visited indianapolis to speak at the national rifle association meeting. during the speech he announced that the u.s. would stop ratification of the united nations arms trade treaty and would draw from it. the speech, nra president oliver north announced that he will not run for reelection. here's the president. ♪ ["god bless the usa" plays] [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪

♪ ["god bless the usa" plays] ♪ pres. trump: thank you. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: i want to thank chris and wayne. i am thrilled to be here in indiana with the men and women of the n.r.a. you are great american patriots. [cheers and applause]

pres. trump: chris, wayne, oliver, i have been following oliver for a long time. great guy. three extraordinary champions for the second amendment. and i am a champion for the second amendment, and so are you. it is not going anywhere. it is under assault. it is under assault, but not when we are here. not even close. i also want to thank our tremendous vice president and indiana's native son, mike pence . he has done a fantastic job. [applause] pres. trump: we are grateful to be joined by a number of terrific leaders from the hoosier state. governor eric holcomb.

where is eric? you can't miss eric, he is so big. [applause] pres. trump: thank you, eric. senator todd young, a terrific guy. [applause] pres. trump: thank you, todd. senator mike braun, what a job he is doing. [applause] pres. trump: and representative greg pence, a familiar name. thank you, greg. [applause] walorski jackie, thank , you. jim baird and jim banks, great representatives, thank you very much. tremendous help, tremendous. i also want to recognize secretary of the interior, david bernhardt, what a job he has been doing. david, thank you. thank you.

a great friend of mine, kentucky governor matt bevin. [applause] pres. trump: thank you, matt. and the house gop whip, a man with more courage than most of us here today. he took some very, very severe shots, you know that. by a madman. and he is stronger and better. i actually told him backstage, i said, you are much more handsome than you were two years ago. i don't know what is going on. he is. steve scalise, a lot of courage. thank you. [applause] pres. trump: thank you, steve. and most importantly, i want to thank all of you, the proud, card-carrying members of the n.r.a. [applause]

pres. trump: every day, you stand up for our god-given rights without exception, without fail, and without apology. together, we are fighting for the timeless values that have built and sustained our nation. and our nation is greater today than it has ever been. stronger, richer -- we are doing better than ever before. we are great americans. you are doing a great job. [applause] pres. trump: thank you. we believe in the rule of law and we will always protect and defend the constitution of the united states. [applause] pres. trump: there are some people that are running right now, i don't think they have that number one on their list. we believe that children should be taught to love our country. honor our history, and always

respect our great american flag. and, we believe in the rights of self-defense and the right to protect your family, your community, and your loved ones. we believe in the wisdom of our founders. we believe in freedom and liberty and the right to keep and bear arms. [applause] pres. trump: we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of american life. and above all else, we know this -- in america, we don't worship government. we worship god. [applause]

pres. trump: every day of my administration, we are taking power out of washington, d.c. and returning it to the american people, where it belongs. [applause] pres. trump: and you see it now better than ever. with all of the resignations of bad apples. they are bad apples. they tried for a coup, it did not work out so well. [applause] pres. trump: and i did not need a gun for that one, did i? all was taking place at the highest levels in washington, d.c.

you have been watching and seeing. you have been looking at things you would not have believed possible in our country. corruption at the highest level, a disgrace. spying, surveillance, trying for an overthrow, and we caught them. we caught them. [applause] pres. trump: who would have thought, in our country? but, it is called what we all together have done, it started 2.5 years ago. on that great november 8, that was a great day. remember that day? great day. in a year and a half, it will be november 3. november 3 this time. get ready to vote.

you better. you better get ready to vote. it is all called draining the swamp. and we are doing it faster than anyone ever thought possible. very proud. [applause] pres. trump: and around the world, america is respected again, because we are finally putting america first. it's been a long time. our economy is now the hottest anywhere on the planet earth. just this morning, we learned that the gdp smashed expectations with the economy growing at an annual rate of 3.2% in the first quarter. always the worst quarter for whatever reason. 3.2%. [applause]

pres. trump: and if we kept the same interest rates and the same quantitative easing that the previous administration had, that 3.2% would have been much higher than that. but they had not hit these numbers in 16 years. we had a tremendous increase in inventory investment. you know what that means. and, listen to this, a very big increase in net exports. isn't it about time? we have added almost 6 million jobs since my election. and if i would have said that during the campaign, all of those people back there, we call them the fake news, they would not have believed it. they are fake. they are fake.

