Safety, Responsibility, Freedom The NRA's Message for America by Mrs. Tanya K. Metaksa, Executive Director NRA Institute for Legislative Action Fresno Rotary Club, Fresno, California November 13, 1995 Day in and day out, NRA sends a three-part message to America ... Safety. Responsibility. Freedom. It's a pretty easy message to understand. It doesn't take any time to decipher. And if you doubt that's our message, for thirty-five dollars a year, you can become a NRA member and see for yourself that, day in and day out, we send the same message to this great country ... Safety. Responsibility. Freedom. NRA has been in the training and education business for more than a century. For 125 years, we've offered world-class training. Today, there's a difference. Today, we're doing more and doing it better. NRA is ten-thousand NRA-certified police firearms instructors who, each year, work with four-hundred and fifty-thousand law enforcement officers at the local, state and federal level. NRA is thirty-five thousand certified instructors -- many of them women -- who teach three-quarters of a million Americans every year how to be safe, responsible firearms owners. NRA is elementary school teachers -- that's right. NRA is school teachers who teach an accident prevention message that has reached six million youngsters across the nation. It's called the Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program. It teaches a valuable -- yet values-free -- message: If you see a gun, stop. Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult. Now, I said that Eddie Eagle is values-free. By that I mean, it doesn't impart political values. It imparts safety. Regardless of how you feel about guns, your children can learn safety from Eddie Eagle. Pro- or anti-, Eddie won't change your mind. You can be a non-gun-owning household, and Eddie won't change your mind. But if you do come from a non-gun-owning household, maybe your children need Eddie more than mine. If some gang-banger drops a gun in a parking lot, my children and grandchildren know just what to do to ensure their safety. Do you children know? Eddie can help. The Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program is more than just a slogan. It is a complete teaching program developed by a team of professionals. And you needn't take my word for it. Recently, Eddie Eagle's creator won the National Safety Council's top honors for national community service. If you're a teacher or a member of the PTA, you can make Eddie Eagle a member of your school's faculty. Women in this country are taking responsibility for their own safety, and NRA is there to help. A few years ago, I spearheaded a group of women from the NRA board, staff and membership to create a new NRA safety program. Called REFUSE TO BE A VICTIM, it is the first NRA course of instruction that is not a gun course. Taught by and for women only, REFUSE TO BE A VICTIM enables women to develop their own personal safety strategy at home, in the parking lot, on the road. Our instructors have taken the REFUSE TO BE A VICTIM course to dozens of cities across the United States. In the last few months, more and more commercial companies are asking NRA to teach their female employees how to refuse to be a victim. So, if you're a woman -- or if you have women employees -- NRA can help teach them how to refuse to be a victim and, as we do, send a message of safety and responsibility. There's another NRA division that helps send the message of safety and responsibility. It's called CrimeStrike. In the first six months of this year alone, NRA, through its CrimeStrike Division, worked toward criminal justice reform and victims' rights in fifteen states -- from "Three Strikes You're Out" in Vermont to juvenile justice reform in Virginia. Think about it. Criminal justice reform. And victims' rights. In fifteen states. In just six months. By one citizens' group. The National Rifle Association. Let me give you some examples. NRA has worked for Two and Three Strikes laws to ensure that repeat offenders are kept behind bars for life. In fact, NRA was the key factor in the first 3 Strikes initiative in Washington state. Later, we helped pass 3 Strikes in California. NRA has worked for truth-in-sentencing to require violent criminals to serve at least eighty-five percent of sentences imposed. And we've worked for pre-trial detention of dangerous offenders, so predators don't get back to the streets before the arresting officer makes it home for dinner. Catch-and-release may be fine for trout fishing, but catch-and- release is no match for today's Billy the Kid. That's why NRA is lobbying for juvenile justice reform to make sure anyone who commits adult crimes is