Branches
In 2004, GOA spent over $1.75 million lobbying the U.S. Congress. Between 1998 and 2004, GOA spent over $18 million lobbying Congress. GOA's Federal Political Action Committee is "Gun Owners of America Inc. Political Victory Fund" (C00278101). It raises funds to support the election of pro-gun candidates at all levels of government.
Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) is a non-profit, tax deductible education foundation. It acts as the research arm for GOA. Their main objective is to hold seminars around the country to inform the public, media outlets, and various government officials on Second Amendment issues. The GOF has recently begun a new campaign by creating Public Service Announcements (PSA) to promote what they call "PROPER Gun Safety". According to GOF their campaign objective is "To generate public awareness of the dangers of not having a gun ready for protection and to encourage gun owners not to lock up their best means of self-defense." The PSAs focus mainly trying to persuade their target audience, American adults in gun owning households, to not lock up fire arms, but instead to keep them ready and accessible. According to the PSAs:
- Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year—or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
- Locking up firearms can cost lives during a life-threatening situation.
- Guns are the Great Equalizer for women. As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.
- Law-abiding gun owners are a good form of crime control. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).
The Consumer Federation of America Foundation disputes these statistics, saying that a Department of Justice study found that guns were used defensively 62,000 times between 1987 and 1992.
Read more about this topic: Gun Owners Of America
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And from her branches carelessly
He takes what he can find.”
—James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)
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—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)