by Cheryl Todd | Oct 25, 2023 | Opinion
By Cheryl Todd |
Practicing gun safety is paramount every day of the year, not the least of which is Halloween. On a day when millions of people all across the nation celebrate the holiday by concealing their true identity and intentionally scaring friends and neighbors, those of us who own and carry firearms must be ever more careful and vigilant to keep us all safe.
A day that celebrates imagination and fantasy is the perfect opportunity for people of all ages to dress up as any character that their creativity and resourcefulness will allow. Many costumes include elements of guns, swords, knives, machetes, pitchforks, scythes, and other such implements.
Trick-or-treaters are welcome to visit your home at night and approach your front door with their faces obscured, their hands gloved, and possibly carrying an item resembling a weapon. On any other day of the year, this behavior might warrant a call to 911. However, it might be more difficult to determine the delightful from the truly dangerous on All Hallow’s Eve.
Exercising a few extra layers of preparedness, safety, and caution will help to preserve the fun while protecting your home, your family, and yourself.
The basic rules of safely handling a firearm are:
#1) Treat every firearm as though it is loaded—even if it is a toy and part of a costume.
Teaching children how to handle every gun as though it is a gun, including toy guns and nerf guns is a great way to begin implementing a safe way to interact with firearms and develop the habit of safety.
#2) Always keep your firearm pointed in a safe direction—even if it is a toy or replica.
Where is a safe direction? This may change depending on your location. If you live in a two-story home or in an apartment that shares walls with another person’s home you will need to be extra aware and diligent in determining a safe direction. One thing is certain, a safe direction never includes pointing a gun at another person or animal, unless that person or animal presents an immediate and imminent threat to your life.
Many of us grew up playing with water guns and squirting one another with both pistol and rifle-shaped toy guns. While this may seem to be harmless fun, on a night like Halloween pointing any toy firearm at people could result in tragic consequences. The time to teach safety is always now. And this holiday is a good time to begin thinking differently about how you model safe behavior with guns.
#3) Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot—not only is this a safety must, it is also the sure sign of a responsibly armed citizen.
Guns do not “just go off” by themselves. Just as knives do not carve a turkey and dishes do not load themselves into the dishwasher on their own, even on a night when ghosts abound. These are all inanimate tools. No firearm can fire until the trigger is pressed.
Keeping your finger off of the trigger will ensure that the gun will not discharge until you are ready for it to do so. Empower yourself and your children with this safety imperative, and you will not only be practicing safety and responsibility, but you will be modeling the behavior of a well-trained gun owner.
#4) Always be sure of your target and what’s beyond it and never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy—a sober assessment of any situation when you might feel that a threat is present is always imperative, and the frightful fun of Halloween might present extra opportunities to be both diligent and restrained.
No responsibly armed gun owner ever wants to have to use their firearm to harm another human being. However, the reality is that over 2,500,000 times every year, guns are used to save lives. In the hands of safe, trained, moral, and responsible citizens, guns are very effective tools of self-defense. Additionally, hunting and target practice are widely popular activities in the United States. Being aware and mindful of the threat, animal, or target you intend to fire upon is vital to good aim, but equally important is what is beyond what you are aiming at. If your aim is not true or if the projectile you fire penetrates beyond where you intended it could inadvertently harm innocent bystanders. On Halloween, when the streets are filled with children and families we must be aware of the added elements and responsibilities inherent in carrying a firearm for self-defense.
A day of fanciful costumes and dressing up can offer opportunities to both practice safety and teach new skills to keep you and your children safe. While enjoying the frights and fun, safety must be at the forefront of your thoughts. Following these universal rules of firearms safety will help keep you and your loved ones safe, on Halloween and every day.
Cheryl Todd has an extensive history of being a Second Amendment Advocate. Along with being a Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, she is the owner of AZFirearms Auctions, Executive Producer & Co-Host of Gun Freedom Radio, the founder of the grassroots movement Polka Dots Are My Camo, and the AZ State Director for the DC Project.
by Cheryl Todd | Oct 20, 2023 | Opinion
By Cheryl Todd |
The lives of our children and grandchildren will be impacted by the decisions we make today. Are your decisions creating the pathway toward individual liberties for current and future generations? Or are you simply allowing cultural whims that seem to shift with the breeze to overtake our nation?
Whether you personally own firearms or not, you should recognize the value of the right and the liberty to do so. And, you should understand your responsibility to protect these rights for all future generations. Throughout the unrest of the past several years, with mandatory lockdowns, riots, and defunding of police departments across the nation, millions of people have realized the value of personal safety and gun ownership. Many of these same people had previously been actively anti-gun and had naïvely voted away their liberties.