[crowd jeering] pres. trump: blue-collar jobs recently grew at the fastest rate in more than three decades. nearly 5 million americans have been lifted off of food stamps since our election. wages are rising fast. and the lowest paid workers are making the biggest percentage gains of all. and that is nice to hear. it is about time. [applause] pres. trump: unemployment recently achieved its lowest rate in 51 years, and very shortly, it should be its slowest rate in the history of our country. [applause] pres. trump: african-americans, asian-americans, hispanic

americans have reached the lowest levels of unemployment in our history. [applause] pres. trump: america's future has never been brighter, yet democrats have never been angrier, especially now that their collusion delusion has been exposed to the world as a complete and total fraud. [applause] pres. trump: it has been the greatest political hoax ever in our country. instead of working with us to rebuild our infrastructure, lower drug prices, which by the way, this year, for the first time in 50 years, drug prices

went down. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: and they will go down a lot lower. and instead of working with us to fix our trade deals, which i am doing without them, and continue creating millions and millions of new jobs, which we are doing at a level the people have not seen before, that people do not even believe, the democrats are obsessed with hoaxes, delusions, and witchhunts. that is what they are obsessed with. that is what they want to do. and we can play the game just as well or better than they do. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: far left radicals in congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights. and they especially want to take away your guns, you know that.

they want to take away your guns. you better get out there and vote. you better get out there and vote. it seems like it's a long ways away, it is not. i was saying to our great first lady, melania, whose birthday it is today -- happy birthday, melania. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: i remember standing two and a half years ago in the same hallway where abraham lincoln and so many others have stood, my first night in the white house, and i said to melania, this is incredible. and four years seemed so long away, and now here we are, we are getting ready to start up the campaign again. start up the campaign again.

i never want to do anything with maga, make america great again has been great, but we have really made it great. we made it great. we brought it back. and we are thinking about slogan -- "keep america great," because you have socialists and far left democrats who want to destroy everything we have done. your 401(k)s are going through the roof, the stock market has hit a record high since the election, almost 100 different records, i have broken, record high. but everybody is like a genius, now, they buy stock and they are all up. everybody is benefiting and jobs are benefiting. but it can all be taken away when you put the wrong people in office. we have cut regulations more than any president in the history of our country, and that is in two years.

in two years, we have done more to regulation, think of that, than any president in the history of our country. that is one of the reasons our jobs are growing, why the economy is booming. we give you the largest tax cut in the history of our country, the biggest ever. and we got the individual mandate, the absolute worst part of obamacare, eliminated. now, we are going for the rest. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: and we had it done, except for one vote. one vote. you know what i'm talking about. in recent days, leading democrats have proposed banning new guns and confiscating existing guns from law-abiding citizens. what they don't tell you is the

bad guys are not giving up their guns. and you are not going to be giving up your guns, either. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: at the same time, house democrats recently voted against notifying i.c.e., these brave, great, talented, brilliant patriots when an illegal alien attempts to buy a gun, which is a felony. democrats also support sanctuary cities that release thousands of dangerous criminal aliens onto our streets. in fact, they like the criminal aliens so much, that when we are forced to release them into our country because of the horrible immigration laws, that the democrats refused to give us the votes, we need some of their votes to change, we give them as many as they can handle.

[cheers and applause] pres. trump: and they are not too happy about it. they are not too happy about it. they said, who came up with that idea? they said, only trump could come up with that idea. we give them as many as they can handle. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: in other words, democrats want to disarm law-abiding americans while allowing criminal aliens to operate with impunity. but that will never happen as long as i am your president, not even close. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: i promise to defend the second amendment rights of every american. and i always will, i will never let you down. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: never let you down.

