A rush of icy air swooshes through Gunslinger’s show room every couple of minutes as customers file in and out.

“It’s insane,” owner Todd Sutherland said on a recent Monday.

“Business has more than doubled, if not tripled,” Sutherland said.

Other Tri-Cities gun and ammunition shop owners are echoing similar refrains, but the sales surge is only half the story. Sullivan County, Tenn., and Washington County, Va., both report that within the past two years, the number of handgun carry permits issued has doubled, if not tripled.

People are buying guns and ammo by the handful, not only locally, but across the nation, and reports on the buying surge tend to focus on the election of Barack Obama as the impetus.

Obama is expected to run the most anti-gun administration in U.S. history, based on his votes on gun legislation while a U.S. senator.

In Appalachia, where gun culture thrives and the buying boom appears monolithic, gun enthusiasts argue the national hoopla is missing the point: It isn’t that it’s happening – but what is behind it, and why.

“It’s a right of passage for a lot of people,” said Michael Campbell, a Virginia spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “No matter what, guns are a very emotional issue.”

Peter Hamm, spokesman for the gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign, said the controversy is about much more than political parties.

“It’s not a Democrat vs. Republican issue,” Hamm said. “It’s a rural vs. urban issue. And the urban people don’t do a good enough job of saying ‘Look, we need some help, people are dying here.’ And the rural people don’t do a good enough job of saying, ‘Look, I live in the country where the closest police department is 40 miles away. If someone breaks in my house, I need to be able to protect my family.’ ”

Epic milestones

Interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the most contentious and impassioned debates of the past American century. Since a 1939 Supreme Court decision over a firearms violation said the Second Amendment must be interpreted with a view of rendering effective a militia, gun-rights and gun-control advocates have been arguing over whether the right to bear arms belongs to individuals or groups.

In the seven decades since that ruling, the collective argument has tended to prevail – but many on both sides maintain that the 1939 ruling was too ambiguous.

Then, in July, the U.S. Supreme Court tackled the Second Amendment again – and issued a landmark decision that clearly supports the individual’s right to bear arms, rather than only a right reserved for a militia.

Four months later, voters elected Obama, the Democratic candidate, as the nation’s 44th president.

Juxtaposed, those epic milestones illustrate the stark polarity that characterizes the debate over the Second Amendment.

“The Obama election represents the kind of worst-case scenario: somewhere between the end of the world as we know it and the apocalypse,” said Michael Banes, a national gun-rights advocate and founder of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Education Program.

Background checks

Federal law requires that firearms dealers check purchasers’ backgrounds before completing the sale. Those background checks provide one way to look at the number of buyers, even though the data doesn’t reflect when sales are denied.

In Tennessee, background checks are called Tennessee Instant Criminal Checks, or TICS, and they soared after the presidential election, said Kirstin Helms, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

“During the first 11 days in November for the last 11 years, we averaged around 11 [thousand] to 14,000 instant criminal background checks,” Helms said. “This year we’ve done 21,608. Some of those people were denied – but a certain percentage are denied every year.”

Gun carry laws differ slightly in Virginia and Tennessee, and state by state.

In Virginia, it’s legal to walk down the street with a gun holstered to your hip; the commonwealth is one of 11 “Gold Star” states as ranked by the gun-rights group OpenCarry.org. However, a permit is required to carry a concealed weapon and must be renewed every four years.

In Tennessee, a permit is required to carry a handgun, concealed or not, and must be renewed every five years.

The discrepancy explains in part why Tennessee’s permit numbers are far higher than its northern neighbor’s.

Records kept by the Washington County, Va., Circuit Court Clerk’s Office show that the number of carry permits more than doubled in 2007, the year of the Virginia Tech killings.

For several years, the average number of permits issued in Washington County, which has nearly 52,000 residents, hovered around 340, but that shot to more than 820 in 2007. So far this year, the county has issued 901 gun permits.

“I knew people around here were getting more handguns,” Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman said. “I encourage it, because the people who are buying them are law-abiding citizens.”

There was no drastic increase in Sullivan County, which ranks sixth among Tennessee’s 95 counties in the number of active handgun permits. Sullivan County has an estimated 2006 population of 153,239, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of gun permits in the county has climbed steadily, from 4,720 issued in 2006 to 5,042 in 2007. And so far this year, Sullivan County has issued 5,489 gun permits.

Keeping track

No one knows exactly how many guns exist in Virginia or Tennessee; in fact, there is no way of knowing exactly how many guns are in all of the United States.

Federal law prohibits the creation of a registration database of guns, and it’s a law that gun advocates ardently defend.

Tracking would be difficult anyway. Until the federal Gun Control Act was adopted in 1968, manufacturers were not even required to put a serial number on each gun. And with minimal upkeep, a firearm can last 100 years.

Even the NRA doesn’t keep state-by-state membership numbers, so it’s impossible to gauge the prevalence of guns or even gun owners in a single community or state. The NRA does boast 4 million members nationwide.

Yet surveys by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, part of the Harvard School of Public Health, put the number of privately owned guns at about 288 million in 2004, the most recent year for which the data is available. The center’s surveys also reveal that gun ownership is increasingly concentrated: 20 percent of gun owners had 65 percent of the nation’s guns.

Buying binge

Sutherland’s store, which typically stocks about 400 guns, sells an average of 125 firearms each month. Since the election, Sutherland has sold 288.

“I would say it has as much to do with the economy as it does the election. We all know that when the economy goes bad, crime goes up,” Sutherland said. “Coupled with the election, you’ve got a lot of people who were thinking about getting a handgun, toying with the idea, and they’re going ahead and doing it now because they don’t know if they’ll be able to later.”

Hamm, with the Brady Campaign, said there is no dispute about the surge in gun sales.