Life moves quickly. Culture perhaps even more so. We must be intentionally mindful of the past, present in the moment, and prepared for what the future holds. Whether we are engaged in the events shaping our world or not, time will march on. Many of those events, it seems, are focused on cultural and legal shifts in how Americans view our basic individual liberties, specifically as they pertain to our right to keep and bear arms. In these moments it’s worth asking ourselves, “Are you creating more freedom and liberty or are you simply allowing those vital elements to be stripped away?”
Leadership expert, clinical psychologist, and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Henry Cloud has summed up leadership in one simple phrase, “You get what YOU create or what YOU allow.”
Too often, we point our fingers at elected officials, at “the media,” and a whole litany of “thems” and “theys” who are eroding our rights and infringing on our liberties. And, there is effort being put in by those who hate freedom and who love to live with the boot of tyranny on their necks and ours. However, the final outcome always comes down to personal responsibility.
Our Founding Fathers and Mothers certainly embodied these principles of creating and allowing. They fought, bled, starved, and died as they CREATED this nation which ALLOWED for their children and ours to thrive wrapped in the precious and unique American Constitutional Protections. They were the counter-culturists of their time. They had every force against them, as we do today, and yet they changed the entire world.
It’s important to remember they were just ordinary people who finally said ENOUGH, we will no longer allow unjust laws to slowly smother us. They said ENOUGH, you will NOT take away our life-saving tools of self-defense that protect us from predators—those with four legs and with two. And, they looked little King George III right in his wild, manic, power-hungry eyes and said ENOUGH. We will not be slowly smothered by unjust taxes, regulations, and laws!
And, as you stand at the crossroads of history you must decide what part you will play.
Our Founders, the famous and those forgotten by history, handed down the keys to the shiny new nation, wrote us an owner’s manual, and prayed that we would value their hard work and sacrifice and try not to wreck this beautiful new experiment in freedom and liberty. Unfortunately, we have slowly and incrementally allowed those who hate liberty to chip the paint, bald the tires, and stain the upholstery with a splash of tyranny here and a dribble of infringements there. You can see it firsthand in overreaching policies that have been proposed or implemented, including certain red-flag gun laws and universal background checks.
Let YESTERDAY be the last day you allow those Representatives to feign ignorance of the Will of the People. Let TOMORROW be the first day that you begin to teach your children and our children’s children the lessons of World History. Let TODAY be the day you become involved in the political process at local, state, and federal levels, and make the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment the focal points of how you vet all candidates in every election.
When you do this, you will create a future that honors the sacrifices made by so many that will once again allow your children and your children’s children to live in a nation rooted in liberty.
Cheryl Todd has an extensive history of being a Second Amendment Advocate. Along with being a Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, she is the owner of AZFirearms Auctions, Executive Producer & Co-Host of Gun Freedom Radio, the founder of the grassroots movement Polka Dots Are My Camo, and the AZ State Director for the DC Project.
by Cheryl Todd | Aug 29, 2023 | Opinion
By Cheryl Todd |
How many times have we heard our parents tell us “keep your hands to yourself”? Being one of four siblings, my parents had that phrase on replay—constantly. When we were children, my brothers and I were always trying to boss each other around and get our own way. But, as we grew up, we learned to mind our own business and control our own behavior. We began to realize that we might not LIKE what the other one was doing, but that their behavior was not up to us to control. Each of my brothers and I matured into grown-ups who understand that we are responsible for our own actions and reactions to other people.
The news media as of late has been replete with stories of how some people are “triggered” by words and symbols and even articles of clothing worn by other people. And, it is conceivable that those who are “triggered” are genuinely having an emotional reaction to their surroundings.
Humans are built to be relational, and part of relating is that we respond and react to those around us. Put two babies in a room together, if one of them starts crying, the other one will impulsively join in. But, as we mature, we learn that we can and must control our own responses to those around us. We can feel a “triggered” emotion without reacting to it, and certainly not by trying to control the people and things in our landscape to whom we are having an emotional reaction.
For example, if I were terrified of flying and seeing airplanes flying over my head does that mean that I should try to make airplanes illegal? They make me uncomfortable, people get hurt and injured in airplane accidents—I shouldn’t have to be made uncomfortable by seeing these things flying over my head…right?! Something should be done about these airplanes! Right?!
