by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President - Tuesday, August 25, 2015

This feature appears in the September ‘15 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.



Of the 318 million people who make up the U.S. population, there is only one Dylann Roof—the confessed murderer who cold-bloodedly killed nine worshipers on June 17 at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

To that unspeakably heartless crime, Americans everywhere grieved for the victims and their families. But our shared sorrow was instantly and all too predictably met by gun-banners charging us with collective guilt.

But the killer alone was responsible for his evil, hate-filled act. Not you. Not me. Not any other single human being. Not people who share a belief in freedom. Not people who cherish the Second Amendment. Not the NRA.Yet because this 21-year-old accused murderer used a firearm to commit his cowardly, heinous crimes, every peaceable gun owner in the nation is being told by the likes of President Barack Obama that we must pay the price for this abject evil.

Yet because this 21-year-old accused murderer used a firearm to commit his cowardly, heinous crimes, every peaceable gun owner in the nation is being told by the likes of President Barack Obama that we must pay the price for this abject evil. They demand that we—as free people, as innocent individuals—submit to collective mass punishment.

Immediately after the shooting, Obama declared that this ghastly event occurred “because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hand on a gun.”

“Every country has violent, hateful or mentally unstable people. What’s different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns.”

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

Those statements by the president were preposterous lies, yet they went unchallenged by the media.

Keep in mind that on June 26, just days after the Charleston murders, a lone gunman in a rubber boat drifted ashore at a popular beach resort in Tunisia and randomly shot and killed 38 mostly British and Irish tourists. Tunisian gun laws—which are among the most restrictive in the world—didn’t stop this mass slaughter.

And there was the January 2015 shooting in Paris where two armed men killed 11 and wounded 11 others in an attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. French gun laws didn’t stop these assassins.

Try some headlines on stories most Americans never read because they didn’t serve the domestic gun-ban agenda.

From RT.com, Feb. 24, 2015: “9 people dead in shooting spree at Czech pub.” Despite tough laws, the mayor of the town where the murders occurred said, “I cannot see security measures that would prevent incidents like this.”

From the Guardian, April 7, 2011: “Brazil shooting: 12 children killed in school rampage.” Brazil’s near-total ban on guns didn’t make a difference.

Then there was the horrific 2011 rampage in Norway where a licensed gun owner, posing as a policeman, used registered guns to kill 69 people, mostly children, at a summer camp. Earlier, he also murdered eight people and wounded 11 with a fertilizer car bomb in Oslo. To arrive at his own Australia solution today, Obama and his cohorts in Congress need one thing—a list of gun owners and their firearms.

From the Voice of America News, June 2, 2010: “Britain in Shock After Lone Gunman Kills 12.” Britain’s confiscatory gun laws didn’t stop the killer.

From ABC News, April 26, 2009: “18 Killed in German School Shooting.” Germany has some of the harshest gun laws on the planet.

But Obama and his media acolytes would have Americans believe the fiction that mass killings are uniquely American and tied to our Second Amendment.

The president’s immediate reaction to the Charleston tragedies was to demand his version of “common sense” (aka, nonsense) gun control modeled on Australia’s response to a mass shooting in 1996. His threat was prefaced with a snide “reassurance” that his agenda was not “a wild-eyed plot to take everybody’s guns away.”

In truth, it is just that. It is as serious as a deadly snakebite.

“When Australia had a mass killing,” the president pontificated, “it was just so shocking the entire country said, ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws,’ and they did. And it hasn’t happened since.”

Every time Obama embraces the Australian gun laws, he and his willing media ignore and dismiss the details of what happened to our English-speaking cousins down under. That is a huge lie by omission.

When an Australian madman ended the lives of 35 innocent victims in 1996—using guns stolen from his first murder victim, a licensed owner—the Australian government acted with massive retribution against all law-abiding gun owners. It resulted in government destruction of all registered semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump shotguns that were confiscated from every licensed gun owner in Australia. Winchester Model 12s, Ruger 10-22s, Browning Auto-5s. Remington 1100s. All taken. All torched.

That little tag about the effectiveness of the ’96 Australian ban at the end of Obama’s claim—“And it hasn’t happened since”—was a lie as well. It did happen.

Despite the fact that law-abiding Aussies were disarmed with the ’96 mass gun confiscation, another insane killer murdered two and wounded five at Monash University in 2002 using a handgun, prompting another round of mass firearm confiscation—with government contractors torching a wide selection of registered handguns forcibly taken from licensed owners.As NRA members, our mission in the coming months leading up to the 2016 presidential election is to fight back against Obama’s tyrannical obsession with civil disarmament by defeating any scheme he cynically produces.

To arrive at his own Australia solution today, Obama and his cohorts in Congress need one thing—a list of gun owners and their firearms.

And this is what the incessant demand for “universal” background checks is all about. Who lawfully owns what. In the gun-confiscation mindset, this is deemed “common sense.”

Databases on all law-abiding gun owners is driving former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s state-by-state big-lie campaign to create universal gun owner registration under the guise of expanded background checks affecting all gun transfers, including private sales among family members and friends.

As a British licensed gun owner grimly told me after his registered firearms were taken for destruction: “Don’t let them register your guns. If they don’t know where they are or that you have them, they can’t come and take them away from you.”

Connect the dots. Obama’s obsession with Australia’s gun ban only makes sense if he can get that initial step. A “universal” background check system is the Trojan horse for what is to come.

With his embrace of Australian tyranny, Obama’s threat to our liberty and the existence of the Second Amendment is real and immediate.

As NRA members, our mission in the coming months leading up to the 2016 presidential election is to fight back against Obama’s tyrannical obsession with civil disarmament by defeating any scheme he cynically produces. And it is equally critical to replace this toxic regime with patriots led by a president and a Congress dedicated to restoring the unique American freedom Obama pledges to destroy.