Grand Slam 3/Grand Slam 3.iso/047/dbate019.arj/NRA.TXT

Text File | 1995-08-04 | 20KB | 416 lines

     #<PRE>
                                Excerpted from

                               Libernet Digest
                                Wed,  2 Aug 95
                            Volume 109: Issue   7


                                Tanya Metaksa:
           RIGHTS, RISKS AND THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A FREE PEOPLE
                           Posted by Matthew Gaylor

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     Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 19:23:27 -0400
     From: [e-mail] (Matthew Gaylor)
     Subject: Tanya Metaksa:RIGHTS, RISKS AND THE
              RESPONSIBILITIES OF A FREE PEOPLE
     To: [e-mail]

                                RIGHTS, RISKS
                           AND THE RESPONSIBILITIES
                               OF A FREE PEOPLE

                                 A Speech by
                  Mrs. Tanya K. Metaksa, Executive Director
         National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action
       before the 17th Annual National Conservative Student Conference
                          Young America's Foundation
                         Friday, July 28, at 4:00 pm.

     As many of you know, my father was John Chamberlain, one of the
     founding fathers of America's conservative movement.  This man,
     someone who William F. Buckley, Jr., and Whittaker Chambers called
     the dearest of friends, passed away this Spring ... but not without
     leaving all of us a legacy.

     It was in the 1940s when world events showed my father that
     individual rights were increasingly important -- all important --
     in a world dominated by statism and "political" solutions.  In a
     book review, he wrote an aside about this new conviction of his:

          "I have simply lived to see at least four major brands of
          statism tried out," he wrote.

     He mentioned Stalinism, of course, and Nazism. But he also wrote,

          "I have also been a witness (sometimes on the spot) to the
          destruction of vitality and initiative forced by socialist
          statism in Britain.  And I have lived through eighteen years
          of New Deal and Fair Deal governments."

     He described his central values -- his politics -- as a movement, a
     constant struggle to, quote, rescue us from domination by the
     state-worshipping intellectuals and restore decentralized rule by
     the intelligent man.

     That was written decades ago -- I'm sure today that he'd include
     intelligent women! -- but that was his core sentiment -- his legacy
     to the American conservative movement -- his legacy to all of you.

     You young conservatives are all part of this never-ending movement,
     the constant swell of an ocean of people who want to protect
     freedom, limit government, safeguard rights and advance moral
     responsibility.

     That is what the 3.5 million members of the National Rifle
     Association of America are all about -- protecting freedom and
     safeguarding rights.

     But too many of your elders in the conservative movement are
     forgetting the simple arithmetic of our rights, so take out your
     mental pens to make an important mental note.  This is the simple
     arithmetic of our rights:

          Rights plus responsibility always equal risks.

     Let me state the formula again: Rights, even when coupled with
     responsibility, always equal risks.

     NRA and gun owners nationwide exercised our rights last fall, and
     we took responsibility for our country's future by changing the
     face of our nation.

     NRA backed 276 U.S. Senate and House candidates.  Of 276, 221 won.

     Of all candidates elected to the U.S. House, 224 were A-rated by
     the NRA.

     In over ten thousand races at the federal, state and local levels,
     82 percent of NRA-backed candidates won.

     Does the name "Foley" ring a bell?

     Not anymore.

     Thanks in large measure to NRA, the first U.S. Speaker of the House
     to be unseated in 138 years lost.  And today, a new man wields the
     gavel in the U.S. House of Representatives.

     On January 13th, one politician made it perfectly clear.  He told
     the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and I quote, the
     NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House, unquote.

     That was probably the first and the last time I will ever agree with
     the man who uttered those words, President Bill Clinton.

     We exercised our rights.  We did so responsibly.

     So, where's the risk?

     The risk is that you don't incur the admiration of your adversary,
     you incur his wrath.  The risk is that our association -- and I
     hope that includes most of you -- have been under constant,
     sustained attack by Clinton, his agencies, his clones in Congress
     and his allies in the media elite.

     By exercising our rights with responsibility, we have incurred the
     wrath of what my father called "state-worshipping intellectuals."

     When you favor good government properly limited in power, you run
     the risk of being labeled anti-government.  It happens to us, so it
     will happen to you.

     But the so-called anti-government charge is a dog that just won't
     hunt.  And unlike Bill Clinton, I know, because I'm a real hunter.
     Consider:

     * NRA was involved in over ten thousand elections impacting every
     single level of government!  That's not just pro- government.  That
     is government!

     * Consider also that the majority of our members serve, have served
     or have a family member serving in the U.S. Armed Forces!  That's a
     record I'll compare with the members of the Democratic Leadership
     Council any day.

     Anti-police?  That's another non-sporting dog.  It was NRA who
     invented police firearms training in 1916, and it's NRA whose ten
     thousand certified law enforcement instructors today work with over
     four hundred and fifty thousand law enforcement officers -- local,
     state and federal.

