Ta l k i n g Po i n t s

IRAN-CONTRA FIGURE OLIVER NORTH NAMED PRESIDENT OF THE NRA

By Lisa Marie Pane | Associated Press

Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North, the gung-ho Marine at the center of the Iran-Contra affair three decades ago, was named president Monday of the National Rifle Association, giving it star power as it faces a powerful backlash over the massacres in Florida and Las Vegas.

North, 74, will be the biggest celebrity to lead the 5-million-member gun lobby since Hollywood leading man Charlton Hes-ton, who famously declared in 2000 that his guns would have to be taken “from my cold, dead hands.”

“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said.

Momentum for gun control has been building since the mass shooting in Las Vegas last fall that killed 58 people and the Feb. 14 rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead.

North was picked by the NRA’s board of directors, which elects a president every two years, and is expected to assume office within the next several weeks. He succeeds Pete Brownell, who did not seek a second term.

LaPierre remains as vice president and chief executive, run-ning the powerful group’s day-to-day operations. North will lead the board, and NRA observers say they anticipate he will take on a more public role in the style of Heston, a fiery presence who

used his acting background to energize members.North was a military aide to the National Security Council

during the Reagan administration in the 1980s he emerged into the spotlight for his role in arranging the secret sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

He was convicted in 1989 of obstructing Congress during its investigation, destroying government documents and accepting an illegal gratuity. Those convictions were overturned in 1991.

With his crisp military bearing and teary-eyed testimony before Congress, North came to be regarded as an earnest American patriot by many on the right, and he went on to run for office, write several books and serve as a commentator on Fox News.

In a statement, North said he was honored to be selected and “eager to hit the ground running.”

North’s appointment was hailed by gun-rights supporters who consider him a warrior who will vigorously battle efforts to restrict access to firearms. Gun-control advocates called his appointment symptomatic of an NRA tone-deaf and unwilling to seek solutions to gun violence.

“For an organization so concerned with law and order, pick-ing a new leader who admitted that he lied to Congress is a truly

remarkable decision,” said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign. The gun lobby “will be led by a man whose own concealed carry permit was revoked because he was ‘not of good character.’”

Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an expert on guns and the Second Amendment, called North the closest thing the NRA has to a celebrity.

“And maybe they figure they need a more prominent person at the helm, as opposed to the string of relative unknowns who have served in recent years,” Spitzer said.

Heston, who died in 2008, served from 1998 to 2003. In 2000, he sought to rally NRA supporters against Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, warning that Gore was going to “slander you as gun-toting, knuckle-dragging, bloodthirsty maniacs.”

Hoisting a flintlock rifle, Heston declared: “From my cold, dead hands!”

It was a time similar to today, an election following a high-pro-file mass shooting — the one at Columbine high school in 1999.

ILLINOIS COUNTIES DECLARE ‘SANCTUARY’ STATUS FOR GUN OWNERS By Don Babwin | Associated Press

Several rural Illinois counties have taken a stand for gun rights by co-opting a word that conservatives associate with a liberal policy to skirt the law: sanctuary.

At least five counties recently passed resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners — a reference to so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago that don’t cooperate with aspects of federal immi-gration enforcement.

The resolutions are meant to put the Democratic-controlled Legis-lature on notice that if it passes a host of gun bills, including new age restrictions for certain weapons, a bump stock ban and size limit for gun magazines, the counties might bar their employees from enforcing the new laws.

“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Sec-ond Amendment rights,” said David Campbell, vice chairman of the Effingham County Board. He said at least 20 Illinois counties and local officials in Oregon and Washington have asked for copies of Effingham County’s resolution.

County officials fear their state legislators won’t be able to stop the passage of the gun restrictions because they are outnumbered by lawmak-ers from in and around Chicago, where the vast majority of the more than 650 homicides last year involved guns.

Co-opting the sanctuary title is also a way of drawing attention to the rural-urban political divide that was so stark in the last general election, when “downstate” areas of Illinois backed Donald Trump, who remains popular with those voters, while the Chicago backed Hillary Clinton, who grew up in the suburbs.

“We’re just stealing the language that sanctuary cities use,” explained the Effingham County’s top prosecutor, Bryan Kibler, who came up with the idea.

Not lost on them is that lawmakers from Chicago were instrumental in turning Illinois into what they derisively call a “sanctuary state” by passing recent legislation that prohibits local law enforcement from

arresting or detaining people based solely on their immigration status. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed it into law.

“They are trying to make a point that they really resent how the city of Chicago treats the rest of the state and how they’re treated as gun owners,” said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

The resolutions are largely symbolic — a way for communities where guns are cherished and where hunting is a way of life to make the point that they view most restrictions on guns to be unconstitutional.

“We wanted to ... get across that our Second Amendment rights are slowly being stripped away,” Kibler said.

Dave Workman, of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation, sees something more.

“It’s like a warning shot across somebody’s bow,” said Workman, who knows of one other place, Oregon’s Deschutes County, that is looking at doing something similar to the Illinois counties. “If you’ve got four or five counties telling Chicago something, that’s significant.”

Such talk worries Kathleen Willis, a Democratic state representative from suburban Chicago who sponsored some of the gun legislation.

“I don’t think you can say, ‘I don’t agree with the law so I won’t enforce it,’” she said. “I think it sends the wrong message.”

Kibler, though, said he thinks the resolutions send the same message that cities like Chicago send by refusing to cooperate with federal immi-gration authorities. He said he won’t speculate about how he’d deal with new gun restrictions that haven’t been signed into law, but that legisla-tors need to understand, “If you pass it we might not pay attention to it.”

Kibler pointed out that prosecutors already have a lot of discretion and cited an example in which he gave a gun owner a break. He dis-missed charges against a man after police found a gun in the car he’d driven from Mississippi, where it is legal to carry guns openly, to Illinois, where it’s not.

“The guy had no (criminal) history and he had it on the side of the front seat of his car in a sack, so I dismissed it,” he said.

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