haven't so far, and i won't. because as the famous saying goes, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." it is very simple. [applause] pres. trump: the democrats are also working hard to block the wall. but we are building the wall, they are not happy about it. and we will have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: building a lot of wall. i want to thank border patrol and our great military, the army corps of engineers, they have been incredible. and we are doing something that i can do very quickly, and we

are doing it very quickly, but dealing with these people is very, very difficult, if you have not noticed, ok? any politician would have given up a long time ago. so we will have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year. it is going up rapidly. rapidly. we are also renovating tremendous stretches of wall. we have wall that's in bad shape, but it is structurally sound, and rather them building new, we make it as good as new. we renovate it. we save money and we gain a lot of territory. so we have a lot of great things going. a lot of great things going. most importantly, democrats must change our immigration laws right now. right now. we could do it in 15 minutes. i used to say 45 minutes. it is very simple. you know the programs, the

asylum, where rough, tough ms-13 gang members come in. you do not want to meet with these people, but ice doesn't mind, because ice are throwing them out by the thousands. and the democrats want to eliminate ice, can you believe that? boy, oh boy. but, it is incredible what they have done, and what we have done, but they seek asylum, and they read a statement, "i am afraid for my life." "i'm afraid to go back to my country." "i want to be an american." and you looking you see a toughness you do not see, and you just see what happens with the mayor of tijuana and others, they say, these people, we try to help them and they start hitting us. they start punching us. we do not want them in our country, and they are not

getting into our country. and when they have in the past, a lot of them have come in, we are throwing them the hell out. they are out. getting rid of them. [applause] pres. trump: but, we can fix the problem so easily. and when we fix the problem, the wall is one thing, and that will have an incredible impact, but they will not even be coming up if we change our old, broken, ridiculous, weak immigration laws. they would not make the journey. the wall is so good to have, we need the wall, but all those people you see coming up, thousands and thousands of people, they won't be coming because they will say, there is no way we can get into the united states anymore, except by going through legal channels. and what we want is -- we want people, we need them for all the great companies coming in, but

people have to come into our country legally and through merit. through merit. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: one of the gravest threats to the second amendment, and to american freedom itself, are activist judges -- you see it every day. every day, they almost always file in a certain little jurisdiction, i will not tell you what it is, but you all know. every time we get sued on the ban, which we ended up winning -- you know, we have the ban. we lost in the ninth circuit. we shouldn't have. we lost in the ninth circuit court of appeals. which we shouldn't have. and we won in the united states supreme court. so we have the travel ban, but

the reporters, the other day some reporters said, donald trump, who lost the travel ban -- i didn't lose it. he meant i lost it in the ninth circuit, but he didn't say we won in the supreme court. they said, that's too bad, he lost. no, we won the travel ban. in the united states supreme court. but they don't say that. so when we confront them they said, we were referring to the lower courts. i said what about the upper court, it is done. they were saying you lost it. these are very dishonest people, ok? [crowd jeering] pres. trump: nobody gets why. they are opposed to strong military, opposed to all the things we have done, including making our nation wealthy. including high gdp's.

including all of the security and all of the law enforcement, all the things we are doing. it is incredible. nobody understands it. someday, we will figure it out and i will feel much better about it, but why are they opposed to things that truly make our country great? why? nobody gets it. i do not get it. the level of dishonesty and corruption in the media is unbelievable. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: but we are stuck with activist judges who seek to rewrite our constitution, to force their own radical views onto our country. that is why my administration has led a historic effort to confirm fair and impartial and mostly conservative judges who will interpret the constitution as written. [cheers and applause]

pres. trump: and, i am very proud to announce that we will soon have 145 federal judges confirmed, a record number, including two great supreme court judges. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: justice gorsuch, justice kavanaugh. two fantastic justices. in fact, next week, we will confirm our 1ooth federal judge. nobody knows what that means. the percentage is incredible. nobody knows what that means. and in the end, i expect to have the second-highest percentage of judges confirmed in the history

of the united states, more than any other president, except one. i will never beat this one. the percentage of judges approved. do you know who the one is? take a guess. george washington. he gets 100%. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: he had 100%. he named every one of them. but you know what, we will have more of them. george washington. but, we are also defending free speech on our college campuses. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: last month, i signed an executive order requiring public colleges and universities to respect the first amendment rights of their students, or risk losing tens of billions of dollars in federal funding.