Of course not. My fears, my phobias, and my emotional reactions are MINE to deal with. It is MY responsibility to learn how to interact with the rest of the world and control my emotional responses through coping skills. I cannot expect the rest of the world to conform to what makes me feel comfortable. I have to learn to “keep my hands to myself.”
A more realistic example of how this scenario tends to play out is with firearms and our Second Amendment Constitutional Right to exercise our God-given Right to self-defense. Some people are made uncomfortable by the fact that I own firearms, even though I am a responsibly armed and trained citizen. They cite times when firearms have been improperly used by others to harm and murder our fellow men and women. They feel deeply that guns are bad, ignoring the obvious fact that millions of times each year guns are used to protect and save lives. The truth is that people who don’t “keep their hands to themselves” hurt other people, and guns are merely one of any number of tools used to maim and murder innocents.
Regardless, there are many who profess that the world would be a better place if everyone would simply listen to their “common sense” ideas of making these tools disappear. However, if those people can take from me my firearms and my right to own those tools, that makes ME feel transgressed and unsafe. Being deprived of my Second Amendment rights makes me deeply uncomfortable. Are my feelings less important than those of other people?
So, where does that leave us? If one person gets their way, the other is left feeling discomfort. What are we to do about that? Our Founding Fathers and Mothers created a solution. In fact, they believed so strongly in the principle of “keeping one’s hands to oneself” that they put everything on the line and fought, bled, starved, and died in order to have the opportunity to write a few documents about this very issue.
The Declaration of Independence was their instruction to the English Monarchy and Army to keep their hands to themselves. It was a boundary-setting written pronouncement of autonomy. It declared where the English Government ends and where the United States Government begins. The Founders followed that up with a missive called the Constitution of the United States, which set the rules for how our own government would behave. And the ultimate “keep your hands to yourself” document is the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights tells our own United States Government what it can NOT do in the personal lives and with the personal possessions of We the People—including our “arms” (guns, knives, swords, bows and arrows, etc.) which free citizens have the right to keep and bear, which means to own and carry. And our Founders, realizing how important firearms are to personal safety and security, included the Second Amendment which codified those inherent rights, and added a clause that you will find nowhere else in our Founding Documents. They wrote, “shall not be infringed.”
It was an emphatic punctuation declaring that no matter what, this right stands unfettered by any other law, decree, or governmental regulation. According to the National Archives website, “[The Bill of Rights] spells out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual—like freedom of speech, press, and religion. It sets rules for due process of law and reserves all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States.”
Part of being a grown-up is knowing that my rights end where my brothers’ and my neighbors’ begin. Keep your hands to yourself. These are timeless values and, in a way, our Founding Fathers and Mothers are continuing to parent each new generation in exactly that wise admonition nearly 300 years after they secured these rights for their own lives.
Cheryl Todd has an extensive history of being a Second Amendment Advocate. Along with being a Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, she is the owner of AZFirearms Auctions, Executive Producer & Co-Host of Gun Freedom Radio, the founder of the grassroots movement Polka Dots Are My Camo, and the AZ State Director for the DC Project.
by Cheryl Todd | Aug 19, 2023 | Opinion
By Cheryl Todd |
Much has been said, debated, pontificated, blustered, and raged about the Second Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Major news media, political talking points, and even official speeches delivered by the President of the United States are filled with confusing and contradictory rhetoric posing as factual information. Quiz yourself and your friends with this “Two Truths and a Lie.” Can you spot what is true and what is not?
A. The Second Amendment refers specifically to the right to keep and bear guns.
B. The Second Amendment is the only place in the U.S. Bill of Rights that includes the clause “shall not be infringed.”
C. The Second Amendment refers to the “right of the people.”
A. LIE! The Second Amendment refers to “arms” which can be guns—rifles or handguns, knives, swords, bows and arrows, spears, axes, cannons, explosives, etc. As explained by The Tenth Amendment Center, “Today the word ‘arms’ refers collectively to offensive or defensive weapons. The word’s meaning has changed little since it was first used seven hundred years ago. Its definition has never restricted civilian use of military weapons, including when the Second Amendment was approved.”
B. TRUTH! The original text of the Second Amendment is a mere 27 words in length and ends with the clause “shall not be infringed.” This phrase is not found in any other amendment or in any other part of our Founding Documents. This speaks volumes to the vital importance of this amendment.