“We’re sure there has been a legitimate surge,” he said. “But we think the people who feel the need to run out and buy a particular gun are being overly concerned about gun laws in our country. When they [the laws] do change, they change very, very slowly.”

John Paul Blevins, owner of the GunRunners store in Blountville, Tenn., has been a private gun dealer in the region for 22 years and is somewhat of an encyclopedia of all things firearm. His store, like others, has seen a nearly threefold increase in business.

Blevins said that many of the guns selling the fastest – semi-automatic weapons included – are misunderstood.

Media reports call those in highest demand “military assault” rifles, he said, and it’s a term gun people hate because of its pejorative connotations.

Assault applies to all guns that shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger. One tug, one round. You don’t reload, you just tug again. That’s considered a semi-automatic weapon because it reloads a round automatically. But it does not shoot automatically.

A fully automatic weapon, also known as a machine gun, is not part of the debate, both sides agree. Heavily regulated, machine guns are capable of continued firing: When you pull the trigger, you don’t let go. The gun keeps firing. That’s why people use the word “spray” when talking about machine guns.

Blevins said the reason the term “military-style weapon” is used so often in popular culture is because some guns are styled to resemble military weapons that are illegal for civilian use. They’re pretty close, he said, but they don’t have the same capabilities.

“People fear that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines will be banned again, and this time it will be permanent,” Blevins said, referring to President Bill Clinton’s 1994 10-year ban on such weapons. “It’s Simple Economics 101. If you ban or curtail supply, the demand goes up with the price.

“Why would you want a gun like that?” Blevins asked rhetorically. “Well, why would you want to drive a Corvette instead of a Ford?”

Hamm faults the gun industry for romanticizing such weapons.

“Like any American company selling a product, the industry is telling them they need these weapons,” Hamm said. “I don’t blame them because it’s what they sell. It’s capitalism, it’s allowed.”

Gun bans

The Brady Campaign pushes for stiff regulations on a whole group of weapons it labels as military-style assault weapons, which includes semi-automatic weapons. On its Web site, the campaign cites statistics regarding crime since the 10-year ban expired in 2004; 165 people were killed as a result, the group says.

“It’s a small percentage,” Hamm said. “I mean, we lose 30,000 people to gun violence in this country each year.”

Hamm said part of the issue is, “We’ve never tried gun control in this country.

“We can’t resolve this issue because there isn’t enough data about gun laws to determine what is successful and what is not,” Hamm said. “We don’t in this society do a good enough job of explaining both points of view. Urban people belittle rural people’s point of view and rural people think urban people are out of touch.”

At the center of the gun-control debate is its impact on crime. Gun-control advocates say crime decreases when guns are restricted. Those for less gun control say with equal certitude that guns are a deterrent and the more there are, the more crime decreases.

“To sit here and tell you, ‘No, firearms don’t play a role in crime,’ well, they always do, no matter what,” Bristol Virginia police Sgt. Charles Robinette said. “But I’ve been an officer for 13 years, and I haven’t specifically noticed a difference as far as the ban or gun control is concerned. I haven’t ever seen a difference.”

Newman agrees.

“From a standpoint of gun control, if a person wants a gun, then he’s going to get it,” the sheriff said. “Nine times out of 10, it’s not a person who has a legal gun. It’s going to be someone who stole it, or got it from somewhere else.” Nationwide, gun crime is down, and save for a brief spike in 2005, has been since 1993. Still, FBI crime studies show that 66 percent of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms.

“What could really change the gun issue in America is that the Supreme Court made it clear that there is no secret conspiracy to take away guns,” Hamm said. “I think it’s great progress. Now we can talk about gun control that works.”

Statistics released today by the FBI show that the estimated volume of violent crime was down 0.7 percent, and the estimated volume of property crime decreased 1.4 percent in 2007 when compared with 2006 figures. The estimated rate of violent crime was 466.9 occurrences per 100,000 inhabitants (a 1.4 percent decrease from the 2006 rate), and the estimated rate of property crime was 3,263.5 per 100,000 inhabitants (a 2.1 percent decline).

The FBI presented these data today in the 2007 edition of Crime in the United States, a statistical compilation of offense and arrest data as reported by law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. The FBI collected these data via the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program.

The UCR program gathers offense data for violent and property crimes. Violent crimes are the offenses of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; property crimes are the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The program also collects arrest data for violent and property crimes as well as 21 additional offenses that include all other offenses except traffic violations.

In 2007, more than 17,700 city, county, college and university, state, tribal, and federal agencies voluntarily participated in the UCR program. These agencies represented 94.6 percent of the nation’s population. A summary of the crime statistics presented in Crime in the United States, 2007 follows:

There were an estimated 1,408,337 violent crimes reported nationwide in 2007.

• All four of the violent crime offenses declined in 2007 when compared with figures from 2006. The estimated number of forcible rapes declined 2.5 percent; the estimated number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters dropped 0.6 percent; and the estimated number of aggravated assaults also decreased by 0.6 percent. The estimated number of robberies decreased 0.5 percent in 2007 when compared with 2006 data.
• There were an estimated 9,843,481 property crimes, excluding arson, reported nationwide in 2007. (Though the FBI classifies arson as a property crime, it does not estimate arson data because of variations in the level of participation at the agency level. Consequently, arson is not included in the estimated property crime total.)
• Each of the property crimes also declined in 2007. Motor vehicle theft decreased 8.1 percent when 2007 data were compared with the 2006 data. The estimated number of larceny-thefts decreased 0.6 percent, and the estimated number of burglaries declined 0.2 percent.
• In 2007, victims of property crimes, excluding arson, collectively lost an estimated $17.6 billion.
• The FBI estimated that law enforcement agencies nationwide made 14,209,365 arrests in 2007, excluding those for traffic offenses.
• The arrest rate for violent crime was 200.2 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants; for property crime, the rate was 544.1 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants.
• The rate of arrests for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2007 was 4.5 per 100,000 in population. The rate of arrests for forcible rape was 7.7; for robbery, 42.9; and for aggravated assault, 145.1.
• Of the property crimes, law enforcement made 101.5 arrests for burglary for each 100,000 in population, 398.0 for larceny-theft, 39.5 for motor vehicle theft, and 5.1 for arson.

