* Originally By: Jneil@genie.com
 * Originally To: All
 * Originally Re: Letter to Harry Browne
 * Original Date: 13 Jul 96  22:18
 * Original Area: PR_NET
 * Forwarded by : Blue Wave/386 v2.30
NOTE: This message was originally addressed to LEROY PYLE
      and was forwarded to you by LEROY PYLE
                          --------------------
J. Neil Schulman Letter to Harry Browne,
July 13, 1996
Harry,
Because Bob Dole has betrayed gun owners by stating he would now
veto a repeal of the assault weapons ban and lobby Congress not to
repeal it -- a direct reveral of his pledge to the NRA that repealing
the ban was a top legislative priority -- I can no longer in good
conscience support the candidacy of Bob Dole, even with the
laudable goal of defeating Bill Clinton at all costs in the 1996
election.
I hereby endorse your 1996 candidacy for president of the United
States.
Since there is no chance that Libertarian Party candidates will
gain control of Congress in 1996, I'm still committed to the
Republican Party maintaining control of Congress in the '96 elections,
and hope that you can find Republicans in Congress whose candidacy
you can endorse and who, in turn, can endorse yours.
You now stand to gain support from millions of disaffected gun owners,
and I strongly suggest you make support for the Second Amendment
a central element of your campaign. If you do not do so, you will be
losing the possibility of the gun owners whose record turnout in the
1994 elections turned contol of Congress over to the Republican Party
because of the Brady Bill and assault-weapons ban passed by the
103rd Congress.
In particular, I suggest you focus on the following issues in order
to set the agenda on the Second Amendment issue for the other
candidates:
1) Concentrate on the proven scientific evidence that private
ownership and carrying of firearms is a major part of crime control
in this country.
Examples:
The National Self Defense Survey, peer-reviewed by Marvin Wolfgang,
a top anti-gun criminologist and found accurate, estimates that
private firearms stop as many as 2.5 million crimes each year -- a crime
stopped by a private gun every 13 seconds.
Women use guns in defense against rapists a dozen times more often
than rapists use a gun to commit a rape.
There are no recorded cases of a gun-control law reducing violent
crime, whereas there are many cases where new gun control laws have
been followed by increases in violent crime, suggesting that gun
control increases violent crime by shifting the balance of power
to the well-armed criminal psychopath.
A gun kept in the home for protection is 216 times as likely to deter
a home invasion as it is to take the life on an innocent person in that
household.
According to National Institute of Justice statistics, a handgun used
in defense against a mugging reduces the victim's chance of injury by
half as opposed to not resisting at all or resisting with any other
weapon.
Guns are more often the choice of weapon in justifiable homicides than
in criminal homicides.
2) Opposition to continued United States participation in international
agreements to restrict trade in firearms, such as the Wassenau
Agreement;
3) A pledge to make support for the individual right to keep and bear
arms a litmus test for any appointment to the federal bench, and a
demand that the Supreme Court of the United States grant a Writ of
Certiorari to overturn the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the
case of Hickman v. Block, which states that an individual has no
standing to claim violation of Second Amendment rights because the
Second Amendment is a right of the states not of the individual;
4) Support for the Right to Carry firearms, openly or concealed, and
endorsement of legislation now before Congress that would require
states to recognize the validity of out-of-state concealed-carry
licenses,
as required by Article IV, Sections 1 and 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
If I can be of use in formulating your campaign statements on these
issues, please call on me.
J. Neil Schulman
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