nosed .38 Special revolver shot at a moving vehicle, making it launch twelve feet into the air and explode into a superheated fireball and are amazed at the power of firearms. It's precisely this kind of crapola that creates an unreasonable fear among people who have never been properly exposed to firearms. This unreasonable fear, leads right into a hatred of both guns and those who own and use them. Throw in a little activist nature and voila, you have yourself a vocal anti-gun advocate who has no idea what they're talking about. Kind of like that idiot Rosie O'Donnell. A fairly decent person, who knows nothing whatsoever about guns and honest gun owners. But then again, calling Rosie O'Donnell and her ilk 'decent people' might be a stretch of the imagination. It's my belief that teaching people, especially non-gun owning types, the truth about guns and gun owners can virtually put an end to misguided gun control efforts. Sure, you'll always have your anti-gun legislator whose mind is set on depriving people of their freedom, but if his/her constituents are fully informed on the issue, they'll be voted out of office as they should be. "Guard with
jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but
downright force. When you give up that force, you are
ruined." The Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms and the thoughts of the Founding Fathers are largely absent from today's public school classrooms. The truth must be told. It especially must be told to America's youth. Without involving the children of today in our fight to preserve our freedom, it will surely be lost within a few generations. Some would argue that there is a secretive and underlying effort to deprive Americans of their freedoms and I wouldn't disagree with that too quickly. It's pure common sense that killers and rapists don't concern themselves with laws that regulate gun ownership. That is where individual activism should come in. We need to be calling, faxing, writing and e-mailing our elected officials on these issues when they arise. If they continue to attack the freedom of the people, they need to leave public office and be sent back to the private sector, plain and simple. It's my belief that there is some kind of under-handed and stealthy effort to slowly deprive Americans of their long-held freedoms. There is a kind of slowly creeping tide of Socialism in America. Most Americans are completely asleep regarding the erosion of freedom as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Perhaps there are only two things responsible for the erosion of our freedoms. If there are only two, it is surely the ignorance of the average American on exactly what our freedoms are and secondly, it's the apathy and indifference of the American who knows their history and who sees their freedom bleeding away, but does nothing to help stop the flow. "The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." Only one in two thousand (1 in 2000) Americans can name the first five Presidents of the United States. Even less than that could name the first five amendments in the Bill of Rights. If we aren't aware of what our rights are, then we will certainly lose them and lose them quickly. The Founding Fathers knew that any government always seeks to gain more power and authority for itself. That is exactly why we have a Bill of Rights. But sadly it seems as if very few people are even aware of the very foundation poured by the founders. We should all stand up together as America's gun owners and in a loud voice tell these anti-gun legislators to leave our Bill of Rights alone. The Bill of Rights is, or rather should be outside the reach of elected officials. It's our solemn duty to make sure our elected officials know that our Bill of Rights belongs to the people of the United States and they are to keep their hands off of it. "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects
from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the
reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.
One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and
assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
"I hope,
therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against
the Federal government as they are already guarded against their State
governments, in most instances." I believe that we can do better, much better in fact. It's one of my missions to get a much higher percentage of gun owners to wake up, smell the coffee, get off the couch and get into the battle. There are approximately eighty million gun owners in the United States, give or take a few million. In comparison, there are only about four million members of the National Rifle Association, which is the nation's largest pro-Second Amendment group. It is shocking to most pro-gun people that only five percent (5%) of America's gun owners are also active members of the National Rifle Association. As of this writing, as an NRA Membership Recruiter, I have personally recruited 136 members by myself. It's also my belief that the NRA could be doing so much more if only those gun owners who identify with the NRA message, would simply rejoin and/or keep their memberships current. Many gun owners feel frustrated with the NRA and say that they're not doing enough to fight for and preserve the integrity of the Second Amendment. Or that they have compromised too much in the fight. However, it's just these most vocal ANTI-NRA voices who have never bothered to join or keep their memberships current. I believe that if all former members who have let their memberships expire, would simply rejoin and then work for change, we could accomplish great things together. We could have nationally televised advertisement campaigns, more public school educational efforts and much more. Asking the NRA to do more or change their focus, without keeping one's membership current and staying involved are empty and hollow words. The mailing addresses of the NRA Board of Directors are listed in every issue. Rejoin the NRA, renew your membership and start being an advocate for change. Join my fight to grow the National Rifle Association and improve their focus, by sending the following webpage to everyone you know. Join, rejoin or give away an NRA Membership
today! What are my missions? My missions here at www.SaveTheGuns.com consist of efforts in a few specific areas. There are a few things that I feel I want to focus upon, aim directly at and accomplish. These goals are long-term goals and I expect to be working diligently on them as years go by. Provided of course that my subscribers and visitors continue to support these efforts. ** There are between three and four children each week ages 0 to 19 years who have to be buried by their parents and grandparents because of the mishandling of a loaded firearm. Mission number one is to bring this number of unnecessary youth burials down to new lows with each passing year. Accidental deaths involving our youth will never completely disappear, but if I can personally play a role in preventing a parent from having to make funeral arrangements for a child, I want to make that a primary mission. ** Once again, I believe that most anti-gun advocates are good, decent and caring individuals who want to do something about acts of violence committed with firearms. Unfortunately, almost all of them don't have a clue what they're talking about. Mission number two is to keep pumping out the information about how violent criminals actually obtain the guns they use. I also want to reiterate that those who are willing or inclined to commit a violent crime are never deterred by laws that regulate guns and how restricting the rights of honest gun owners only diminishes freedom. In addition I want to offer legislative solutions that will work to keep guns out of the hands of violent thugs while preserving the original intent of the right to keep and bear arms. These efforts include adding five (5) years onto a burglary if a firearm is taken, per gun. I would also like to see escalating mandatory prison sentences added to a crime of rape, robbery, aggravated assault or murder if a firearm was possessed, brandished, fired or used to injure. We must make violent criminal thugs think twice about choosing a gun to commit a crime with. ** My third and final aim is to prompt a higher percentage of America's gun owners to get off their butt-cheeks and get into the battle. I hope to accomplish this through my efforts as an NRA Membership Recruiter and by personally urging the inactive gun owner to actually do something to preserve their own rights instead of merely pointing a finger of blame at pro-gun organizations of which they have never even joined. Thank you for receiving and reading my Minuteman Monthly Newsletter. I hope you continue to visit and support my efforts. I know that many of my readers have done much more than I to preserve our rights, I want to know about it. If your personal efforts to protect our right to keep and bear arms is interesting enough, e-mail me and I'll feature you and your story in an upcoming issue. If you're very experienced in this field and have something you'd like to say, then e-mail me directly and I might allow you to express your thoughts in an upcoming newsletter. I want to hear from you. Thanks for reading!
Closing Comments Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter. I encourage you to pass it on. You may use this newsletter as you see fit. You may post it, blog it, print it, forward it and publish it. The only thing I ask is that somewhere in your material, make sure the URL www.SaveTheGuns.com appears prominently. Thanks,
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