In addition to offense and arrest data, Crime in the United States, 2007 contains information regarding the staffing levels of more than 14,600 city, county, state, college and university, and tribal law enforcement agencies as of October 31, 2007. These agencies reported that, collectively, they employed 699,850 sworn officers and 318,104 civilians, which was a rate of 3.6 employees for each 1,000 inhabitants.

Note: Caution Against Ranking—Each year when Crime in the United States is published, some entities use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region. Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents. Valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction. The data user is, therefore, cautioned against comparing statistical data of individual reporting units from cities, metropolitan areas, states, or colleges or universities solely on the basis of their population coverage or student enrollment.

In the fall of 1997, I started collecting guns I really didn’t need to own. One Saturday in October of that year, I headed to the outdoor range with a few of my friends, our assault rifles, and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. While we were there, one of my friends complained bitterly about the anti-gun rhetoric spewed by one of his former sociology professors – a man we shall refer to as Gary (because that’s his real name).

Specifically, my friend was annoyed that Gary spent valuable class time arguing that the 2nd Amendment protects the citizen’s right to own guns but not to own bullets. With a straight face, his professor had argued that the key to reducing gun violence in America is to enact a legislative ban on the manufacture, distribution, and sale of bullets. This, he thought, would actually pass constitutional muster.

Gary’s proposed bullet ban makes him sound a lot like the segregationists I knew when I was a child in Mississippi in the 1960s. They didn’t like “colored people” and didn’t want them to vote. But they could not actually keep them from voting so they found ways to construct laws that would have the same effect without actually banning blacks from the voting booths. After all, a law that required literacy among voters was really just a way to promote public education, which, after all, is in the best interests of all, regardless of race.

As a professor in a Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Gary should have some familiarity with the case of Griffin v. California (1965). After the case of Malloy v. Hogan (1964), all states were required under the Fourteenth Amendment to extend the Fifth Amendment “self-incrimination” privilege to defendants in criminal cases. The case also extended the privilege to witnesses who were not defendants, even in pretrial proceedings such as preliminary hearings.

However, since prosecutors did not like this particular constitutional right, they tried to subvert it indirectly by asserting, for example, that the defendant’s choice to “take the fifth” was itself unequivocal evidence of guilt. The assertion, generally made during the prosecutor’s closing argument, was sometimes the last thing the jury heard before the onset of the process of deliberation. But, thanks to Griffin v. California, this act of allowing a government agent (a prosecutor) to indirectly subvert a constitutional right –simply because he found it distasteful (and/or dangerous) – was ruled unconstitutional by the end of 1965.

At first, I was under the impression that Gary’s support of a federal law banning ammunition was born of constitutional ignorance. But, in April of 2007, another student approached me with yet another complaint about his anti-gun rhetoric. Again, it was his specific assertion that the 2nd Amendment allows citizens to own guns but not ammunition. In other words, he has been making the same silly argument for over a decade while drawing a paycheck from the very citizens whose rights he wishes to subvert.

This kind of persistence leads me to believe that Gary’s problem is not born of ignorance of the constitution. Instead – just like the prosecutors subverting the “self-incrimination” privilege in the 1960s – he is hostile to those portions of the constitution that interfere with his specific occupational goals. More ambitious than the prosecutor’s goal of restricting the freedom of the criminal is the sociologist’s goal of restricting the freedom of the lawful gun owner.

Until now, no one (to my knowledge) has publicly challenged Gary’s silly proposal. But imagine he had a different goal; namely, that of restricting a woman’s so-called constitutional right to have an abortion. Imagine further that he took a similar tactic by indirectly attacking that constitutional right, which, unlike the right to bear arms, is written nowhere in the Bill of Rights. Specifically, imagine him going into a sociology class and suggesting that a woman has a right to an abortion but that abortion clinics could be lawfully banned. Or imagine him saying that forceps or suction tubes could be similarly banned. The possibilities are almost endless but the reaction from feminists would be uniform and loud.

Our college campuses need an organized response to anti-gun extremists like Gary – one that has the same level of enthusiasm and visibility that the campus feminists have enjoyed for decades. Thanks to some fairly recent decisions by the Supreme Court such a response is entirely possible because colleges collecting mandatory student activity fees are no longer able to deny funding to student organizations they deem to be offensive. This applies to all clubs – even those celebrating the 2nd Amendment.

There can be no better response to an anti-gun extremist like Gary than to establish a 2nd Amendment club at the local state college or university. And to those who have already done so I would suggest making a funding request to your university for an afternoon’s supply of ammunition. Taking your 2nd Amendment club to the gun range at the taxpayer’s expense will surely get under the skin of your liberal administrators.

Professors like Gary think they are exploring fertile intellectual ground with their latest anti gun schemes. It’s up to us to show them they are shooting blanks and, therefore, just a generation away from extinction.

About the Author:

Large numbers of people in this country believe that eliminating guns would make things safer. Belief is an amazing thing.

It lets liberal judges in New York allow lawsuits against gun manufacturers because some thug used their product to kill someone else. Under this belief system, it’s just a matter of time before Toyota gets sued because a drunk driver used one of their trucks to kill someone. The same people also believed there would be blood in the streets each time a state passed concealed carry laws. The reality is, each and every time, murder and crime decreased faster in those states than anywhere else (google John Lott, whose studies have been reluctantly verified by some gun control advocates).

