A northern Arizona lawmaker won a major recognition from a Second Amendment organization.
On Monday, the Arizona House announced that State Representative Selina Bliss, a freshman Republican, earned the “Legislator of the Year” Award from the Arizona Citizens Defense League (AzCDL).
✅FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE✅ State Representative @SelinaBliss Earns “Legislator of the Year” Award from Arizona Citizens Defense League for Second Amendment Support
“I am immensely honored to be recognized by the Arizona Citizens Defense League. They are a terrific organization,… pic.twitter.com/cEZmmDELgR
“I am immensely honored to be recognized by the Arizona Citizens Defense League,” said Representative Bliss. “They are a terrific organization, dedicated to legislative action in support of the Second Amendment. Like them, I believe fervently in safeguarding our citizens’ right to bear arms – a cornerstone of our Constitution. As a state legislator, it is my privilege to work alongside fellow Arizonans in safeguarding and preserving the freedoms that define our great state, and to stand against any attempts to undermine those cherished liberties.”
Representative Bliss wasted no time in coming to the legislature and working to achieve results for her constituents and Arizonans. Bliss introduced HB 2617, which would have “allowed a constable or deputy constable to carry a firearm, both on and off duty and in the same manner as other certified peace officers, if the constable or deputy constable is in compliance with the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (AZPOST) firearms requirements and has fulfilled all other requirements as prescribed.” The first-term legislator told AZ Free News that she had introduced the bill after learning from her own Yavapai County Constable Ron Williams ““that constables and deputy constables are not part of the list in ARS 38-1113, which covers off-duty carry of firearms by peace officers.”
Even though the legislation passed out of the State House with broad bipartisan support on May 15, Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed the bill four days later. In the governor’s veto letter to House Speaker Ben Toma, Hobbs said, “I am concerned that this bill would have expanded the authority of constables to carry a gun while off-duty whereby some constables may choose to view themselves as having a ‘duty to respond’ when they are off duty.”
Bliss also scored a recent Second Amendment victory over the City of Phoenix’s donation of hundreds of unclaimed firearms to Ukraine’s national police force, working with Arizona House Judiciary Chairman Quang Nguyen to force the municipality’s leaders to end their efforts and to seek sanctions against its leaders. Both Bliss and Nguyen sent a 1487 complaint to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes over the issue, who issued a subsequent report which concurred that the City’s ordinance had violated multiple state laws. The two lawmakers were then joined by Representative Travis Grantham in sending a letter to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, calling on the prosecutor to “immediately undertake a criminal and civil investigation of City of Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and City Councilmembers for their intentional and flagrant violation of state law in connection with their actions surrounding the City’s Ordinance S-50010.”
According to its website, AzCDL “is a non-profit 501(c)(4), all volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to the principles contained in Article II, Section 2 of the Arizona Constitution that ‘All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.’”
The organization’s goals for Arizona are as follows:
Freedom to Carry – Restore and protect the right of law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm openly or discreetly anywhere they have a right to be.
Fewer restrictions on the lawful carrying of firearms on public property (state and local government buildings, parks, etc.).
Restaurant Carry – The ability of law-abiding citizens to dine out while carrying a firearm.
Continued strengthening and preservation of the right of presumed innocence in self-defense situations.
Strong State Preemption – Firearms laws should be consistent throughout the State.
Liability responsibility for property owners who ban firearms.
Continued improvements to CCW laws.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
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.
#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.
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.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is abusing New Mexico’s public health laws by declaring a “mass shooting health emergency” and has decided that the right to conceal- or open-carry a firearm for one’s own self-defense is what’s causing a crime wave to sweep Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque. Yes, she is attempting to suspend the Second Amendment via an executive order. In so doing, she has crossed the political, legal, and constitutional Rubicon and the end result will be to turn this part of New Mexico into a free-for-all crime zone.
As common sense tells us, what encourages crime is lax enforcement of the law, not draconian enforcement of unconstitutional edicts upon law-abiding citizens. The revolving door criminal justice system to which Gov. Lujan Grisham and her political ilk have subjected the residents of New Mexico has touched off a crime wave that has decent people seeking to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Disarming the residents of Bernalillo County will not make them safer. It will make them victims.
Criminals are criminals because they break the law. They don’t complete ATF screening forms, submit themselves to background checks and waiting periods, and then abide by posted signage that says a certain location is a gun-free zone. No, they break the law by committing wanton acts of violence. They steal, rob, rape, and murder. These acts are already illegal. Clearly, the governor’s executive order will be meaningless to those who perpetrate these crimes.
But, crime is not what Gov. Lujan Grisham really cares about. She simply wants to push her anti-freedom agenda and disarm the good people of Bernalillo County.
Her goals are no different from those of the Southern ex-Confederates who formed the KKK and disarmed freed Black Americans to continue to promote a system of bigotry. Her aims are those of corrupt Northerners who pushed gun control to keep Irish and Italian immigrants from being able to defend themselves from corrupt party bosses and city officials who preyed on them for “protection.” She wants to disarm the people and make them subservient to her political machinations.
At Gun Owners of America, a number of our staff are proud former law enforcement officers. They understand that they swore to uphold and protect the rights of their fellow citizens. The same is true for officers currently serving in New Mexico. They know that the United States Supreme Court has made clear that the right to keep and bear arms applies both inside and outside one’s home.
But, Gov. Lujan Grisham does not care that police have the duty to disobey illegal orders as part of their oaths. Similar to dictators in tyrannical regimes, she expects the rank and file police to just do her bidding. Luckily, some wearing the badge understand this. Local Sheriff John Allen noted that, “This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right of self-defense.” Albuquerque’s Police Chief, Harold Medina, said simply he won’t enforce the order. Now, even the Democrat Attorney General has announced he will not enforce this ban, stating bluntly “I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.”
Despite this, the Governor’s actions still place the residents and visitors of Bernalillo County at extreme risk. While some law enforcement officials have declared they will not enforce her illegal order, the risk still exists for a patriotic American to wind up at the end of an officer’s muzzle if they are willing to enforce this unconstitutional edict. Gov. Lujan Grisham will have officers on the streets under the mistaken belief that anyone in public with a firearm is a criminal.
Far from addressing a crime emergency, the governor has created one with her soft-on-crime policies. Now she seeks to exploit that to pursue her anti-freedom agenda. Her actions will disarm the residents and visitors of Bernalillo County and turn it into a free-for-all crime zone in which the law-abiding public will be made victims. Most dangerously, innocent people could very well be gunned down by police who believe the law-abiding are the criminals. All this while, without even a touch of shame, Gov. Lujan Grisham is protected by taxpayer-funded armed guards. We the people must push back.
Tim Macy is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and serves as the Chairman of Gun Owners of America, a non-profit “no-compromise” grassroots lobbying organization boasting over two million members. His organization has filed suit against the order discussed in this piece.
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.