you do not want to hear another voice? you do not get all of the tremendous amount, in some cases, ridiculous amounts of dollars. [applause] [whistling] pres. trump: and we have shut down the previous administration's massive abuse of power known as operation chokepoint. [applause] pres. trump: under this ill-advised program, government bureaucrats discouraged banks from making loans the gun retailers, a backdoor attack on gun ownership that whenever be allowed to happen on my watch. that is step one, folks. step one. do you know what two, three, and four is? you do not have guns, you have no way to protect yourself. today, i am proud to announce another step to protect your

second amendment rights. and i did not tell chris and wayne and oliver, i did not tell them about it, so they are listening someplace, i wonder what he is going to do? that is the good thing with me, you never know. you never know. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: that is why we are making trade deals that are so good for our country. so in the last administration, president obama signed the u.n. arms trade treaty, and he sent the treaty to the senate to begin the ratification process in his last days in office. this treaty threatened your subject at -- you know exactly what is going on here -- your rights. and your constitutional and

international rules and restrictions and regulations. under my administration, we will never surrender american sovereignty to anyone. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: we will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedom. and that is why my administration will never ratify the u.n. arms trade treaty. i hope you are happy. [cheers and applause] i am impressed, i did not think many of you would know what it is. it is a big factor.

i see a couple happy faces from the nra. and i am officially announcing today that the united states will be revoking the effect of america's signature from this badly misguided treatment. we are taking our signature back. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: the united nations will soon receive a formal notice that america is rejecting this treaty. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: as part of this decision, i will sign right now in front of a lot of witnesses. a lot. a message asking the senate to discontinue the treaty ratification process and return

the now rejected treaty right back to me in the oval office, where i will dispose of it. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: by taking these actions, we are reaffirming american liberty is sacred and that american citizens live by american laws, not the laws of foreign countries. thank you. [cheers and applause]

>> usa, usa, usa, usa. [chanting] [cheers and applause] pres. trump: they all want the pen. can you believe these people? should i give it to them? [cheers] pres. trump: as we protect gun rights for law abiding citizens, we are also getting guns out of the hands of violent criminals. when i took office two years ago, one of my highest priorities was to reduce violent crime. in the two years before my inauguration, murder rates had increased by 20% and the u.s. had experienced the largest

increase in violent crime in over 25 years. for this reason, my administration resurrected project safe neighborhoods, bringing together prosecutors, police, sheriffs and citizens to put the most dangerous offenders behind bars. we funded 200 new violent crime prosecutors. we charged a record number of criminal offenders. and last year, we prosecuted the most violent criminals ever in our history. and now violent crime is way down. murderers in america's largest cities dropped by 6% between 2017-2018, but i do have to ask you, what the hell is going on in chicago?

what is going on? if we could solve that problem we would have been down even a lot more, and it is not a tough problem to solve. you have to let law enforcement do what they have to do into they will solve the problem very quickly. very quickly. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: we do not think enough about the victims. they are too worried about the people that caused the crime. it has got to stop, that thought process is no good. the number of police officers shot and killed in the line of duty last year, i'm so happy to report, is down 21% compared to the year before. and that was the year before i took office. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: one of the reasons is that we are supplying police

with military equipment, military supplies and gear the previous administration refused to give up. this is surplus, extra, we do not need it. great equipment sitting in warehouses all over the country, billions of dollars of equipment the military no longer needs or wants or uses. some of it has never been used, brand-new, from vehicles to essentially supplies of all kinds, including bullet-proof vests. and rather than having it sit and draw dust, i had it distributed all over the country to police departments. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: and that is why you see these numbers -- a great thing.

a lot of being president is common sense, right? common sense. have a good heart, but it is common sense. and in this administration we will always stand with the heroes of law enforcement. they are heroes. they are brave. they are great. and they will tell you, they have not felt so proud of themselves for many years, because they were abandoned by washington. they were abandoned by our politicians. and not just the obama administration, before that they felt abandoned. well, they know i love them. and we are going to protect them like they protect us. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: incredible people. we have also taken critical steps to improve school safety.