Gun study

A new study out by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser, “Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide? A review of international and some domestic evidence,” shows that gun proliferation and ease of access have little to do with increasing total murder and suicide rates. The study focused on industrialized European countries. Luxembourg had the lowest gun ownership rates, but had five times the murder rate of the other countries. Russia had very low gun ownership rates, yet had 10 times the murder rates. Poland was the only anomaly, with lower murder rates and low gun ownership rates (however, guns are not banned in Poland).

Look for context

The gun control crowd states that a gun in the house increases the risk 42 times that a family member will be shot with that gun. True, but it has no relevance to the majority of households. In most of the incidents involving a shooting, the perpetrator already had a long history of violence or crime. We already have gun laws restricting possession by felons. Usually, law-abiding citizens only shoot people who need it. Yet the control crowd believes that we need to add more gun restrictions to protect us from law-abiding citizens. Even if all guns were banned (like heroin and cocaine are banned yet are still available) the criminals will still be able to buy them. These are the folks who commit almost all the gun crimes.

Suicide rates

Suicide rates have absolutely nothing to do with gun availability. When guns are restricted, other ways are substituted. For example, quoting the aforementioned study, “Sweden, with over twice as much gun ownership as neighboring Germany and a third more gun suicide, nevertheless has the lower overall suicide rate. Greece has nearly three times more gun ownership than the Czech Republic and somewhat more gun suicide, yet the overall Czech suicide rate is over 175 percent higher than the Greek rate. Spain has over 12 times more gun ownership than Poland, yet the latter country’s overall suicide rate is more than double the former country’s. Tragically, Finland has over 14 times more gun ownership than neighboring Estonia, and a great deal more gun related suicide. Estonia, however, turns out to have a much higher suicide rate than Finland overall.”

Other studies

The study also noted that two liberal organizations should no longer call themselves believers. “In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of then extant studies.”

In general, a large group of American citizens have been fooled into believing that people should be denied the right to defend themselves with firearms.

Some data is emerging that shows guns are used more often to prevent a crime rather than commit one. Over 20 of the industrialized nations in Europe suffer murder rates higher than the U.S., yet the U.S. has by far a larger number of guns per capita.

As more and more “people without agendas” gather and analyze the data, we can hope to erode the belief system held by a large number of misinformed Americans. Hopefully the gun control crowd will someday understand that their beliefs end where my rights begin.

LAN'AI, HAWAII -- Once more a tragedy is fueling those now old arguments about the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms.

Americans love guns or fear them.

At the pier on this island off Maui, you could see both -- the gun lovers toting their cased shotguns from the ferry toward the shuttle bus that would take them to a popular shooting clays range; the gun nervous eyeing the gun cases as if they might contain weapons that would jump out and begin shooting on their own.

Away from the pier later -- sitting in the shade of the deadly, cancer-causing tropical sun -- I read a San Fransisco Chronicle columnist ranting on how America would be a better place if guns were simply banned. It was a piece obviously not written by someone who once shot a grizzly bear off their leg to ensure the damage would end just above the ankle.

There is, obviously, no arguing with the contention that banning guns from this country -- if that were possible -- would eliminate gun deaths.

Likewise, there is no argument that banning motor vehicles would eliminate motor-vehicle deaths.

Motor-vehicle accidents killed about 43,000 people -- 5,000 of them innocent pedestrians -- in 2005.

About 30,000 people died from guns in the same year, more than half of them intentionally. Suicide is a horrible thing for the family and friends of the victim, but it is not something of concern to any of us in society at large.

Homicides -- one person shooting and killing another -- numbered about 12,000.

Given the numbers, you can see the chances are about three times better you'll be killed by someone driving an automobile than someone wielding a gun. Not only that, the stranger who kills you -- if you are so unlucky -- is far more likely to be the driver of another automobile than someone wielding a gun.

Given these realities, we would clearly be safer if we banned cars than if we banned guns.

But all of this is also open to all kinds of speculation and differing interpretation. As has been observed before, there are liars, damn liars and statisticians.

You can make almost any argument you want on this issue, and the residents of the virtual world are doing that now.

0The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, one side argues, might have ended with only a few people dead if there had been an armed citizen on the scene to shoot it out with the killer.

The latest tragedy at Virginia Tech, the other side argues, wouldn't have happened at all if there was better gun control, if it was hard to get a gun, if guns were banned, etc.

Both arguments are as valid as they are invalid.

No one can know what might have happened if there had been someone on the scene able and willing to stop the killer with a bullet. Likewise, no one can know if any gun law would have stopped, or even slowed, this killer's commitment to his murderous task.

And the real problem is that this whole argument about gun control distracts from the real issue in this country, which is a national epidemic of rage.

In the latest case, the rage might have been fueled by mental instability, but it remains symptomatic of the rage that seems to boil just below the surface all across America.

When kids get mad at each other in Anchorage now, they don't decide to pull on the gloves and have it out in the ring; they try to kill each other.

Sometimes, too often, they use guns. Other times, though, it's knives or baseball bats or boots. The problem isn't the weapon of choice, it's the anger.

Why that is? I don't know.

Why it is isn't talked about more is equally beyond my knowledge.

Maybe it is a question too hard to address. Or maybe it is like other issues we, as a society, just don't want to confront.

Look, if we really wanted to save people in this country, we would stop worrying about gun control and institute mandatory, government-enforced daily exercise.

It's a documented fact exercise improves mood, which might help people deal with some of the rage, but that's the tip of the iceberg.

The really serious death rates in America aren't tied to gunfire or automobiles, at least not directly. They're tied to lifestyle.

