Riding Shotgun With Charlie
#100
Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation
Alan Gottlieb is The MAN! At my first Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in Tampa 2016, I approached Massad Ayoob to have him sign my copy of In The Gravest Extreme. I took a deep breath, asked Mas if he could come Riding Shotgun. Alan was right behind Mas. He said “Oh my gosh, Mas you’ve got to go Riding Shotgun With Charlie!” It was 2 years before we made it happen.
In Phoenix 2019 at GRPC, I was hanging out with a few people at the social hour and Alan came up to our group and congratulated me on the Blogger of the Year. And he asked when HE was going to come Riding Shotgun. We made it happen in Bellevue, WA, at the Second Amendment Foundation headquarters last month. He may have let me conduct the interview in his car, his 7th Corvette!
Alan grew up in New York City then joined the Army. Earning a degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee, he became interested in fighting for individual rights, and the 2A which is most under attack. He got involved with the Young Americans for Freedom and was sent to Seattle to cover a 13 state region for the Student Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. In 1972, way before the NRA-ILA, he had the idea to change it to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRBKA). Within 2 years ,the CCRBKA was bigger than its predecessor, and then he started the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). The CCRBKA donations are not tax deductible as they’re involved with lobbying, but the SAF is non-partisan and donations are deductible. Both offices of the SAF & CCRBKA are located at Liberty Park in Bellevue.
We talk about how things have been changing and the SAF is reaching out to the new gun owners with TV ads. Alan shares how he’s able to get commercials for SAF on some of the networks that are against the 2A. It’s very important to get the new gun owners involved and learning how the anti-gun crowd is going after our Rights and our firearms. Brad Parscale, who worked for the Trump campaign, is now working for SAF and helping the foundation grow.
We also cover how just being public and open about firearms makes us a target for the anti-gun folks. Alan shares some stories about threats he’s gotten and how he passes them on to the local authorities. Some of the threats are ‘downright scary’. He isn’t the only one who gets these threats either.
We also cover that often the people fighting for our rights don’t get enough time to get out and do some shooting on our own. One of Alan’s favorite shotguns was a shotgun owned by Neal Knox. His favorite type of shooting is trap and skeet, which he would love to do more often but he’s very busy fighting for our rights to shoot.
He’s traveling all over the United States and the world talking about gun rights. He said that when people in other countries talk about gun rights, they call it “Second Amendment” rights, which is a wonderful hat tip to our Constitution and Founding Fathers. What I really got from my time with Alan is that the shoes he wears in the 2A community are HUGE! When he does finally decide to retire, we are going to need about 4 or 5 people just to keep up with everything Alan does.
Favorite quotes:
“Donations can be tax deductible and you can write part of this off on your taxes and make the government pay part of the freight, since they were attacking our rights to begin with.”
“We buy those spots (remnant time) so we’re not feeding the enemy.”
“Our outreach is tripled already this year.”
“The more public you are in the media with this, the more you get picked on. The more threats you get.”
“In Europe, they always refer to gun rights as “‘Second Amendment’.”
“Internationally, gun rights shouldn’t stop at any country’s border. Gun rights are a human right.”
Second Amendment Foundation
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Special THANKS to Derek LeBlanc of Kids S.A.F.E. Foundation for following us and getting some ‘B roll” film.
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