more than 30 states now allow teachers that are highly trained, highly trained, talented people, to carry guns in the classroom, to protect themselves and to protect their students, who they love. who is better? who is better? [cheers and applause] pres. trump: i have been calling for that for the last two years and i think we had a big impact. some legislation passed and they do not have that few paragraphs. and legislators go back to governors and say we are not passing it unless you allow that to happen, so we have come a long way, but it was better to protect students than and teachers who love them? through stop school violence grants we are helping police departments and local schools to hire more

officers, more teachers, and address early signs of mental illness. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: every day, citizens across america exercise of their constitutional right to defend themselves, and their families and their communities. that is a constitutional right. they want to take it away from you. they will take it away. if you let these maniacs get into office, they will take it away. you see what is going on. let the boston bomber vote. i do not think so. let terrorists in prison vote. i don't think so. can you believe it? this is where some of these people are coming from. and they are the most popular ones. when bernie sanders made certain statements the other day, i said, that is the end of his

campaign and then everybody agreed with him. most of them. we know that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. [cheers and applause] pres. trump: i wanted to be a little more original, than to use the phrase that you have probably heard 1000 times, but what is a better phrase -- we cannot do better -- how simple is that? i want to give these citizens a chance to share their stories. a lot of television back there. when i started going after them, you saw the red lights go off. then they come back. they need the ratings. [cheers and applause]

pres. trump: they come back. at a certain point, i think they will probably all endorse me, because they will be dead without me. can you imagine getting a boring person up here? they would be as far away from you as possible. april evans joins us from virginia. one night in 2015, she was home alone with her two-year-old daughter when an intruder broke into her home, violently. april took care of it. april, please come up. please, april. [cheers and applause]

april: my husband is a police officer and he works night shift. one night my daughter and i were home alone. some of them started banging on the door and it broke in two places. he demanded i let him in. i called 911 and i went to my room to get my gun. i heard a crash and i came out to the hallway to see. he was running toward me with a look in his eyes i will never forget. i shot him twice and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. [cheers and applause] this event was something that changed my life. i have never been more afraid but i have been standing strong and i told my story again and again because each person i told, based of a little taller knowing that if i could protect myself and my family that they

could to. protecting my family would not be possible without the right to bear arms. it's an issue close to my heart. if these rights had been taken from us come i may not be standing your today and he may not have a healthy secure old six-year-old daughter. i would like to thank you, mr. president, for your unapologetic stance on her right to bear arms. i believe those rights say my -- saved my life and my daughter that night, thank you. [applause] president trump: also with this -- with us is mark vaugh. n. who owns a meat processing plant

in oklahoma. when an employee begin attacking coworkers with a knife, viciously and violently, mark drew his gun and ended the assault immediately. he saved countless innocent lives. mark, please come up. [applause] >> thank you, mr. president. welcome all. i got a call late one thursday afternoon while sitting in my office, frantic call from our customer service group who said an attacker with a knife was victimizing people in our office. i ran to my vehicle and ran 100 yards to the other end of our complex, it was a chaotic scene. screaming, crying, blood everywhere, i immediately entered the building, ran down a hallway and saw a man attacking

a woman in the neck and the head with a large knife. i yelled, he stopped, paused for a moment and ran at full speed toward me. at about 18 feet, i fired three rounds from my ar-15 carbine. [applause] immediately incapacitating the subject. he was a determined attacker, unbeknownst to me, moments before he decapitated a coworker, and had targeted several others in our operation. to be attacked that day. i was able to take that action because i had a gun and i was prepared to use it. these are central missions of the nra and i thank you for that

and everyone here. [applause] we have the one true mission before us today and that's to come together like we never have before, to preserve our foundational freedom to bear arms in the defense of ourselves, those we love, those we seek to protect and most importantly, our liberty. lastly, i would like to express gratitude. no other president in our lifetime has to do with this so us so stronglyth in defense of our second amendment rights. thank you, mr. president. [applause] president trump: thank you,

mark, i appreciate that, great job. finally, stephen willeford joins us from sutherland springs, texas, the great state of texas. [applause] where a mass shooter opened fire at the first baptist church. you all read about it, in november, 2017. taking many innocent lives, wonderful, wonderful people. stephen heroically risked his life to bring the horrible violence to an end. stephen, please come up and say a few words. [applause] >> i would like to thank first

