January 24, 2020

NSSF Fighting Onerous Gun Control in Statehouses, Beginning with Virginia

NSSF Director of Public Affairs Mark Oliva was joined on SHOT Show TV by Sean Davis, Co-Founder of The Federalist, and Ryan Cleckner, of GunUniversity.com, for a wide-ranging discussion on recent state and local efforts by elected officials to enact stricter gun control policies. The three kicked off the discussion by highlighting the recent gun rights rally in Richmond, Va., which national pundits and politicians falsely predicted would become violent and dangerous. Instead, Davis said he observed the opposite. “What we saw instead was tens of thousands of people getting together peacefully, talking, making new connections, picking up their own trash, and not a single arrest,” he said.

Cleckner touched on the American system of federalism, where states are the laboratories for policy. When it comes to gun rights, the places with the most restrictive gun control measures, like Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City, those policies have proven a failure and only restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Other topics Davis, Cleckner and Oliva discussed included local ordinances to ban and close down gun ranges, efforts to restrict gun ownership based on age, NSSF’s #GUNVOTE^® voter education efforts. They also spoke of how local gun control efforts are actually doing more to “wake up” and energize Americans about their Second Amendment rights being attacked.

Cleckner summed it this way, “I love it – nothing is better for gun rights than unsuccessful attempts to take them away.”