sentenced to adult time. 8----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 Amiga Channel BBS - 804-733-5596 - USR Dual Standard 6----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 From: 2Los Gatos #1 @5080 WWIVnet Re: Speech 2 0R: net33: @6125 (via @6001) [04:33 11/22/95] 0R: net33: @6001 (via @4001) [23:46 11/21/95] 0R 34 11/19 23:20 WWIVnet 2003->4001 0R 35 11/19 00:52 WWIVnet ->2003 0R 35 11/18 23:24 WWIVnet ->12001 0R 35 11/18 23:01 WWIVnet ->5080 -------------------- But that also adds up to criminals getting past the police, getting past the system, and getting into our neighborhoods. So NRA has diligently pursued the safety of our citizens by protecting freedom. In ten states just this year, we've ensured that honest citizens have the freedom to apply for a permit to carry a firearm for personal protection. We call it Right to Carry. We believe that, without this freedom, there can be no safety. America has seen the NRA transform our fundamental right of self- protection into fair, effective laws that assure the Right to Carry is granted to responsible, certifiably law-abiding citizens. Even TIME magazine tipped its hat to our enactment just this year of Right to Carry in Virginia, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas. Later this year, it was signed into law by the governors of Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada. We passed Right to Carry in North Carolina. We have improved the existing law in Florida, and we have extended Pennsylvania's law to the good citizens of the birthplace of freedom, Philadelphia. A lot of people express fears about Right to Carry. Are the fears new? No. Do they have any basis in fact? No. When Right to Carry was introduced in Florida in the late 1980s, opponents expressed much the same fears. They charged that the law would bring the Wild West to every street corner. Florida, the "Sunshine State," would become the "Gunshine State." Perhaps this controversy prompted legislators there to incorporate a tracking system into the law. That tracking system has proven the naysayers wrong. Does Right to Carry prompt crime? Since Right to Carry passed in Florida in 1987, the state's homicide rate decreased twenty two percent, while it rose across the country fifteen percent. During the same period, Florida's handgun-related homicide rate decreased twenty-nine percent while it rose fifty percent nationwide. Won't everyone carry? From 1987 to the present, Florida issued about three-hundred thousand carry licenses in a state of some fourteen million. Won't permit holders commit crimes? Have accidents? Hardly. Of the nearly 300,000 permits issued since 1987, only seventeen-one- thousandths of one percent have been revoked for some criminal infraction, and fatal firearms-related accidents there are down thirty percent from 1987 to 1993. Doesn't Right to Carry generate problems for police? Not according to Florida's top cop. Earlier this year, Florida's Law Enforcement Commissioner, James T. Moore, reported to the governor, "From a law enforcement perspective, the licensing process has not resulted in problems in the community." Twenty-eight states have Right to Carry. Twenty-two do not. Including your state. In those twenty-two states without Right to Carry, including your state, people trust their doctor with their very lives. But they don't trust their doctor to make it safely home at night. The law enforcement record of the twenty-eight states which have Right to Carry -- the police record of those twenty-eight states -- proves that law-abiding citizens are not crime problems but, potentially, crime victims. The law enforcement record proves that, with freedom, citizens demonstrate responsibility and achieve safety. That's NRA's message for America, and for California. Safety. Responsibility. Freedom. New programs for children. New programs for women. And a new appreciation of an old, old concept, that the right to defend yourself is fundamental, and this fundamental right doesn't stop at your front door. Thank you. =+=+=+=+ This information is provided as a service of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, Fairfax, VA. This and other information on the Second Amendment and the NRA is available at any of the following URL's: http://WWW.NRA.Org, gopher://GOPHER.NRA.Org, wais://WAIS.NRA.Org, ftp://FTP.NRA.Org, mailto:LISTPROC@NRA.Org (Send the word help as the body of a message) Information may also be obtained by connecting directly to the NRA-ILA GUN-TALK Bulletin Board System at (703) 934-2121. 8----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 Amiga Channel BBS - 804-733-5596 - USR Dual Standard 6----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5