the nra for this opportunity and then i would like to thank our president for this opportunity. on november 5, 2017, i was home because i normally -- i was going to start my on-call at the hospital where i worked as an emergency plumber during on-call and could be called. so i stayed home from church that day because i wanted to get rest. it wasn't to happen. my daughter came into my bedroom and said dad, doesn't that sound like gunfire to you? i ran to my window thinking it was someone tapping at the window and she said no, come into the kitchen where i immediately set its gunfire. my daughter was an nra distinguished expert when she was eight years old. [applause] all three of my children, my other daughter and my son, were nra distinguished experts at the

time they were eight years old. i was in nra instructor. i ran to my safe and my daughter ran outside. she ran out to her car, got in the car and ran reconnaissance for me. she ran up to the corner and came back while i was getting a gun out of my safe and loading it and she said dad, there's a man in black tactical gear shooting up the church. i said, did you call 911? she said i did, they are aware of it. right away, that told me the police were coming but i couldn't wait. i couldn't wait, our police department in wilson county has some of the best officers in the world and they were racing as fast as they could. but my community could not wait for them. i ran out the door and i told my daughter to load another magazine for me because i gave

her busywork, i didn't want her to be there if i failed. and i didn't want her to be there for a target for him. the holy spirit took over me at that moment and as i ran across the street, i yelled out, the gunman heard me inside and so did some of the people from the church. so did my own daughter. he came running out of the church and started shooting at me. i put two shots center mass and he stopped shooting at me and ran to his vehicle. the two shots center mass, he had class three body armor on. they made no difference but when he ran and turned around his door to his vehicle, i put one in his side and one in his leg. he got in his vehicle and he put two more shots through the side window. i put one where i perceived his

head to be an shot through the window. he took off and ran away, down the street and i thought he was getting away. i ran out into the street and took one more shot that went through his back window, penetrated the drivers side seat and hit him just right at the left shoulder blade. he continued to run. i met up with a man who was dark in the parks and watched the whole thing and everybody in this world would have just written on but this is texas. we aren't known for our sanity. [laughter] [applause] i found out later his name was johnny and i got in the truck with johnny and we gave chase. at the end, the gunman, being the coward that he was, took his own life. inside the church were more heroes than we could even talk about in a limited amount of time. i'm here today to talk about the

fact that i used my own art-15 ar-15 to confront a shooter that had dropped 15 30 round magazines in my church. he murdered 26 people and injured 20 more. there were only seven people that walked out of the church without a gunshot wound. if it were not for our second amendment rights and the right to carry an ar-15, the same style gun he had, then i would have been outgunned myself. [applause] if it were not for god hovering over and protecting me, i would not have been successful bad day. i want to thank the nra for being relentless and protecting our second amendment right and i would like to thank this president for defending the

second amendment and i would like to say today -- he says make america great again and he is including you. you will make america great again with him but he needs you, he needs your vote, and if you do not get out there and vote for this man, then it's on you. thank you very much to the nra and thank you for president donald trump. [applause] [applause]

president trump: what a job, thank you. thank you. i can't say it better than that. but i want to thank you all for your courage because you are really living proof that law-abiding gun owners make a tremendous, tremendous difference. a tremendous difference. paris, france, they say has the strongest gun laws in the world and you remember those maniacs when they went into the nightclub. i use this example and there are many but they shot one person, another person, another person, another person. hundreds of people dead and horribly wounded to this day. that was five years ago? if there was one gun being carried by one person from the other side, it very well could

have been a whole different result. the shooting went on so long and there wasn't anything you could do about it. get over here ,boom. and then they left. they were captured later. there was only one gun. there were 2, 3, 4 -- it wouldn't have happened. a tiny percentage by comparison. but it wouldn't have happened because the cowards would have known there are people in their having guns, it wouldn't have happened. so people don't really understand the other side of the argument. i have this debate a lot and i win the debate all the time in the next day you see the same person who was so badly defeated in the debate going out and saying the same thing. even though he or she, i really believe, know that you can't

justify the side of the argument. so gun owners make our communities safer and they make our nation stronger. americans have understood this truth going back to the earliest days of our nation, two months before the american revolution broke out with the shot heard round the world. a group of patriots gathered along a bridge in salem, massachusetts. in the preceding months, british soldiers had confiscated muskets in boston. you know the story well. gunpowder was seized in somerville and the patriots in salem know that the redcoats would soon come for the town's cannons. but the americans were prepared. they already loved our country. and they were determined to

defend their rights to the death. when hundreds of british soldiers arrived at the bridge, the americans stood firm, blocking their path. when swords were drawn, they did not flinch. when the redcoats tried to steal american boats, the patriots sank those boats and sank them very quickly. when a british soldier held the tip of his bayonet against a man's chest, that man, w joseph wicher, tore open his shirt and dared him to do his worst. soon, the crowd grew larger as civilians came from miles around to stand side-by-side with their great countryman against tyranny.