Consider these numbers on annual deaths from the Centers for Disease Control:

• Heart disease: 654,092

• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884

• Diabetes: 72,815

All of these are, in significant parts, what are called "lifestyle diseases.'' If as much time and energy was spent worrying about them as is spent fretting over gun control, lots of lives could be saved.

Even a 10 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease would save more people than eliminating all deaths from motor-vehicle accidents and firearm homicides combined. The latter deaths, of course, are impossible to zero out no matter what is done. The former is something about which we might be able to do something.

So is the flu. Flu and pneumonia, according to the CDC, kill more than 61,000 people per year.

If the people intent on trying to ban guns in this country put the time, energy and money they spend on that issue into seeing that the old, the young and the infirm got flu shots, they might be able to save more lives than they would by totally eliminating homicide by firearm.

And the reality is that banning firearms is a stupid, utopian idea. Yes, it would make the world a safer place, unless you're the guy with a grizzly bear's teeth already in your leg or a single woman confronting a man with a knife in your home.

Guns aren't bad things or good things. They're things, inanimate objects, chunks of metal with no will of their own.

They're really not the problem. We are.

We are a society in which solving problems with violence has become an almost accepted norm. Our entertainment is full of it. We celebrate gun violence on film.

And when someone acts this out in real life, we blame the gun. There is something wrong here, all right. I'm not sure it's firearms.

GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

GLENN: Ted Nugent is on phone with us. Ted.

NUGENT: Hey, happy October to you, Glenn.

GLENN: They tell me you like guns.

NUGENT: I'm fondling guns as we speak. I'm calling you from a beautiful Texas campfire at a hunting camp here in Albany, Texas, campfires, cops, heroes, military, plumbers, welders and teachers and ranchers and guitar players and we all carry guns and we can't imagine how a human being of consciousness, a human being of goodwill and decency and certainly independence and knowledge and an understanding of good over evil would ever go forth in this world in a known and intentional unarmed helplessness. In the scenario you just talked about, Glenn, horrifically, this unfolds on an hourly basis around the world and certainly right here in the United States of America. And for people to dismiss the horror and tragedy with which you are conveying on this radio show and then still shake their heads, purse their lips and walk out of their houses knowingly unarmed and helpless, it boggles my mind. I can't imagine such a wimpy, helpless accepted condition, and I would like people to man up, to freedom up, to good over evil up and people should do what we've done around the country, get their concealed weapons permit, train, get a modicum of tactical understanding of weapon retention, weapon utility and stop evil and not wait for the multiple stab wounds. Stop the person now. And Glenn, in every instance, like this cop, this off-duty cop who stopped evil and deadliness, we the people can do that. We're not stupid. I know who the bad guy is and I'm just a guitar player.

GLENN: You know, Ted, you just got off your tour. Are you finished with it now or are you going back on?

NUGENT: Well, we take breaks during the hunting tone, but the tour never ends. I had a greatest tour of my life, 77 concerts in 77 nights and that's 70 different cities that have 70 different gun laws. But like the U.S. Marine Corps heroes that I train with, trained me, I improvise, adapt and overcome. And I can tell you this, Mr. Beck. I as a father and as a husband and as a good American neighbor, I will not go gently into that night. I will not accept unarmed helplessness because Nancy Pelosi dictates so. I will not accept that.

GLENN: You know, when I find -- what I wanted to ask you about on, you know, your multicity tour is you get a feel for the country and I tell you, Ted, I'm feeling something I've never felt before. Last, what was it, last Thursday I had two guys on the show. One is, you know, a Ben and Jerry's lover from Vermont that just, you know, just can't get enough liberalism, says that our courts, believe it or not, are too conservative and that people should be set free and there's no use for the Constitution anymore because it has been completely usurped and there's -- and people, liberals, are being crushed by these conservatives and the way they have distorted the Constitution. He was sitting in the same room at a convention of about 20, I think it's 20,000 members at a convention with another group. This guy was from Tennessee. He says the Constitution has been destroyed, it's all states rights and the Southerners have been kept down since, you know, 1865 or whatever it is and these two actually are banning together. They don't agree with anything. I mean, these two should hate each other. It's like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore having a love fest.

NUGENT: Good grief.

GLENN: And they are banning together to secede from the United States. You have the guy from Reno last week that, he's a vet. He's a normal guy and he saw the Mexican flag flying over the American flag in Reno and the guy lost it and cut it down. And he said, you know what, you got to fight me for this flag. You are not just going to come in here and take over my country. We're being taken over slowly but surely, but I am going to fight for it. And I see this and I wondered if you had picked up on this, this great discontent in our country from people who are saying enough is enough.

NUGENT: Well, certainly. I mean, again I've been very fortunate. I've been touring since 19, since about 1962 and I do travel all over the country and it's just glowing with positive energy, but there is a strange atmosphere out there where we identify a disconnect from the bureaucrats who, we the people -- and it's why your shows are so popular, why Rush Limbaugh is setting records in broadcasting, why Sean Hannity is popular. There is a self-evident truth in population, and it's the majority of us, Glenn, it really is. Unfortunately too much apathy has silenced and gagged the we the people that live by logic and the self-evident truths that are constitutionally guaranteed and that we no our God-given rights, not bureaucrat-given rights. So when you use the term "We the people," believe me the Nugent family and everybody listening, watching Glenn Beck, we go damn right, that's what we need to get more of. We need to be more active, we need to register, we need to vote, we need to research the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the conditions around the world where our founding fathers refuse tyrant tyranny, we refuse slavery, we refused emperors and kings, we refused control by bureaucrats in Europe and choosing what religion is authorized, whether we can defend ourselves or not. And we wrote down these self-evident truths in the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights. And you bet you, Glenn, there is a real discontent because we the people feel that the bureaucrats do not care to represent us accurately. But I see a painfully slow growth in activism on my website every day. I was on -- in a deer blind this morning talking with people and sharing the beautiful sunrise and the kind of points that you're bringing up, the logic, the taking care of business, work ethic, being productive instead of bloodsucking, to be good and positive instead of negative and whining. What we can do for our country instead of what our country can do for us. This is resonating around the land and I find in every hunting camp I go to, every rock-and-roll concert I go to, every charity event I go to that the big message here, Glenn, is what you project. We the people have got to become more active. We've got to sit down with our school administrators, at church, at the local community centers. We've got to monitor how policies are made, how these bureaucrats in New York City will literally force millions of people to be unarmed and helpless and we are forced to run away when we see someone stabbing someone because the bureaucrats won't let us stop evil when 99.9% of us know exactly how to stop evil.

