This month marks a quarter century since America’s 1st Freedom was launched in June of 2000. At the time, the NRA recognized that the media landscape was undergoing massive change and that, in this transformation, there were threats and opportunities.
The nation had entered a time in which a U.S. president and many U.S. senators were openly attacking the citizenry’s right to keep and bear arms, but there was also an explosion of new media outlets as legacy media was losing its influence. FOX News had only begun four years before and was just starting to challenge the networks. Magazines were being reduced to—or replaced by—websites. The .coms would bubble and burst and then grow again. Smartphones were still a few years away and social media did not yet exist.
In this fracturing media landscape was opportunity. If the nation’s oldest civil-rights organization had a political magazine and website that dug into and told the truth, then the NRA would have a real chance to further reach and inform the public and to thereby affect political races and policy via voter education. A well-informed public is, and has always been, the best defense of our individual rights.
Indeed, the spin needed to be taken out of narratives that gun-control groups were concocting, some notable politicians were repeating and many in the mainstream media were printing and airing without so much as critically looking into the claims or even attempting to balance them by interviewing people who might have a different point of view.
Such is why this publication’s debut cover featured an illustration of then-President Bill Clinton (D) morphing into then-Vice President Al Gore (D), a nominee for the presidency at the time who brashly wanted more gun bans and other restrictions on our civil liberties.
The previous eight years of Clinton and Gore had seen one attack after another levied against law-abiding gun owners and their Second Amendment rights. Perhaps most notably, the improperly named “Federal Assault Weapons Ban” was passed in 1994. It ultimately sunset in 2004, thanks in large part to tireless lobbying from the NRA backed by a robust membership, but should Gore have won the presidency, things might have turned out quite differently.
A Gore administration could have shaped the U.S. Supreme Court into one that might have used a case like Heller (2008) to take away our individual right to keep and bear arms, rather than to recognize the protections our founders intended. Subsequently, a Court packed with anti-Second Amendment justices would have likely ignored cases like McDonald (2010) and Bruen (2022), further burying this individual right by simply allowing anti-gun lower court decisions to stand. Fortunately, in part thanks to well-informed NRA members, Gore’s anti-Second Amendment positions ultimately cost him the election; indeed, they cost him his own state.
The 2000 election was critical to our freedom, but so was the 2024 election. Kamala Harris (D), vice president to then-President Joe Biden (D), was her party’s nominee for the presidency and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) joined her on the ticket. In the last months of their run for the presidency, both Harris and Walz attempted to portray themselves as seasoned gun owners, but Americans saw through their ruse and issued a resounding rebuke at the ballot box.
This all came after a Biden administration nominated not one, but two gun controllers to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the latter of which, Steve Dettelbach, was confirmed by a narrow U.S. Senate vote. Dettelbach’s ATF then used the dubiously named “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” legislation the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) and this very publication warned was ripe for abuse, to go after firearms sellers and law-abiding gun owners.
Biden, meanwhile, repeatedly expressed his desire to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)—he even said it was the “one thing” he’d ask God for. Of course, Biden ultimately dropped out of the race, but Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were no better on the Second Amendment. A Harris administration, as a follow-up to Biden, could have done even more damage to our rights than what a Gore administration might have done.
Thankfully, President Donald Trump (R) returned to the White House, this time with JD Vance (R) as vice president. Already, Trump has been working to not only defend, but also to strengthen, the protections around this American freedom.
Prior to his reelection last fall, Trump spoke at the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Dallas, Texas, and said, “The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning. And with your vote, I will stand strong for your rights and liberties.” In the months since President Trump retook this high office, his administration has openly moved to protect and remove impediments to this civil right.
However, even with this victory, the struggle to keep and, where necessary, to win back our Second Amendment-protected freedom is far from over. Such is why America’s 1st Freedom will dutifully continue to remain a voice of truth in the months and years ahead as the media landscape continues to transform.
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