President Reagan knew value of gun ownership
>
>By Alan Gottlieb and Joe Waldron
>
>History will remember Ronald Wilson Reagan as one of America's greatest
>presidents, but long before he was recognized as the man who won the Cold
>War, or was the hero of countless "B" movies, he was a genuine hero to a
>woman named Melba King.
>
>According to recently-surfaced reports, when Reagan was a radio
>sportscaster in Des Moines, Iowa back in the fall of 1933, he came to the
>rescue - gun in hand - of King, who was then a 22-year-old nursing student.
>King recently recalled the incident to a Des Moines television station,
>noting that a mugger had come up from behind to rob her, outside the
>rooming house where Reagan was living. The robbery was thwarted when Reagan
>appeared in a second-floor window, gripping a .45-caliber pistol, and
>telling the mugger to "leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the >shoulders."
>
>Small wonder, then, that the man who would later become president
>understood the value of gun ownership. During his time in office, President
>Reagan signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which was written to
>protect law-abiding gun owners from harassment for merely exercising their
>constitutional right to own firearms.
>
>President Reagan most assuredly understood that honest gun owners are not a
>threat to anyone, and neither are they a threat to national security or
>their own neighborhoods. After all, the man took a bullet less than three
>months into his first term, yet he never used that as an excuse to make his
>office a bully pulpit for gun bans or repeal of the Second Amendment. He
>clearly separated the act of madman John Hinckley from the everyday actions
>of millions of legally-armed citizens.
>
>When he was in office, his detractors repeatedly alluded to him sneeringly
>as a "cowboy." Not coincidentally, the so-called sophisticates and
>intellectuals of another era said that same thing about another great
>president, Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt, of course, was the
>genuine article, having worked a ranch in Montana and once bringing in some
>outlaws at gunpoint. Roosevelt was a hunter, shooter and a pretty
>courageous soldier, so being called a cowboy did not seem to bother him,
>and neither did it bother Ronald Reagan.
>
>Cowboys, you see, are widely known in both legend and fact for their
>ability to face a problem and just deal with it. Confronted by a stampede,
>cowboys don't call for a public opinion poll or gather around the campfire
>to confer with one another, they jump in the saddle and stop the stampede. >
>Ronald Reagan came from America's heartland, where they still understand
>the difference between talking and doing. Not too many years before
>Reagan's birth, the good citizens of Coffeyville, Kansas did it "the cowboy
>way" when the infamous Dalton Gang showed up to attempt the nation's first
>dual bank robbery, on Oct. 5, 1892. It turned into a disaster because the
>armed townsfolk literally shot the Daltons to pieces.
>
>Sixteen years prior to that, the residents of Northfield, Minnesota reacted
>swiftly when the James-Younger gang robbed their bank and killed a teller.
>Northfield residents didn't call a town council meeting to "find a
>solution." History documents what happened to the James-Younger gang that >day.
>
>Perhaps that "cowboy" philosophy is what separates great men from those of
>lesser accomplishment. Who else but Ronald Reagan could have challenged
>Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," and see it happen?
>
>Mr. Reagan was later to acknowledge that the .45 in his hand that night in
>Des Moines wasn't loaded. But Reagan understood the deterrent value of
>firearms in the hands of common citizens, and obviously so did the robber.
>And so do millions of legally-armed Americans today who live rather
>peaceful lives due in no small part to the fear criminals have that their
>next intended victim might just terminate their career.
>
>President Reagan was a man of common values with the uncommon good sense
>not to compromise them. He learned from personal experience that good
>people could, and should, be trusted with firearms, and that their civil
>rights - including the right of self-defense - are not negotiable. That's
>as true today as it was that night in 1933.
>
>Alan Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation:
>
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Joe Waldron is executive director of the
>Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:
>
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>
>
>
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"A vote for Kerry is a de facto vote for bin Laden." Strider