Andrew Gottlieb – New Managing Director Of CCRKBA

I received an email a few minutes ago from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) saying that Andrew Gottlieb had been appointed their new Managing Director. Andrew is a friend and I am extremely happy for him to get this new opportunity.

From the release, in part:

For the past eight years, he has served as director of outreach and development for CCRKBA’s sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation. Gottlieb, son of CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, stepped into his new post Tuesday.

In his new position, Gottlieb will focus on fund raising growth and membership expansion, and raising CCRKBA’s profile as a direct and grassroots lobbying organization.

“I am excited about my new role for the Citizens Committee,” Gottlieb said. “We’re seeing more efforts by anti-gunners to erode our firearms rights, and it is time for the CCRKBA to take on a much larger role in this battle.”

Andrew says he plans to grow the organization and to expand their projects. He notes that we as a community need to meet the challenge from the gun prohibitionists and the political allies head-on. He is absolutely correct on that.

Again, I want to congratulate my friend Andrew on this new position and wish him tremendous success in that role. His success will be a win for everyone in the Second Amendment community.

Gun Rights Policy Conference 2022

The 37th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference will be held in Irving, Texas from September 30th to October 2nd. Due to the pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 GRPCs had to be held virtually. This year the conference returns to its regular in-person format. Starting with a reception on Friday night, the meat of the conference will be the presentations on Saturday and Sunday by speakers covering everything from legal issues to gun politics in the states to international issues.

GRPC is sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

I have been an invited speaker for the past few years. As to my topic, I’m not sure what will be this year. However, I have spoken on the use of new media to build support for the Second Amendment while last year I spoke about the history of armed neutrality as represented by Swiss and Swedish firearms.

If you can only do one day, make it Saturday. You don’t need to worry about lunch as box lunches are provided free of charge. Moreover, you will go home with a library of books on the fight for gun rights. If you cannot make it, it will be streamed live on the Second Amendment Foundation’s Facebook and YouTube pages as well as on the OpsLens app.

One thing that needs to be emphasized over and over is that this is a great chance to meet fellow activists in the fight for the Second Amendment from around the country. Oh, and by the way, it is free!

GRPC-2022-Flyer

2021 Gun Rights Policy Conference

The 2021 Gun Rights Policy Conference starts tomorrow at 1pm Eastern. As like last year, it will be 100% virtual. It will be broadcast live on both Facebook and on YouTube. It will resume at 2pm on Sunday afternoon.

Registration is still open and can be found here.

Unlike in year’s past when I spoke about the use of new media to advance gun rights, this year I will have a presentation on the firearms of Sweden and Switzerland entitled “Armed Neutrality”.

Here is the list of the speakers for both days:

Saturday 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern Sunday  11am Pacific/2pm Eastern 
  
​Introduction Alan Gottlieb Law 
Invocation Kenn Blanchard Joel Ard  
​ Alan Beck  
History Josh Blackman 
Kevin Dixie Raymond DiGuiseppe 
David Hardy Matthew Goldstein 
Dave Kopel Don Kilmer 
George Mocsary George Lee 
John Richardson  John Ohlendorf 
Cheryl Todd Pete Patterson 
 Dan Schmutter 
BREAK David Sigale 
 David Thompson 
11:30AM Outreach 
Rick Ector  Policy
Derek LeBlanc  Mark Smith 
Tony Simon   
Robyn Sandoval Break 
Nikki Stallard 
 2:15PM State  Reports
Gun Culture Alex Kincaid  
Chris Cheng  Dave Kopp  
Charlie Cook Richard Nascak 
Andrew Gottlieb Richard Pearson 
 Dean Rieck 
BREAK Alexander Roubian 
 Bryan Strawser 
1:15 PMHolly Sullivan 
Public Safety Philip Van Cleave 
Mas Ayoob   
Patrick Collins Addressing National and International Regulations
Nikki Goeser  Diana Muller 
Jim Irvine  Rick Patterson 
John Lott   
Dan Wos  
  
Media  
Beth Alcazar   
Beth Baumann   
Cam Edwards   
Stephen Gutowski   
AWR Hawkins   
Don Irvine   
Mike Piwowarski   
Amanda Suffecool   
Mark Walters  
Lee Williams

If a more detailed agenda become available, I will post it.

