president’s column
By John C. Sigler, President

Freedom’s Future Is In Your Hands

   Summer’s over, the Supreme Court has spoken and, by a 5-4 decision, the world now knows that the Second Amendment does, indeed, protect an individual right. Now that we’ve celebrated, it’s time to focus on the future—and that means the 2008 general elections, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
   As you know, presidential candidate Barack Obama has supported and proposed some of the most radically oppressive gun bans and anti-gun laws in American history. (For a full report with documented sources go to www.nraila.org/obama.)
   What you may not know is that Obama and his anti-gun allies are building an enormous political machine the size and strength of which are unprecedented in American political history. I need your help, right now, to fight fire with fire and to deliver freedom from the jaws of this clear and present danger.
   Unless you do your part to match, meet and reverse the momentum of Obama’s political juggernaut, we could face the most anti-gun president—ever.
   You’ve probably heard that Barack Obama began as a so-called “community organizer” in Chicago in 1992, where “community organizer” was code for “aggressive political operative.”
   Obama headed the local branch of “Project Vote,” which recruited and trained more than 700 deputy voter registrars who went into urban Chicago neighborhoods and registered more than 150,000 new voters in just six months.
   In 1993, Chicago magazine reported that the 1992 elections “turned on these totals”—elections that made Bill Clinton president.
   Now, “Obama & Co.” have taken their program nationwide.
   In May, Obama’s campaign launched a massive voter registration and mobilization effort in all 50 states, registering hundreds of thousands of new voters: 150,000 in Indiana; 165,000 in North Carolina and 200,000 in Pennsylvania.
   Meanwhile, Project Vote joined forces with another group called “ACORN,” stopping people on city sidewalks and registering them to vote. (To read what’s being said about “ACORN,” go to www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968).
   According to Project Vote, they’ve recruited more than 1 million new voters in each of the past two national elections, and expect to add another 1.2 million voters in 2008.
   I ask you, now, to help me fight fire with fire by matching every one of those new Obama votes with new
pro-freedom voters of our own.
   I need your help to find every hunter; every recreational shooter; every rifle, shotgun or handgun owner; and every law-abiding, freedom-loving patriot in America, and transform them into informed, engaged, energized, registered and ready-to-roll “Freedom First Voters” on Election Day.
   If you’re not registered to vote, register now. Then, go out and find every gun owner and hunter you know and get them registered to vote. Remind them that every vote counts—especially this year!
   Freedom isn’t free. And we must never allow others to do our work for us—now is the time to put an end to complacency, or whatever it is that allows gun owners to shirk their responsibility as American citizens by failing to vote.
   For information on how to register to vote in your state, or any state, go to www.nraila.org/vote2008 today!
   If you still need proof that your vote is important, simply consider D.C. v. Heller—the most important U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment in U.S. history.
   Where would we be today if Al Gore, John Kerry—or worse yet, Barack Obama—had appointed the last two Supreme Court justices?
   What if, instead of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, we now had—thanks to a President Obama—a Chief Justice Clinton, and a Justice Schumer, Edwards or Biden on the Supreme Court?
   How would they have defined your most precious constitutional freedoms?
   A President Obama wouldn’t simply get to handpick Supreme Court justices; he’d also choose all of the hundreds of federal judges a president typically gets to appoint.
   Worse, if anti-gun forces also control Congress, the Senate will be a mere rubber stamp for Obama’s appointees.
   With the national debate over gun bans now moving into the federal judiciary as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Heller case (the D.C. gun-ban case), it’s more important than ever that we have a pro-freedom president to nominate pro-freedom federal judges, and a pro-freedom Senate to confirm them.
   Indeed, from the White House to your statehouse, from Capitol Hill to your hometown, the candidates you elect on Tuesday, November 4, will have more of an effect on your Right to Keep and Bear Arms than ever before.
We must match “The Obama Machine” new voter for new voter if we don’t want Heller reversed. Please, step to the plate and do your part today!
   Register to vote! Then convince every other gun owner and hunter you can find to do the same. Then, get ready for the fight of your life to save your Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
   The future of freedom in America is in your hands.