Article first appeared at America’s 1st Freedom.

This feature appears in the April ’16 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.

The anti-gun activists working for Michael Bloomberg and their allies in the media are doing their best to convince politicians that the time is right to embrace their anti-gun agenda. The 2016 elections, they’ve been told, are a time when millions of Americans are just chomping at the bit to vote for a politician who’ll support bills to ban guns, require background checks even on temporary transfers between friends, set limits on ammunition ownership, and require legal gun owners to purchase insurance before they exercise their rights.

Reality tells a very different story. Headlines from Minnesota proclaim the number of concealed-carry permit holders now tops 200,000 (an all-time high). In Fresno County, Calif., demand for concealed-carry licenses has skyrocketed to the point that the sheriff’s department says it’ll take 10 months to work through the stack of applications. The number of NICS checks is soaring, and gun safety and training classes are full around the country. It seems more Americans are embracing their right to keep and bear arms, not turning their back on the Second Amendment.

I’m glad that more of us are exercising our right to keep and bear arms, but we also have to be engaged in the political fight to secure and defend that right. Armed with information, facts and the passion to protect the rights we hold dear, we can not only push back against the anti-gun barrage of ads and media funded by Bloomberg’s deep pockets, we can send a message that politicians across the country will hear loud and clear: Focus on the criminals by prosecuting them and keeping them in prison. Leave my rights alone.

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