Record Pre-Registration For Gun Rights Policy Conference

The Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms sent out an announcement regarding the record number of pre-registrations. Included in the release was mention of some of the “mystery” guests which include my own Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kim Rhode.

Joe Bartozzi of NSSF and Jason Ouimet of the NRA-ILA will also be speakers. It is good to see these organizations participating. GOA and Knife Rights have been participants for years.

From SAF and CCRKBA:

BELLEVUE, WA – The largest-ever number of Second Amendment activists has pre-registered for this coming weekend’s 35th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which will be held entirely online Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19-20, with more than 120 speakers, including several VIP guests.

Co-hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, this is the first time in history the event will be entirely online. According to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, there is an “energy” for this year’s conference unlike anything he’s seen before. To register, go to www.saf.org/grpc/.

While the conference will be streamed on several platforms including YouTube and Facebook Live, you must pre-register in order to receive the Free Digital Second Amendment Library, Gottlieb noted. So far, more than 2,200 people have pre-registered.

“It takes more than a virus to dampen the spirits of grassroots gun rights activists,” Gottlieb stated. “We expect the event to be viewed by several hundred thousand people. It’s the biggest agenda we’ve ever had, with guest presentations from Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise, Alaska Congressman Don Young, U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Olympic Gold Medalist Kim Rhode.”

The agenda includes a federal affairs briefing, two state legislative panels, updates on legal actions and court victories, a discussion on outreach to an estimated 5 million new gun owners, and the importance of this year’s presidential and congressional elections to advance the gun rights cause.

In addition to Gottlieb, this year’s speakers include National Shooting Sports Foundation President Joe Bartozzi; Jason Ouimet, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action; Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America; Tom Gresham, host of Gun Talk radio; Mark Walters, host of Armed American radio; Charlie Cook, host of Riding Shotgun with Charlie; and Jim Shepherd, editor at The Outdoor Wire.

“We’ll also be hosting live events on Zoom both Friday and Saturday evening,” Gottlieb said. “We’re determined to make this year’s conference the best ever, despite the pandemic, and we are truly looking forward to what may become the most important weekend of the campaign season.

“We’re expecting gun owners from coast-to-coast to attend this virtual event,” he added. “Last year’s conference in Phoenix was live-streamed to more than 100,000 people and we hope to exceed that number. It’s going to be an event no gun owner will want to miss.”

Remember, GRPC 2020 Is Online

Thanks to the pandemic and the restrictions in place in Orlando, this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference will be 100% virtual and online.

The Second Amendment Foundation sent this announcement out yesterday.

BELLEVUE, WA – For the first time in its 35-year history, the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference will be a virtual event held online Sept. 19-20, hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

This year’s conference theme is “Elect Freedom.” With the crucial 2020 presidential and congressional elections less than two months away, this year’s event has added importance for gun rights activists across the country. To register, go to www.saf.org/grpc/. You will receive information to join the event, which will be presented on several different platforms.

The conference agenda includes 32 panel discussions covering such subjects as federal and state legislative affairs, grassroots activism, suicide prevention, legal actions in defense of the Second Amendment, media and corporate attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, women’s issues, advancing the run rights message, and much more. There will also be a panel memorial honoring the late Joe Tartaro, SAF president and longtime executive editor of TheGunMag.com.

“Despite the problems relating to COVID-19,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb acknowledged, “we’re really excited about this year’s event, and because it is online, we are going to reach a huge audience. The importance of that cannot be over-estimated.

“We’ve got a lineup of presentations that will educate, inform and even entertain our GRPC audience,” he added. “We will also have some special VIP appearances.”

“Since the first GRPC was held in Seattle in 1986,” Gottlieb noted, “the event has evolved from 20 speakers and 70 attendees to more than 90 speakers and 1,100 attendees in 2019. The GRPC has become a ‘must attend’ event for gun rights advocates and grassroots activists across the country. This year we anticipate having nearly 120 gun rights speakers.”

And because the event is entirely online, gun rights activists can attend from the comfort of their own home.