GLENN: Let me ask you this, Ted. There's two things that come to mind. I think that there could be -- I think there could be a perfect day scenario. There could be -- there could be something that terrorists would launch on us that could cause such great disruption in this country that I could see us having some sort of a martial law kind of scenario, at least temporarily in this country because it -- you know, our enemies want to destroy us.

NUGENT: That's materialism they seek, no question.

GLENN: Let's just say go down that road. You have somebody like Hillary Clinton in office. I could also see then the next step saying, we have got to get the hand -- guns out of the hands of the people; there's too many guns on the street, and a lot of dopes going right along with it just like they did in New Orleans, you know, right before they became a third world country and they took away all of the guns there by gunpoint. The question I have for you, Ted, is, A, do you believe that we could get to a situation in a relatively, say in a five-year period where you could see that scenario happening and, B, I have to tell you, I know a lot of cops, and I think the cops are our future's best friend because I don't think -- I don't know a cop that would come to my house and say, I've got to get your gun. I don't know a cop that is for disarming good, strong citizens. They want us to be on their side.

NUGENT: Again I have to clarify because I am just the extreme guitar player. But when it comes down to taking a shower and calming down, I'm pretty much a nice guy, a nice neighbor, I try to be a positive asset to this great American dream, and I do so. And most of my friends, Glenn, are cops and military heroes. And believe me, my friend, what you just articulated is alive and well in the hearts and souls of those who have sworn to God to support and uphold the Constitution and certain protect we the people, the cops of this country and the military heroes of this country are on the side of we the people, not someone like Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or Obama or what happened down in New Orleans. Most of the cops in this country, if they were told to go door to door and disarm Americans, they would say, nope, can't do it. Won't do it. I'm confident of that. But we've got to cultivate relationships with our law enforcement. Citizens have to have a relationship with their state trooper, who is a dedicated hero in every state I've been to. The sheriff, the local police chief. We've got to -- you know, Glenn, I wrote Wang Dang Sweet Poontang but I still introduced myself to the sheriff and the constable and the chief of police and the state trooper commander. I got to know these guys because I know that I'm their boss. They serve and protect me. My dad and my mom taught me that. But I think it's a rare relationship that I would like to see you prod and encourage that more and more American citizens and neighborhoods should have an ongoing, upbeat but prodding and probing relationship communication with their law enforcement officials because now more than ever the painful scenario of potential societal disruption is on the cusp right now. I'm not predicting doom but I'm prepared. I have that which I need to sustain my family. And again, Glenn, everybody I know, they have adequate food, water, supplies. You know, most of my buddies are rural. So we've got the firewood and we have the firepower and we have relationships with law enforcement and National Guard where we the people know that those heroes will be on our side, but we've got to be prepared just like this cop yesterday or the day before who lost his cool in Wisconsin and went nuts and killed people. We've got to know and be cognizant of those kinds of signs and warning signals so that we can raise a little bit of hell prior to the disruption so that the officials who are in charge of those kinds of potentially dangerous individuals will nip it in the bud, if you know what I'm saying.

GLENN: I have to tell you, Ted, I couldn't agree with you more on reaching out to your local police. I was asked a couple of weeks ago if I would help a sheriff's department out in Idaho on something that they were working on, and Sheriff Klingler's from Madison County in Idaho asked me to come out. I don't give up my personal time easily. It means a lot to me. And I was out in Idaho -- because I have connections to this community -- helping him and helping the sheriff department on something that they were working on, and I have to tell you if we don't do this, if we don't recognize who our friends are, we're in real, real -- we're in real, real trouble. Ted, one more thing. Let me ask you, have you made a decision on if you had a gun to your head today -- and I just want to make it very clear, you don't have one. But if you had a gun to your head today, who would you vote for?

NUGENT: Do I really have to answer that question?

GLENN: Yeah.

NUGENT: It's tough. My favorite man or individual running for the presidency of the United States of America right now today, since you're holding that gun to my head.

GLENN: Yeah.

NUGENT: Is a man who covers all the bases for we the people, the U.S. constitution, the Bill of Rights, decency and that's Mike Huckabee.

GLENN: Mike Huckabee, I would have thought you were a Ron Paul guy.

NUGENT: Ron's a good man, Fred Thompson's a good man, I like Mitt Romney and Mr. Giuliani on many levels. But no one in my estimation today -- and I'm not voting today.

GLENN: No, no, if you had a gun to my head. We're the same way. I would never draw a gun on you because I'd lose.

NUGENT: But Mike Huckabee, I'm telling you I've spent time with the man, I've watched how he conducts his personal life, his family life as governor of the State of Arkansas.

GLENN: Oh, Ted, personal life doesn't -- personal life, personal life doesn't matter. You know that. You learned that.

NUGENT: Well, a person's moral compass, I believe.

GLENN: What did you say?

