> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Gun control lobby now attacking vets
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/gun-control-lobby-now-attacking-vets/
- Published: 2007-12-24T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T01:31:55.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Mark A. Taff Your column here*

UNSUCCESSFUL IN ITS CONTINUED EFFORT to permanently strip as many American citizens as possible of their constitutionally-protected firearms rights, the gun control lobby has now launched a vicious tirade against our military veterans; men and women who have given their hearts, souls and often much more so that these extremists can sleep safe and secure at night in a free society.

As a Gulf War veteran, I am insulted by a recent rant from Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, that leaves readers with the impression that military veterans are essentially ticking time bombs. Millions of American men and women have served courageously under fire only to come home and find hysterics like Sugarmann ready to strip them of rights.

Sugarmann, in a remarkable diatribe assailing passage of the NICS Improvement Act, claimed not only that the legislation had been “hijacked” by the so-called “gun lobby” — an assertion he will have to debate with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control group that supported the legislation – but also had the audacity to suggest that combat veterans who may have needed counseling as a result of their battlefield experiences should forever be denied their right to own a firearm, for hunting, competition, recreation or personal protection.

Evidently, Sugarmann has never been near a battlefield, or stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the citizen soldiers he has now maligned, else he would never have tried to convince the public that these heroes are somehow second-class citizens now that they’re back home. Of course, combat veterans often have a tough time when they return from deployment. After all, who wouldn’t come back from a war zone with some emotional issues? It is our responsibility as a nation to help and support our veterans, not trash their rights and steal from them a sense of dignity by lumping them together with convicted rapists, murderers and other felons who can’t legally own a gun.

Sugarmann is livid that the NICS legislation includes a mechanism by which tens of thousands of military veterans — people who were callously and cavalierly classified as “safety risks” and had their names entered into the NICS system during the Clinton Administration — can now clear their records and truly resume their normal lives. Sugarmann, who has made a career of characterizing average gun owners as perhaps untrustworthy to own firearms has descended to a new low.

Of course, nobody wants criminals or the insane to have access to firearms, but the Violence Policy Center doesn’t want anybody to have a firearm. They traditionally support any kind of legislation that would expand the number of persons with “disabilities” who would lose their gun rights, for any number of reasons.

Sugarmann owes every military veteran an apology, not merely for suggesting that we all may be ready to go off on a killing rampage, but for working so hard to legislate away the rights with which we were born, and that includes the right to keep and bear arms. Those of us who have born arms so zealots like Sugarmann can enjoy the liberty to attack our character do not ask for much, except perhaps to be left alone so that we can live the rest of our lives in peace.

Quite possibly, Sugarmann has done us all a service by demonstrating that gun control fanatics will go to any lengths, including slandering men and women in uniform and those who once served, to further their own vicious, insidious agenda. It’s a lesson all America should learn from, and react accordingly by making gun control extremists as irrelevant as they deserve to be.

MARK TAFF is the executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org).

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 24, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/122407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)