Deneen Borelli is the outreach director for FreedomWorks, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that helps promote conservative issues. She’s also the author of a book, Blacklash, and a regular contributor to Fox News. Borelli lives in Eastchester, where she and her husband are “exercising our right to be responsible, law-abiding gun owners.”
Why do you own guns? Our home was broken into when we first moved in back in the nineties, and we wanted to be able to protect ourselves in case it happened again. I love our law enforcement and the hard work that they do, but, unfortunately, the police can’t be everywhere.
What does it mean to be a responsible, law-abiding gun owner? We chose the right to get licensed for a gun, to take the training that we had to go through. We took all of the right precautionary steps in order to be approved for our pistol permits. Just to get our target permits, it took us over a year to [complete] the certification.
The legislators in New York and Washington are thinking about making the process of obtaining a gun even stricter. Do you think that’s a good thing? I don’t think individuals should go through such a rigorous and, I think, a very arduous, process. I mean, how long does it take for someone to perform a character check, a background check, a check on someone’s mental capacity? We had four individuals who had to provide a character statement. They had to be notarized. We were fingerprinted. Once it’s determined that you’re a law-abiding citizen and you don’t have any mental issues, it should not take over a year for someone to get a license.
Do you think that all types of guns should be allowed? If a person wants to own a gun, no matter how many bullets or clips are allowed for that gun, I think they should have that right.
But why do people need such strong weapons? If somebody breaks into my home and if I’m here alone and it’s more than one individual coming at me, I would want as much fire power as humanly possible to protect myself and protect my property.
Do you think that the actions of the Journal News were justified? I don’t think so; too much harm has been done. There is a report that an elderly man’s home was broken into and the thieves tried to take the guns in his safe, so I think what they did was very irresponsible and very immoral.