NUGENT: It's an indicator of a person's moral compass, I believe.

GLENN: No! No! Bill Clinton told me. Bill Clinton told me personal life doesn't -- just go in and do the right thing. You know, from 9:00 to 5:00. You can do whatever you want outside at 9:00 to 5:00.

NUGENT: I don't think so.

GLENN: All right. Ted, always good to talk to you, sir.

NUGENT: Glenn, God speed.

GLENN: You bet, bye-bye. 

END TRANSCRIPT

 On May 11, 1993, Justin Dey's nightmare is about to begin. The 19-year-old young man is alone in his Atlanta home. Suddenly there's a loud pounding on the front door. He peeks out the window. He sees two strangers in his front yard, one starring at the house, the other pounding on the door. The house had been broken in to three times in recent months.

So, terrified, Justin grabs the phone and dials 911. But even as he's talking to the police, the strange men enter the fenced back yard. They begin kicking against the back door. The wood starts to splinter. "They're coming in!" Justin shouts into the phone. He grabs a handgun his father gave him after the last break in. The door smashes open. As the men enter, Justin raises the gun and fires. He kills the first intruder, the other two flee.

We continue to hear about the evils of gun ownership. Especially with the tragic school shootings, there has been a lot of demonization of guns and gun owners. Guns are portrayed as tools of crime and murder, and gun ownership is portrayed as a detriment to society - a bad thing.

I disagree. I submit to you that not only are guns not evil, but that guns are a great benefit to our society. That's a view that's not heard very often, but is one that all Americans need to hear. That's why I want to talk to you about it today. In fact, what I'm about to share with you could save your life or the lives of your loved ones.

Let's go back to the story I began with. When young Justin used a gun to protect his life and property, he was hardly unique. In fact, leading criminologist Gary Kleck -- who incidentally is a liberal Democrat and an ACLU member -- found that American gun owners use their guns almost 2-1/2 million time per year to ward off criminal attack. That's once every 13 seconds! That means that since I started speaking, 8 times Americans have used guns to protect themselves.

Most of the time, the guns are not even fired. Just showing a gun is enough to send criminals fleeing. Without guns, homeowners and their families would be at the mercy of murderers, rapists, burglars, and other thugs. Guns provide even the weak and elderly the ability to defend themselves against crime. In fact, we could say handguns are a girl's best friend. When we think about the violence and threats of violence that are out there, diamonds just don't cut it.

They don't call guns "equalizers" for nothing.

Increasingly, women are becoming aware of this and are more than ever turning to handguns for protection.

Anti-gun forces don't like this. They say this is a bad idea.

Peter Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc. -- the largest gun control group in America -- has some advice for women threatened by attackers. He says, "give them what they want." As a woman, mother and grandmother, I find this highly offensive.

The anti -gun forces also tell women it's dangerous to carry a gun or try to use it against an attacker, because, they say, the attacker is likely to seize the gun and turn it against the woman. You've all heard that argument, right? Well, it's simply not true.

According to liberal criminologist Don Cates, there is no recorded example anywhere of an armed woman having her gun seized by a rapist and used against her. Let me repeat that: there is no recorded example anywhere of an armed woman having her gun seized by a rapist and used against her.

Even more amazing, the government's own Bureau of Justice Statistics found that criminals were able to turn guns against their owners - male or female - in less than 1% of cases.

And the anti-gun argument that it's dangerous to resist a criminal attack is simply wrong. Criminologist Kleck studied U.S. Justice Department figures and found that "for both robbery and assault, victims who used guns for protection were less likely either to be attacked or injured than victims that responded in any other way, including those who did not resist at all."

Furthermore, the best research shows that rape attempts against women who are armed almost always fail. The failure rate is around
98%!

Maybe guns ARE a girl's best friend.

There’s no doubt that guns are a major way for women, for the weak, for smaller
people, the elderly – anyone who may be vulnerable, NOT to be weak and vulnerable.

Bottom line: guns protect people.

Another way that guns are a blessing is one simple and seemingly obvious fact: criminals are afraid of guns. That's not just a guess, either. Research bears this out, and it's a very important point.

A three-year study by the National Institute of Justice surveyed 1,800 convicted felons and confirmed that criminals strongly fear meeting armed resistance by potential victims. Fully 74% said they believe burglars avoid houses where people are at home because they're afraid they'll get shot. 39% said they personally had called a halt to a particular planned crime because they feared the victim might be armed. The study also found that felons from states with high gun ownership worried the most about being shot.

This seems like common sense - that criminals are afraid of guns. But when it comes to discussion of this issue, many people throw common sense out the window.

Here’s a virtual lab experiment that shows the truth of this research. Kennesaw, GA, near where I live, in 1981 passed a law requiring all households to have a gun. The law received world-wide coverage, with many people laughing about it and some predicting a blood bath. After all, if gun ownership led to death and violence, surely the town would be covered in blood, right? Seven years later, although the population had almost doubled, annual home burglaries had dropped from 11 per 1,000 houses to 2.6 per 1,000 houses - a 400% decrease in burglaries in the fastest-growing town in America's S8th-fastest-growing county. Kennesaw still has that law and the low crime rates continue.

This isn't just recent. Let's go back to 1966. In that year, the number of rapes in Orlando, FL tripled - and that was accompanied by a dramatic increase in robberies as well. This terrified the community ¬particularly women. Police began offering well-publicized courses in how to use handguns, and over 2500 women promptly took the course. Apparently, word got out to criminals and would-be criminals, that women had guns and knew how to use them. One year later, the rape, assault, robbery and burglary rate had all plumped in Orlando, while over the rest of the state they continued to rise.

This same thing has happened in many other communities.

