PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
By Ronald L. Schmeits, President

How Your NRA Membership Is Winning Firearm Freedom

As your president over the past 16 months, I've had the pleasure to meet with and hear the concerns of gun owners and NRA members like you all across the country.

No matter where you live, no matter what your particular interest in firearms—whether you're a collector, competitive shooter, recreational plinker, hunter or self-defense advocate—the most common question I hear from gun owners like you is this:

"How will NRA protect my firearms and my freedoms from the Obama administration and its anti-gun allies in Congress and the courts?"

So if you want to see why your NRA membership is so important to the future, just take a look back at some of our victories over the past year.

By far, our most important and farthest-reaching recent win for firearm freedom was the Supreme Court's McDonald v. Chicago ruling in June which—for the first time in American history—said that Americans have an individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms that no city or state may deny.

By protecting the Second Amendment against infringement by cities and states, the Supreme Court effectively drew a historic line in the sand, ruling that Americans have equal rights under the Second Amendment no matter where they live.

The fight isn't over yet. But thanks to your NRA membership, the good guys are winning.

In the months ahead, you can bet that arrogant politicians like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, cynical city councils from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco and activist judges will keep trying to deny your Right to Keep and Bear Arms through defiance, duplicity or decree.

But now we have Supreme Court case law to stop them.

We've won important legislative and regulatory battles on your behalf, as well.

For example, last December, NRA helped pass legislation allowing you to transport firearms in checked baggage aboard Amtrak trains, reversing a policy on the books for almost a decade and restoring the ability of hunters and other gun owners to travel by rail.

Back in February, thanks in part to NRA's efforts, the federal government changed its policies on the right to carry in national parks and on other federal lands.

As a result, with few exceptions, if state law recognizes your right to carry, then national parks within that state must also recognize and respect your right to carry.

Last summer, NRA even came within a whisker of winning passage, in the U.S. Senate, of national Right-to-Carry reciprocity.

If you want to know what your NRA membership helps achieve, just consider this: Even in the current political climate in Washington, D.C., we missed winning that fight in the Senate by a margin of only two votes.

Make no mistake: The greatest danger to our freedoms today isn't the politicians who want to take those freedoms away. The greatest danger we face is from those who believe in firearm freedom—but don't believe that their voices and their votes really count.

The truth that our opponents don't want you to realize is that when NRA members and American gun owners unite to do their part for freedom, there's nothing that can stop us.

For proof, just look at the elections we helped win last November in—of all places—Massachusetts and New Jersey. In both states, NRA and members like you helped elect pro-gun candidates in some of the most historically hostile states for Second Amendment freedom anywhere in the nation!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: That's why your vote—and the vote of every freedom-loving American—is so historically and decisively important in the November 2 elections this year.

So if you're not registered to vote, get registered to vote now—and get every gun owner you know to do the same.

Firearm freedom can only prevail if every American gun owner does his or her part to protect it. Yet as hard as it is to believe, as many as 25 million American gun owners are not registered to vote.

Worse yet, half the states in this country require you to be registered to vote at least one month before Election Day. That only gives us about 30 days from now.

So do your part to recruit and rally a Freedom First Voter Army now. And together, on Election Day, let's make sure firearm freedom wins in every race!