By Frank Miniter, NRA Armed Citizen Podcast
The thing that compels a person to step into advocacy—whether on a local school board or on a state or the national level—should have a story behind it, a good story.
If an activist doesn’t have a good and clear story, they are probably the type of individual who, when searching for meaning, decided to align their identity with some cause popular in their circles because of what it might do for them. Those types tend to be unhappy, and can even be dangerous, as they so often want to burn things down for reasons they can’t even articulate; indeed, they often can’t even explain, outside of catchwords, what they want to build in place of whatever they are against.
So yes, when I approached her, I expected Cheryl Todd, co-host of Gun Freedom Radio, to have a good story about why she became an advocate for our Second Amendment-protected freedom.
As she is from Arizona, I should have realized it would have much to do with former President Barack Obama’s (D) gun-running scandal known as Operation Fast & Furious.
Cheryl’s husband—the co-host for Gun Freedom Radio—was running a gun store when Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ), via its subsidiary the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), decided to start a secret operation in which gun-store employees would look the other way they let obvious or known straw purchasers buy guns so they could run them to criminals, such as drug cartels in Mexico. The DOJ, then under Attorney General Eric Holder, actually ordered ATF agents to compel gun-store owners to do this. The Obama administration later tried to couch this as some sort of crime-fighting technique, but it all blew up in congressional hearings after at least one of the guns turned up at a crime scene after a cartel member murdered a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
In this climate, the Todd’s experienced, but did not give in to, pressure from ATF agents. As she relates in an episode of the NRA’s The Armed Citizen Podcast, this entire despicable situation made Cheryl decide she needed to begin to speak out.
So began her step into advocacy for this critical freedom.
“If Obama and Holder had left gun owners alone, I would never have felt the need to speak up and defend the Second Amendment,” said Todd. “I am now a full-time volunteer Second Amendment advocate who pays other people to run my small business, which is something I would have never guessed I would be doing in my Grandma years, but it is where God has me and it has become a mission and a passion.”
When asked what it is like being a woman visiting her state and federal representatives to talk about this freedom, she began to tell stories; for example, when she met her now former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R), she said his staff laughed at her when she said, “I would like to see National Reciprocity happen.” This occurred during her very first visit to the U.S. Capitol. She did not understand why this was funny to them, as the NRA has long been working to get local governments out of the way of law-abiding citizens’ need to carry their freedom with them as they travel and, more recently, President Donald Trump (R) has said he would sign such legislation.
Cheryl Todd also said that when she visited Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) office with an appointment to meet her senator, his staff met her instead. “This was actually a very good thing because I knew I would never change Sen. Kelly’s stance, but I could cause some cognitive dissonance with a staffer,” said Cheryl.
In any pro-Second Amendment event, Cheryl can often be spotted quickly, as she says, “polkadots are her camo.” She is an NRA advocate and is she often testifies against anti-gun bills in her state. Cheryl is the Arizona State Director for Women for Gun Rights and says that her daughter and granddaughters go to D.C. with her and attend state-level events to advocate for our Second Amendment-protected freedom.
“Flash forward through different iterations, and we are now a one-hour freestanding self-published podcast and it has been quite the journey,” said Cheryl to The Armed Citizen Podcast. “And really, when I look back and I think if Barack Obama and Eric Holder had just left us alone, I would probably just be running my businesses and being a worship leader at church and a grandma to my granddaughters.”
When asked how her radio show, and all her advocacy and support for NRA programs has shaped her, Cheryl said, “In ways I can’t imagine. You know there’s so many people that go to college, they pay to go to learn things and here I’ve had 10 years of access to some of the greatest minds in the law, our rights, in our history, in the culture … and I feel like it’s been such a privilege for me to be able to be one on one with them. So, you know, the way that I present the show is that I want my audience to learn ... . I’ve said many times on our show, if the audience is out there disagreeing with anything I’ve said, that Danny, my co-host has said, that our guest has said, that’s awesome. Please, because that means that you are mentally active. You are mentally chewing on the ideas that we’re presenting. And they’re more likely to take those conversations to all they reach.”
Check out the full podcast here, and follow Cheryl Todd at GunFreedomRadio.com.