The fact that guns deter crimes - millions of them a year - has been proven over and over again - by anecdotes, by examples like Kennesaw and Orlando, and by the best research by the best criminologists in America.

Guns save lives and gun ownership is a great benefit to America.

I want to give you one more example of cutting-edge research that I found amazing.

In the largest study of its type ever done, Dr. John Lott and David Mustard of the University of Chicago examined crime statistics in every single county in the U.S. from 1977 to 1992. They found abundant, unequivocal evidence that gun ownership is a major deterrence to violence. In the 31 states that have "shall issue" laws -- where any adult without criminal records or evidence of mental illness is permitted to carry a concealed gun -- crime rates are far lower than in states where there are no such laws. Their research shows that, using the most conservative estimates, those states reduced their murder rate by an average of 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%.

Those statistics have human faces. According to Lott and Mustard, if the states that didn't have "shall issue" laws had instead adopted them in 1992, the country would have been spared 12,000 robberies, 60,000 aggravated assaults, 4,177 rapes and 1,570 murders - per year.

Here's a real-life example of lives that could have been saved.

A few years ago there was a well-publicized mass shooting at a MacDonald's. One woman who was in the restaurant when it happened had left her handgun in the car --because her state had no "shall issue" laws. If she had had her gun with her, she could have saved several lives -- including those of her Mother and Father whom she watched gunned down.

Again, The fact that guns deter crimes - millions of them a year -- has been proven over and over again.

In spite of all these facts, today we're seeing more and more calls for gun control ---at least partially spawned by the recent and tragic Littleton, CO high school shootings.

This is a disturbing trend. During the past few years, we've seen a New York congressman introduce legislation to entirely abolish the 2nd Amendment. We've seen Sen. John Chaffe -- a powerful Republican Senator from RI ---propose legislation that would totally outlaw private ownership of handguns and require all citizens to turn over their handguns to the government. If you fail to turn over your gun, you would be fined $5,000 and sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. Even conservative columnist George Will has called for getting rid of the 2nd Amendment.

Of course most proposals are far less dramatic. Some of the proposals sound very reasonable. Like a waiting period. Makes sense, right? Let the person cool down a little. But remember the Los Angeles riots? Here was a situation where innocent, law-abiding, peaceful citizens found their homes, businesses, families and lives threatened by unbridled violence. Many of them had never even thought of having a gun, but now they needed one. When they tried to get guns, they had a rude awakening: in Los Angeles there is a 14-day waiting period. Suddenly that14-day waiting period didn’t seem so reasonable any more.

And consider Katherine Latte, a mail carrier in Charlotte, NC. Her ex-boyfriend had robbed her and raped her, and she feared he might kill her. She went down to apply for a gun and was informed that there'd be a 2-4 week waiting period. "I'll be dead by then," she told authorities, to no avail. So she bought an illegal gun for $20 on the street. Five hours later, her ex-boyfriend attacked her outside her house and she shot him dead.

A Wisconsin woman was not so lucky. She had a restraining order against her husband who had threatened her and her children. She called a firearms instructor to inquire about getting a gun and was told there'd be a 48-hour waiting period. Just 48 hours. Sounds pretty reasonable, huh? Well, 24 hours later she and her children were dead.

Waiting periods sound very reasonable in legislative chambers. But not so reasonable in real life.

It's because of stories like these - and there's no end to them - that 1 agree with prominent female gun rights advocate Sonny Jones, who fears that proposed laws will keep women from getting much-needed weapons. She says, "I do not approve of background checks, waiting periods, registration, or mandatory training. It is our right to use whatever means we choose to protect ourselves. We have nothing to prove, we need no one's permission."

Another reason I fear seemingly reasonable gun control proposals is that I believe there is a hidden agenda behind many of them. And that is the banning and confiscation of firearms in America. This is not just paranoia. Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc., the country's biggest gun-control organization, now headed by Sarah Brady, the people who brought you the Brady Bill- let the cat out of the bag. In
1976, he wrote in the New Yorker that the organization's "ultimate goal" was "to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors --- totally illegal."

Does this sound implausible? Well, it's happened recently in Britain and in Australia. Similar broad bans are being introduced in state legislatures across America. If some of the anti-gun forces have their way, America is next.

To some of you, this may even sound like a good idea. Let's get rid of guns, and then we won't have violence. But it doesn't work that way. Keep in mind that all proposals to ban guns are aimed at law-abiding, non-violent citizens. Criminals --- who by definition ignore laws against burglary, rape, assault, murder -- will also disregard laws against guns.

Whatever the anti-gun lobby tells you, the truth is that every year guns save the lives of huge numbers of children and adults - far more lives than are lost to gun violence or accidents.

The truth is that violent crime has been dropping every year since 1991.

The truth is that none of the recent shootings were done with legal guns.

The truth is gun control disarms law-abiding citizens, not criminals.

The truth is that if a criminal knows he may be met with a gun, he is far less likely to violate a home or commit an assault.

I hope you're convinced that guns are actually a benefit to society.

But as important as guns are in fighting crime and saving lives, that's not the main reason I support the right to bear arms. As a libertarian, the main reason I support this vital right is for the same reason that the Founding Fathers did. It was not for hunting furry little animals or Bambi's Mom. It wasn't even for protection against crime or to make sure we could defend our borders. It was because they knew that, throughout history, the greatest threat to life and liberty has always come from government -- and they believed that an armed citizenry would be the best protection against government tyranny developing in America.

All the stories you hear from history - around the world - about ethnic cleansing, oppression of minorities, totalitarian regimes - none of these could have happened if the people were armed.

The Second Amendment is the" enforcement clause" of the rest of the Bill of Rights. The right to keep and bear arms is, like free speech and religious freedom, a central part of our political heritage as a free people. We MUST preserve it.