'ACORN Uses Public Funds to Steal Elections, Now Your Gun Rights,' Says SAF

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct 28, 2008 -- ACORN, the publicly-funded national organization linked to voter fraud in several states is now actively interfering with the exercise of firearm civil rights in New Jersey, and the Second Amendment Foundation is calling for an immediate federal investigation.

"ACORN has, since 1998, received an estimated $31 million in government funding," said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "Now they have intervened in a New Jersey gun rights case in defense of an illegal Jersey City one-gun-a-month ordinance that violates the state preemption statute.

"For the past few election cycles," Gottlieb noted, "ACORN has clearly grown more partisan toward the political Left. ACORN'S PAC has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. That's hardly surprising since he used to serve as their legal counsel and he taught the group about community organizing. ACORN and Obama are lockstep in seeking to destroy our Second Amendment rights.

"The organization is currently under FBI investigation over allegations of voter fraud in several states," he added. "Bad enough that ACORN is implicated in fraudulent activities in several states, but now an ACORN chapter in the Garden State is working against the ability of New Jersey gun owners to exercise a constitutionally-protected individual civil right to own a handgun.

"It is an outrage that this group has intervened to defend an anti-gun ordinance that has already been declared illegal by the court," he observed. "So long as ACORN accepts one penny of public funding, the organization should remain absolutely neutral on social issues, political campaigns and especially legal actions defending the right to keep and bear arms.

"We call upon the FBI to expand the scope of its ACORN investigation and focus on the group's involvement in the Jersey City case," Gottlieb stated. "We support Ohio Congressman John Boehner's request that the White House immediately block all federal funding of ACORN activities until this group's questionable activities are fully investigated. We want to know how they are paying for attorneys, and why Seton Hall's Center for Social Justice and the Public Interest Law Center are providing legal assistance to ACORN for this effort.

"This is still the United States, not a socialist gulag," Gottlieb concluded. "Public money should not be given to private organizations which then turn around and utilize that funding to usurp the electoral process and erode constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights."