The 30th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference

2014 Gun Rights Policy Conference (from: ammoland.com)

2014 Gun Rights Policy Conference (from: ammoland.com)

I attended my first Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in 1994.  I admired the chutzpah of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb in setting that year’s annual pro-gun rights confab in San Francisco, the heart of gun-grabbing coastal California.  It was the same year that Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership came to life, and the year I realized that as long as Americans cared enough about their civil rights to fly or drive hundreds of miles to meet like-minded people and learn how to protect those rights, our freedoms would be safe.

The three-day conference meets again this weekend in Phoenix. It kicks off with a Friday evening reception that affords great opportunities for networking, catching up with friends, and meeting new fellow activists. Starting early Saturday morning is a tight schedule of subject-oriented speaker panels. They provide the audience with updates on running battles in the gun rights wars, such as right to carry. The last panels conclude the conference at noon on Sunday.

Long-serving volunteers (think of them as civil rights workers) in state politics brief us on legislation and opinion trends on the state level. For example, Jim Irvine, president of the Buckeye (Ohio, of course!) Firearms Association has been a regular speaker for years. In my years at the GRPC I saw the evolution of Ohio from a right guaranteed by the state constitution but denied in practice, to a striking reversal of policy to allow concealed carry, finally codified in Ohio’s statutes.

Other state leaders include Dave Kopp of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, longtime executive vice president Richard Pearson of the Illinois State Rifle Association, and Hon. Philip Journey, vice president of the Kansas State Rifle Association.  All are slated to speak in Phoenix this weekend.

An international perspective on gun rights is given in a standing panel every year that includes Julianne Versnel, an attendee at United Nations proceedings on international gun control. Other attendees have included pro-gun rights authors, activists, and lawyers from Italy and Canada.

Famed criminologist and author of More Guns, Less Crime John R. Lott, Jr. will again speak on latest developments in crime trends in the context of right to carry.  Lott has established a formidable media presence for his panel of experts—the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Every year at least two speaker panels include prominent attorneys involved in various gun rights court cases from the local level up to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The attorney who won the famous District of Columbia vs. Heller and McDonald vs. Chicago U.S. Supreme Court cases has been a regular speaker at GRPC. He is Alan Gura, and he will deliver the awards luncheon address on Saturday.

Other attorneys at GRPC include author and historian David T. Hardy, Esq., California gun rights attorney Don Kilmer, Esq., David Sigale, Esq. from Chicago, Dan Schmutter, Esq. from the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, and the Second Amendment Foundation’s own in-house counsel Miko Tempski, Esq.

Pundits discuss gun rights on the national political scene, including Breitbart.com’s AWR Hawkins, Armed American Radio’s Mark Walters, and The Gun Mag’s Dave Workman.

Finally, DRGO has been given an entire speaker panel this year. Your DRGO leadership team will be there discussing our project’s growth and goals. We will also cover mental health considerations of firearm policy, social media methods and outreach, and dealing with terrorism in hospitals.

These are only a few highlights of a weekend packed with news and policy expertise from the makers of that news and policy.  We hope to see you in Phoenix this weekend, but if not there, at next year’s GRPC.  Check the Second Amendment Foundation’s website for updates and news on the Gun Rights Policy Conference.

 

Dr. Tim Wheeler

—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.

All DRGO articles by Timothy Wheeler, MD.