C.TRUTH! The text of the Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” While proponents of anti-Gun ideology hyper-focus on the first four words (“A well regulated Militia”) and ignore the following words that define and clarify (“the right of the people”), the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled on this issue multiple times. In Heller v. District of Columbia in 2008, in McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, and most recently in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, “[T]he Court points out, the primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to preserve the right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense.”
In summaries from these historic SCOTUS cases, the Justices have stated that “The Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens (‘the People’) to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’” And, “The Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to both possess and carry weapons for self-defense, particularly weapons that are in common use among the populace.”
Bottom Line:
The brilliance and foresight of our Founders have stood for centuries as a firewall preventing people in positions of power from whittling away at the freedoms of the average citizen. Since the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, our Founders have been proven prophetic. Through regulations, legal maneuvers, politically-based compromises, propaganda, or tricky wordplay, infringements have been ever-eroding our right to own and use tools of self-defense. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are inspired documents, and so far the Supreme Court has upheld the power and significance of these documents, but it is the responsibility of each generation to reassert the principles that our Founders fought, bled, starved, and died to secure for our nation. Read the documents for yourself. Do not rely on others to interpret them for you. They are part of your precious and unique inheritance of Freedom and heritage of American values.
Cheryl Todd has an extensive history of being a Second Amendment Advocate. Along with being a Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, she is the owner of AZFirearms Auctions, Executive Producer & Co-Host of Gun Freedom Radio, the founder of the grassroots movement Polka Dots Are My Camo, and the AZ State Director for the DC Project.
by Corinne Murdock | Jul 9, 2023 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
The city of Phoenix plans to send hundreds of unclaimed guns to Ukraine, around 500 to 600 guns, over the next two years.
The Phoenix City Council approved the measure during last week’s formal meeting. The city will give the guns to a private company headquartered in Pennsylvania, D.T. Gruelle, who will then transport them to the National Police of Ukraine. The city will expend nothing for the transfer.
The approximately $200,000 in firearms given to Ukraine will only be 9mm, 45mm, 39mm, and 12 gauge. The firearms transfer agreement is binding for two years: June 28 of this year to June 28, 2025.
However, the gun donation may be unlawful.
Arizona House Judiciary Committee leaders immediately contacted Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego over the arrangement. In a letter, the committee members warned that the gun donation violates state law.
Reps. Quang Nguyen (R-LD01) and Selina Bliss (R-LD01), chair and vice-chair of the committee, urged Gallego to repeal the ordinance.
The lawmakers noted that state law prohibits political subdivisions from enacting any ordinance concerning the possession, sale, transfer, purchase, acquisition, or use of firearms.
The lawmakers also noted that state law doesn’t permit cities or other local governments from disposing of their firearms through donations. Rather, statute permits local governments to either trade the unclaimed firearms to a federal firearms licensed business in exchange for items like ammunition or weapons, or sell the unclaimed firearms to an authorized business who will then sell those firearms to the public.
The pair reminded Gallego of Brnovich v. City of Tucson, in which the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the city of Tucson’s ordinance ordering the destruction of unclaimed firearms conflicted with state law.
It appears that Phoenix’s donated guns may not only go to the National Police of Ukraine, but the citizens themselves.
The company contracted to take the unclaimed guns, D.T. Gruelle, has close ties to the Ukrainian government. Their managing director, Marco Gruelle, sits on the board of Ukrainian Arsenal of Liberty (UAL): a group created by Ukrainian Parliament members for the purpose of arming citizens. Parliament member Maryan Zablotskyy sits on UAL’s board.
Also on UAL’s board are Oleksandr Markushyn, mayor of the city of Irpin, and Ivan Slobodyanyk, chair of the Union of Local Communities and Farmers Union of Ukraine as well as a fighter in the Territorial Defense Force.
According to UAL’s donation brief, they utilized donated and unused guns obtained by American states’ police forces. Unclaimed guns are held by the Phoenix Police Department; as the Arizona Daily Independent first reported, the donation plan didn’t mention tracking measures for the guns once donated.
The company first engaged in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict last February. D.T. Gruelle has provided “critical aid transport” to various conflict zones since 2019.
That same year that D.T. Gruelle began providing conflict zone assistance, it established its 501(c)(3) nonprofit, D.T. Care, which currently provides emergency relief to Ukraine. Marco Gruelle also serves as president of D.T. Care. In its last annual report, issued in 2021, D.T. Care distributed over $361,000 in relief to South Africa, Panama, Lebanon, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, respectively.
D.T. Gruelle was founded in 1982 by Durard Timothy Gruelle, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War who continues to preside over the company today.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