“This will be an awesome event,” Gottlieb predicted, “and gun owners from coast to coast can virtually attend.”

I will again be a speaker on the use of “New Media”. It was both easier and harder to my presentation that way. I think I took 8-10 tries to get it right. Alternatively, I didn’t have a moderator looking over my shoulder as the time to end approached and I didn’t have hundreds of people looking at me as I spoke.

One feature of GRPC that is not going away is the piles of gun rights books you will receive. The only difference is that this year it will be in the electronic PDF format and not paper.

As I understand it, GRPC will be broken down into four sessions. You can see the full agenda at the bottom of the sign-up page here.

Online 2A Grassroots Training (Update)

The Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are holding three Zoom online sessions on grassroots activism during the pandemic. They will be led by Glen Caroline who is the SAF’s Director of External Affairs. Prior to joining SAF, Glen was the NRA’s Managing Director of Grassroots Affairs and Campaign Field Operations. Glen will be joined by SAF founder Alan Gottlieb.

The training is entitled, “Grassroots Activism in the COVID Environment”. We may be stuck or mostly stuck at home but that doesn’t mean we still can be active and defend the Second Amendment and our rights.

The sessions are being held at 7pm local time on successive nights depending upon your time zone. Pre-registration is required.

Here are the sessions and links to pre-register:

Tuesday, May 26th, 7pm, EASTERN

Wednesday, May 27th, 7pm CENTRAL

Thursday, May 28th, 7pm, PACIFIC

“We’re encouraging all Second Amendment activists to sign up, participate and learn new strategies to help us win in the months and years ahead, and make the Second Amendment great again,” Gottlieb said. “We look forward to greeting all of you.”

I registered for the Tuesday session last week. The cost is free and you are learning how to be more effective from a master. That is a double win in my opinion.

UPDATE: I participated in this last night and can highly recommend it. I have five pages of notes containing tons of ideas. If you weren’t on last night’s Zoom presentation, you have two more presentations.

If you are a Second Amendment supporter, you need to be on this Zoom presentation.

Quote Of The Day

We should all know what former Congresssman and current presidential candidate Robert Francis O’Rourke said by now. If you don’t, you can see it here.

Alan Gottlieb, wearing his Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms hat, had a good response to the mask coming off.

“Thanks to O’Rourke,” he noted, “Democrats have just graduated from being the ‘party of gun control’ to officially being the ‘party of gun confiscation,’ and nobody in the firearms community is going to forget that.


“From this moment forward,” he predicted, “when Democrats talk about ‘gun reform’ or ‘gun safety,’ the whole country will know they’re not just talking about gun control, they’re talking about taking firearms from law-abiding citizens who have committed no crime.

You can see Alan’s full release here.

Standing United

The Second Amendment community is like a family. We may squabble amongst ourselves but unite when we are attacked by outsiders. This latest release from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms illustrates that. It takes aim at attempts by House Democrats to cripple the National Rifle Association through multiple investigations.

BELLEVUE, WA – Reports that the National Rifle Association is being engulfed in what one publication described as “a rapidly expanding tangle of congressional investigations” raise an important question that nobody has been asking: Is this a deliberate effort by anti-gun-rights Congressional Democrats to overwhelm the organization’s leadership and prevent NRA from fulfilling its mission to protect the Second Amendment?

That’s what the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are wondering as House Democrats are pressing their gun control agenda.

“According to The Trace, which is funded by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Congress has launched six investigations of the NRA,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “With Democrats in control of the House, promising to push a full slate of gun control measures, that seems just a little curious.”

Gottlieb, who also chairs the CCRKBA, said it is fair to question an avalanche of investigations involving the NRA at a time when its attention should be focused squarely on renewed efforts to erode the Second Amendment.

“Are these investigations legitimate,” Gottlieb wondered, “or are they a deliberately choreographed attempt to distract the NRA’s focus when it needs to be concentrating on the battle now developing on Capitol Hill?