in the face of such unbreakable resolve, the kings soldiers had no choice but to admit defeat and failure and retreat. in the courageous actions of those early americans, we see the defiant and determined spirit of patriotism that has always willed america to its greatest victories. it is a spirit that is passed down from generation to generation, from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. it is the spirit that lives in each and every one of you, a duty, it a responsibility come our sacred charges to preserve the freedoms that our ancestors gave their very lives to secure. because no matter how many

centuries go by, no matter how much the world changes, the central drama of human history remains the same. on one side are those who seek power, control and domination. and on the other side are patriots like those in this hall who stand up right and plant their feet in a eternal defense of our liberty. and with god as our witness, we swear today that we will defend our rights, we will safeguard our freedoms, we will uphold our heritage, we will protect our constitution and we will make america stronger, browder, -- prouder, safer, greater than ever before.

[applause] to all of our incredible friends at the nra, thank you for fighting the good fight. it is an honor to fight by your side and it's an honor to be with everyone in this giant hole -- hall today. i am with you and i will never ever let you down, thank you, god bless you and god bless the united states of america. thank you. [applause] ♪ [you can't always get what you want ♪] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪

and the kid -- that the kids grew up in.

and we as a society owe every kid in education and will take three of those components to probably notn here educational activities at home. in many cases, not much in the community. clubs, boys clubs, friar's club -- club come ymca, things and low income communities, those types of activities are essential if we will do a better job educating the next generation. think we alli realize because we have great ideas for improving education but the one component we don't talk about often is teachers. around we see going america today? we have seen at west virginia, kentucky, and the number of other states where the teachers

have said we have had enough of how we are being treated. and we will change it. we have done that by bringing the educational system to the legislators and said either help us or -- i think we need to involve teachers more. if we haven't gotten the message by what has happened around the country with teachers taking over state capitals, i think we should understand let's start with what we want to do to improve education. >> you can hear more about the future of work and how congress should proceed in the wake of the mueller report today, 6:35 p.m. eastern on c-span online or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> wednesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, attorney general william barr will testify before the senate judiciary committee on the mueller report. on thursday at :00 a.m. eastern,

he will testify before the house judiciary committee live on c-span.org, and listen on the free c-span radio app. and more on that story as a number of news agencies are reporting that attorney general william barr has want judiciary committee -- that he might not appear as scheduled this week in front of the judiciary committee because of the hearing format. in addition to five minutes of questioning for the committee, he has proposed an additional round that would allow for each side to question the attorney general for 30 minutes. that round of questioning would also allow the committee councils for both parties to question mr. barr. the attorney general has rejected the additional rounds of question but it is possible a deal could be reached before thursday's scheduled hearing. the chairman said the committee might issue a subpoena for the attorney general if he refuses to appear.

>> here's a look at what is live on c-span network monday. on c-span, the endowment for international peace holds a discussion on the trump administration's policy toward iran. at two :00 p.m., the house or transfer legislative business. most of the week, members will debate climate change legislation. secretary of state mike pompeo discusses u.s. foreign policy at an event hosted i the hill newspaper. at noon, the cato institute holds a discussion on economic inequality. the senate gavels in at three clock p.m. to continue work on executive nominations. on c-span3 at 1:00 p.m., a discussion on syria and the middle east hosted by the center for new american security. former vice president joe biden kicks off his presidential campaign with a rally in

pittsburgh. later, a house veterans affairs committee hearing on how to prevent suicide by military veterans. afl-cio president talks about trade, health care, immigration, and the 2020 presidential election in an event hosted by the economic club in washington, d.c. >> can i have your attention, please? we are pleased to have rich trum a briefme give introduction if i could and then we will have a conversation with him. >> can i have your attention,