     NRA also buys a $25,000 life insurance policy free of charge for
     every law enforcement officer who joins.  Since 1992, we have
     provided $450,000 in payments to the survivors of our law
     enforcement members who lost their lives in the line of duty.

     If you work out the figures, that means -- some law enforcement
     agency loses an officer, an agent, a sheriff or deputy every other
     month --and so does NRA.

     NRA is more than firearms safety training.  NRA is more than the
     fight to safeguard our rights.  NRA is also about putting criminals
     behind bars.  NRA is perhaps the only citizen organization that has
     worked for tough criminal justice reform and victims' rights in
     fifteen states in the first six months of this year alone -- from
     "Three Strikes You're Out" in Vermont to "Hard Time for Armed
     Crime" in Washington state.

     But remember the arithmetic of our rights.  Even with
     responsibility comes risk.  And the risk we've been running in the
     last few months is the steady rush of ridicule, innuendo and hatred
     pouring out of the White House and from the lips of politicians who
     want our rights and want our power all to themselves.

     To the best of our ability, NRA will not let that happen, not this
     year, and certainly not on election day in 1996.

     Rights plus responsibility yields risk.  Have your elders learned
     that simple arithmetic?  I'm afraid the answer is not all of them -
     - not yet.

     We have seen the Republicans in the Government Oversight and the
     Crime and Criminal Justice Subcommittees examine the tragedy near
     Waco, Texas, in 1993 which claimed the lives of four federal agents
     and more than eighty civilians.  There have been brilliant
     inquiries made by members of this body -- by Bob Barr of Georgia,
     John Shadegg of Arizona, Ed Bryant of Tennessee -- just to name a
     few.

     Legally and ethically, independent of this panel, NRA conducted its
     own fact-finding inquiry.  We were perfectly within our rights to
     hire the nation's foremost engineering analysis firm to look into
     the Waco disaster objectively.  That firm, Failure Analysis
     Associates, is the team of Ph.D.s who uncovered the O- ring problem
     in the Challenger spacecraft disaster -- and discovered the
     ignitors placed on GM pick-up truck by NBC Dateline.

     Legally and ethically, through counsel, NRA asked the Subcommittee
     that, if the opportunity presented itself, would a firm, even if
     retained by an advocacy group, be permitted to x- ray the fire-
     damaged guns retrieved from the ashes in Waco?  The Subcommittee
     queried the House ethics panel, and that panel's leading democrat,
     Jim McDermott, co-signed a return letter saying there was no
     ethical or legal problem.

     Failure Analysis made the trip to Austin -- but was denied access
     to the guns by an on-scene personal assistant to Attorney General
     Janet Reno.  Why?

     This firm would have provided its scientific data for any other
     expert to duplicate.  They would have explained their findings,
     whether they found one illegal gun or one hundred illegal guns.  X-
     rays employ photons.  Unlike politicians, photons move in a
     straight line and never, ever lie.

     Why was access denied?

     When the credentials of the Failure Analysis team were explained to
     Reno's aide, the aide visibly trembled.  Why?

     The Democrats got away with murder in this hearing, allowing a
     British expert to falsely claim that CS gas posed no problem.  Not
     so.

     Much of his testimony was linked with a British report that
     responded to criticism of British use of CS gas in Northern
     Ireland, and many believe that report itself was a political
     whitewash intended to soft-peddle gas effects.

     The fact is, the Congress didn't call the nation's premier experts
     on failures of a scientific nature -- like the use of ghastly
     amounts of a gas at levels that threaten health and life itself.

     Let me give you just a glimpse of what they found ...

     >From the Model Five delivery systems on the tanks alone, the CS
     gas concentration in some rooms ranged from two to ninety times
     that required to deter trained soldiers on the first assault alone.
     Anyone hit directly by spray from the Model Five system would be
     affected immediately and potentially receive a dose resulting in
     systemic shock and conceivably death.

     In addition to tank delivery, a ferret round -- a gas grenade, if
     you will -- was fired into every window of the center.

     The methylene chloride used as a solvent in the gas reached 1.8
     times the level immediately dangerous to life and health.  The
     concentration level reached by firing just one ferret round was
     sixteen times the level required to deter trained troops.

     And all this was the scientifically calculated result of just the
     first of four gas assaults.

     And we taxpayers were attacking pregnant women and children, not
     trained troops.  That gas led to incapacitation and death.

     Why didn't Congress hear those facts?

     Because Congress did not invite Failure Analysis to testify.

     The reason: fear of risks.

     These are our rights we're exercising; we're doing so responsibly,
     and we accept the risks -- because we know that America can keep
     score pretty darned well.

     Even if we only provided information, the way every other advocacy
     group provides information, we accepted the risk that we would be
     falsely accused of running the hearings.

