by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President
For anyone who doubts President Barack Obama’s dedication to a second-term all-out war on the Second Amendment, say just one name—Mayor Rahm Emanuel—the new boss of Chicago machine politics, tapped as the star co-chair for Obama’s re-election campaign.
Obama’s Chicago-based campaign manager characterized the mayor as key among those who “share the president’s vision of a future. …”
The focus of that Obama-Emanuel shared vision for the nation’s gun owners can be summed up in Emanuel’s pursuit of gun bans by any means.
This is no honorary job. It is real power linking Obama’s re-election with Emanuel’s fanaticism for destroying the Second Amendment.
Emanuel has spent his political life pressing for gun control—as policy advisor to President Bill Clinton, as a member of Congress, then as Obama’s White House chief of staff. As mayor of Chicago, he is doubling down on his vendetta against lawful gun owners. And as the most visible campaign co-chair, his efforts are unconditionally tied to Obama’s re-election agenda.
Days before his campaign appointment, Emanuel launched a vicious attack on law-abiding Illinois gun owners that was stunning even by Chicago standards. Blaming peaceable citizens for Chicago’s runaway criminal violence, Emanuel has demanded that Illinois firearm owners be forced to register their handguns at $65 a pop. Possession of an unregistered gun by ordinary citizens would be a felony. Further, gun owners would be required to re-register their firearms every five years, paying an additional $25 fee per gun. Failure to comply would be a criminal act.
Forget to renew your registration: go to jail. Move and fail to notify authorities within 72 hours: go to jail. Take your handgun to the range, but forget your registration certificate: go to jail.
As a final insult, the mayor is demanding a punitive or “sin tax” on all ammunition sales to pay for trauma wrought by violent Chicago criminals whom he is unable or unwilling to control.
In a Feb. 9, 2012, report headlined “Emanuel Calls For Statewide Gun Registry,” CBS in Chicago reported Emanuel as bragging, “I have a long history, both on the Brady Bill, assault weapon ban and passing gun legislation.”
Boss Emanuel credited his draconian gun registration scheme to Rev. Michael Pfleger, a radical leftist whom Barack Obama once characterized in the Chicago Sun-Times as being among his most personal “spiritual advisors.”
What does Obama’s “spiritual advisor” say about the NRA? Try this from a guest sermon: “It’s a midnight hour when gun manufacturers and distributors and the NRA under the disguise of rights to hunt, continue to market guns as part of America’s new wardrobe and continue to arm gangs and criminals out of back rooms and back alleys of our cities, and then … seek like Pilate to wash their hands of the responsibility and accountability, of their death dealing, that causes hearses to drive down the streets of our neighborhoods carrying the bodies of our children and they say ‘We are not guilty.’”
Speaking of death and murder, for those who don’t recall, it was Pfleger who called for the killing of a Chicago area gun store owner and threatened pro-gun Illinois legislators as targets to be “snuffed out.” In June 2007, leading a near-lynch mob at that suburban gun store, Pfleger screamed for the violent demise of the licensed dealer:
“We’re going to find you and snuff you out. … Like a rat, you’re going to hide. But like a rat, we’re going to catch you and pull you out. … We’re going to snuff out John Riggio.” As for pro-gun rights state legislators: “We’re going to snuff out legislators that are voting against our gun laws. We’re coming for you because we’re not going to sit idly.”
For his clear threats of violence, there was no prosecution. Under the “Chicago Way,” Pleger’s call to “snuffing” is apparently protected.
And today, Rahm Emanuel’s in-your-face, Pfleger-inspired gun proposals are part and parcel to his being chosen as an Obama campaign majordomo. This is the web of Chicago thug political connections that cannot be ignored. Know your enemies by the company they keep.
Among others tapped as campaign chairs who “each share the president’s vision” are a select group—“F-rated” gun-ban politicians including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.; Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, I; California Attorney General Kamala Harris, D, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, D.
Guilt by association? You bet.
With all of the talk about “transparency,” one thing is truly clear—the web of lies spun about the president’s phony, claimed support of the Second Amendment. Obama’s vision of the Second Amendment and the vision of his fellow travelers, Pfleger and Boss Emanuel, is the one that disarmed the citizens of both Washington, D.C., and Chicago—the vision that says there is no individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Every gun owner must be “All In” to defeat Barack Obama in the political fight of our generation this Nov. 6—when all of our freedoms are on the line.
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