“We’ve been delighted to work with NRA on a number of efforts,” he continued, “including our successful lawsuits against the 2005 post-Katrina gun grab in New Orleans, the San Francisco gun ban, our joint challenge of Seattle’s attempted parks gun ban and our ongoing federal lawsuit against a gun control initiative in Washington State. So, when we see this kind of congressional onslaught at the same time Beltway anti-gunners are trying to ram through an aggressive gun control agenda, let’s just say our radar is up.”

Gottlieb said that if there are legitimate issues, they need to be explained to the nation’s 100 million gun owners.

“Otherwise,” he observed, “all of this may amount to a lot of smoke and mirrors designed to not simply distract NRA but to discredit it in the eyes of its members, supporters and allies when we all should be working together to defend our fundamental rights at a time when they are under unceasing attack.”

I agree with Alan that this is “curious” at a time when more and more gun control bills are being introduced in Congress. Indeed, I read a bill this morning that would put any semi-automatic rifle including Ruger 10/22s capable of accepting a magazine under the purview of the National Firearms Act. 

Agenda Released For 2018 Gun Rights Policy Conference

The Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms have released the tentative agenda for the 2018 Gun Rights Policy Conference. The conference is being held starting this Friday evening in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency – O’Hare Airport. While pre-registration is now closed you can register at the door.

You can find the agenda here.

There will be plenty of gun rights leaders from around the country with whom you can mix and mingle. There will also be these guys.

11:15 a.m. Using New Media to Advance Gun Rights
Charlie Cook, YouTube host, Riding Shotgun with Charlie
Don Irvine, chair, Accuracy in Media
Paul Lathrop, Polite Society Podcast
John Richardson, blogger, Only Guns and Money Blog

If you can’t make it, the Polite Society Podcast will again be livestreaming the entire conference. That can be found on the Second Amendment Foundation’s Facebook page and will be broadcast in 2 hour segments.

CCRKBA Says Anti-Gunners Stymied By The Facts

The Citizens’ Committee Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued a statement yesterday regarding the Sutherland Springs church shooting. They say the gun prohibitionists are stymied by the facts given that Stephen Willeford, the nearby hero who shot the killer, used an AR-15 to stop more carnage.

I have to disagree with Alan Gottlieb on this. While rational people would look at the facts and say that the presence of a firearm prevented further bloodshed, the gun prohibitionists ignore facts. They work on emotion and the facts be damned. The fact that Mr. Willeford used an AR-15 was ignored yesterday when Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a coterie of her power and control mad colleagues introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017.

Rational people like thee and me, Alan, and Texas AG Ken Paxton recognize that an armed man using an AR-15 helped to end the killing sooner than later. You can read Alan’s statement on this below:

ANTI-GUNNERS STYMIED BY FACTS IN TEXAS SHOOTING, SAYS CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – As more facts emerge from the tragic Sutherland Springs, Texas church shooting, gun prohibitionists and their cheerleaders in the media are stymied in their efforts to exploit this case, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“The perpetrator’s rampage was stopped by a law abiding citizen, using an AR15-type rifle,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The shooter bought his guns at retail and passed background checks because the military failed to forward his criminal records to the National Instant Check System. Now it is being reported that the gunman once escaped from a mental health facility in New Mexico.

“Isn’t it ironic,” he mused, “that a private citizen, who the anti-gunners would prefer to be defenseless, used a rifle that gun control extremists have tried to ban with the claim that such guns do not belong in civilian hands?”

Gottlieb noted that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told two different cable news networks that adding more gun control laws that penalize honest citizens and interfere with their right of self-defense is not the answer.

“We stand in agreement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who told both MSNBC and Fox News that Kelley had already violated laws against murder, so another gun law would not prevent this from happening,” Gottlieb said. “Sunday’s incident proves that the kind of gun controls advocated by politicians and anti-gun groups would have prevented the heroic actions of Stephen Willeford and Johnnie Langendorff, and may have allowed the shooter to continue his rampage.

“Mr. Willeford’s heroic intervention and his pursuit of the wounded madman, with Mr. Langendorff, is exactly what the Second Amendment is about,” Gottlieb observed. “They followed the killer and kept him covered with a semiautomatic rifle until lawmen arrived.

“America is blessed to have men like these,” he said. “But gun control extremists? Not so much.”