North headlines Lincoln Day dinner - News - Rockford Register Star

NRA president says group has to double its strength to preserve Second Amendment Retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North said Wednesday that the National Rifle Association has to “double our strength to preserve the Second Amendment” between now and the 2020 elections, in keynote remarks at the 115th annual Sangamon County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner at the Bank of Springfield Center.The 75-year-old North, who became president of the NRA last May, also said the “disarm America movement is the best-funded, most sophisticated assault on our American liberties in our history.”North claimed that an unnamed “unholy troika of tyrannical billionaires” was setting the Democrats’ “far-left socialist agenda.”“They’re using their vast fortunes to elect enough progressives to turn America into a disarmed socialist dystopia,” North said.“The hard left in America are socialists. They’re anti-freedom candidates for office. If they succeed in what they’re doing, our lives are going to be adversely affected forever.”The annual Lincoln Day event, the longest-running in the country, is a key fundraiser for the party organization. About 1,000 people attended.Illinois Republic Party chairman Tim Schneider didn’t shy away from the GOP’s showing last fall in Illinois.“We had a tough election in 2018, but Illinois Republicans aren’t ready to give up yet,” said Schneider, in remarks preceding North's. “After J.B. Pritzker spent $171 million on his election, he still only got 54 percent of the vote. They don’t buy him, don’t buy his tax increases or his policies.Republicans will hold Pritzker and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan “responsible for their actions in driving families, jobs and business out of (Illinois)," he said.“With your help, we will unite. We will come back stronger than we’ve ever been and together we will make Illinois the shining star of the Midwest again."Invoking the dinner’s namesake, North said that Lincoln’s advocacy “was

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