As an enthusiastic supporter of the Second Amendment, I find the NRA’s Freedom’s Safest Place ads to be outstanding expressions of the freedom that gun ownership provides.

A couple of particularly affecting pro-gun statements come from the European immigrant who lived in Nazi-occupied Greece and the older black woman who bought a gun to keep safe in her gang-infested apartment complex.

The most recent is from Benghazi defender, Mark “Oz” Geist. It’s inspiring to hear a genuine hero talk about American courage:

Transcript

I know the truth about Benghazi.

I was there, fighting alongside five Americans, who were all raised to believe that if you have a chance to save someone’s life and you don’t try, that’s more criminal than anything else. So we fought for 13 hours, and we saved lives. But we are not unique.

We are no different than the Americans who ran back into those crumbling New York towers, or the Americans who tackled the armed terrorists on that French train, or the many faceless, nameless Americans who every day risk their lives for perfect strangers trapped in burning cars or dangerous waters—because if they didn’t, no one would.

Where was that courage among the politicians who had the power to make a difference during those 13 hours in Benghazi?

I am the National Rifle Association of America, and I am Freedom’s Safest Place.

People who care about the Second Amendment should pay attention to immigration-fueled demographic change in this country, because Hispanics are gun grabbers at heart, as Pew pollsters discovered in a 2014 survey:

Pew Hispanic: Gun Rights and Restrictions

An early 2014 Pew Research Center survey asked U.S. adults what is more important — protecting the right of Americans to own guns or controlling gun ownership (Pew Research Center, 2014d). Hispanic registered voters nationally say they prefer gun control over the rights of owners by a margin of 62%-to-36%, as do black registered voters by a margin of 71%-to-26%, according to the survey. By contrast, white registered voters choose gun owners’ rights over gun control by a margin of 59%-to-39%.

Included in the roughly six-in-ten Hispanic registered voters who say they prefer gun control are 44% who say that most Americans should be able to own guns if certain limits are in place and 18% who say only law enforcement and security personnel should be able to own guns. Also included among the 36% of Hispanic registered voters who think protecting gun rights is a bigger priority are 27% who favor some restrictions on gun ownership and just 9% who favor no such restrictions.

Looking across all Hispanics regardless of their voter registration status or eligibility, 82% of foreign-born Hispanics think controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting gun ownership rights, compared with 59% of Hispanics born in the U.S. who say the same.

A recent Pew Research Center analysis found that two-in-ten Hispanics say they have a gun, rifle or pistol in their home (Morin, 2014). This is similar to the share of blacks who say this (19%), but whites are twice as likely (41%) to say they have a gun in their home. According to a Pew Research analysis of crime rates in the U.S., 17% of gun homicide victims were Hispanic, proportionate to their 16% share of the U.S. population in 2010. By contrast, blacks make up 55% of gun homicide victims, but just 13% of the U.S. population, while whites make up 25% of victims and 65% of the population (Cohn et. al., 2013).

The gun grabber thing is of a piece with Hispanic culture that comes from the national backgrounds of many, where quite a few of their home countries are at least semi-socialist: they like their government to be big, not limited. We shouldn’t be surprised, since Hispanics come for the dollars, not liberty.

Unfortunately for America, their anti-gun beliefs remain unfazed by living in a free nation, because they do not understand — or care — how guns are a foundational part of freedom here.