NEWS RELEASE

Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA  98005

CLAIMS OF ‘HUGE’ ANTI-GUN PROTESTS WERE LIES, SAYS CCRKBA


For Immediate Release: August 30, 2007

BELLEVUE, WA – A Brady Campaign news release headline claiming that “huge” crowds turned out across America for anti-gun protests on Tuesday was both false and misleading, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said this morning. The news release went out over the national PR Newswire serviceTuesday evening at 9:56 p.m., Eastern Time.

“Careful analysis of news coverage, or the lack of it in the 24 hours following the Tuesday protests, confirm that these events were pretty much a bust,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The biggest crowds reported were ‘about 200’ people bused to an event at Lake Barrington, Illinois, and another in Philadelphia. A Maryland protest outside a District Heights gun shop drew about 60 demonstrators, and one at Seattle’s Green Lake Park attracted two people who spent 32 seconds lying on the grass. And this was supposed to be a ‘huge’ event? That gives a whole new definition of the term ‘lie-in’ that was used to describe this protest.

“What this tells us,” he observed, “is that the public has grown tired of rants about the evils of gun ownership, and how gun rights must be restricted to ensure public safety. The proof of gun control failures is visible every day. In the wake of Virginia Tech, people are beginning to understand the insanity of so-called ‘gun free zones’ that protect nobody but crazed killers, especially when campus officials do not act quickly. Americans look at murder and violent crime statistics in Washington, DC and Chicago and realize that bans on handgun possession by honest citizens in those cities have been disastrous.

“Americans now see the gun control agenda for what it really is: a citizen disarmament campaign by Utopian extremists who have built their movement on false promises, false hopes, false hysteria and false headlines,” Gottlieb stated. “Restrictive gun laws haven’t prevented a single mass shooting, and instead have turned our shopping malls, universities and public schools into killing grounds. Indeed, there is no evidence that any of this nation’s restrictive gun laws have prevented any kind of violent crime.

“By contrast,” Gottlieb concluded, “right-to-carry statutes, stand-your-ground laws and tough Three Strikes provisions – all supported by the firearms community and consistently, and vigorously, opposed by gun control fanatics – have been proven effective. They give honest citizens the means and legal protections to fight back, and they put criminals on the run, or behind bars where they belong.”

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.

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