     I'm here to tell you: If we really ran these hearings --if we
     really orchestrated these hearings as White House spokesman McCurry
     has accused, those hearings would be very, very different.

     What America had was an opportunity to put all the crazy conspiracy
     theorists out of business with the results of this hearing, but I'm
     afraid the crazy cottage industry will still be in business.

     What America had was an opportunity to discover that Waco was
     never, repeat, never a problem with law enforcement officers, but a
     problem of leadership -- and those leaders are still on the job,
     still being paid with your tax dollars.

     What America had was an opportunity on the order of Watergate --
     only to end up with a tall glass of water.

     America wanted sustained questioning by the committee, if not
     counsel. But the five-minute rule was the best the majority could
     do.  Indeed, the words from these hearings that might be remembered
     the longest are: "I think my time has expired."

     America wanted the truth, cut boldly from fragments of reports,
     lies, and cover-ups, but while the Republicans were the majority,
     the Democrats ruled.  If the Democrats had run the Iran-Contra
     hearings like the Republicans ran the Waco hearings, Ollie North
     would be president of the United States.

     The problem was that the Republicans didn't understand the
     arithmetic of our rights -- that rights plus responsibility always
     yield risks. Always.  So, when the risks started to loom, too many
     buckled.  They appeared to want to be regarded more as ladies and
     gentlemen than truth seekers.

     If they think the press is going to hand out "fairness awards,"
     they better not be holding their breaths.

     According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, NBC Nightly
     News three nights ago gave the Waco hearings a whopping fourteen
     seconds of coverage.  Fourteen seconds for the greatest loss of
     life in federal law enforcement history since Wounded Knee in the
     19th century.

     The night before last was no better -- a few more seconds to cover
     the largest use of CS gas against a single target in the history of
     mankind.

     Let me close to talk about another father of Republicans, from whom
     we should all draw inspiration.  Theodore Roosevelt was an NRA
     member and a great Republican, a man with an unshakable sense of
     ethics.

     The NRA and the Republicans are accused of somehow undermining law
     enforcement.  In fact, we're just learning from Roosevelt's
     experience that the best law enforcement is always the best-led.

     Many of us think of Roosevelt as a great President, as a great
     soldier, and even as a great sportsman.  But Roosevelt was also a
     law enforcement officer and leader.  As a North Dakota rancher in
     1886, Roosevelt served as a deputy sheriff and in arctic March
     weather, led a legendary boat chase for a group of fleeing horse
     thieves.

     And, in 1895, Roosevelt became president of New York City's Police
     Commission overseeing one of the most corrupt law enforcement
     agencies in the country -- so corrupt that criminals would return
     their booty to the Chief on request, because he covered up most of
     their crimes for them.  So corrupt that a State Senate committee
     estimated the department raised twice as much money from graft as
     from tax dollars. So corrupt that, as Roosevelt said, "the New York
     police force was utterly demoralized by the gangrene ... the ward
     politician, the liquor seller, and the criminal alternately preyed
     on one another and helped one another to prey on the general
     public."  Well, Roosevelt wouldn't take it.  With reporters
     watching, he began an investigation. Three weeks later, the Chief
     decided to avoid the heat and light of Roosevelt's scrutiny.  He
     resigned.

     Have we had any resignations since the Waco hearings got underway?
     Not a one, not yet.

     Roosevelt kept on going.  He shut down even more graft by enforcing
     the city law that was supposed to keep the saloons closed on
     Sundays. The public outcry was intense.  And with reporters in tow,
     he started prowling the streets at night, throwing policemen out of
     saloons and waking them up from naps.

     There were death threats, even letter bombs.  Lots of risk, but
     this leader kept leading.

     He raised the department's physical fitness standards and
     marksmanship scores, built new police stations, even introduced a
     mobile "Bicycle Squad."  In just two years, morale rose, and crime
     rates plummeted until New York had arguably the best police forces
     in the world.  The best, because they were led by the best.

     Roosevelt was hated for what he started and loved for what he
     finished.

     Times change.

     Principles don't.

     Limited government is best.  Freedom is worth protecting.  Values
     are worth safeguarding.  Laws are worth enforcing.

     And law enforcement deserves the best in leadership, so the boss's
     wrongdoing never endangers the rank-and-file officers and agents
     with a dangerous plan.

     Law enforcement deserves the best in leadership, so the boss's
     wrong-doing never tarnishes the badge of the rank-and-file officers
     and agents as committed to constitution as they are to the citizens
     they serve.

     Remember what my father grieved over -- the destruction of vitality
     and initiative by statism.

     Let's rescue vitality, and rescue initiative by exercising our
     rights and doing so responsibly.

     When we do, all of us -- here in this room and on Capitol Hill --
     all of us will begin to relish the risk that always comes with the
     exercise our God-given rights.

     Thank you.

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