Royce Gracie is one of the most successful and influential mixed martial arts fighters of all time. His success in the Ultimate Fighting Championship popularized Gracie jiu-jitsu and gave raise to an entire style of hand-to-hand fighting, which is still taught around the world today. Even despite this success, Gracie is an avowed supporter of our right to keep and bear arms, and he outlines exactly why he supports the Second Amendment and the National Rifle Association in the video above.
"I am very skilled on hand-to-hand combat. Yes, on self defense," Gracie told the NRA. "Gracie jiu-jitsu is the best self-defense art out there. I can defend myself against one attacker. If there's more than one, two, three, four, I need something else to help protect myself, to defend my family. That's when a gun comes in hand."
Gracie grew up with firearms during his childhood in Brazil. His appreciation for firearms and for gun culture only grew when he and his family emigrated to the United States.
"My interest in firearms started at a young age. My father had guns in Brazil, and he kind of showed me how to shoot a little bit," Gracie said. "And when I moved to America, then I really got interested in the culture of guns. We had a student, he was DEA, every Sunday, he would take my brother and I to the range, and we would shoot a hundred rounds a day of Colt .45, 1911 Colt .45. And that was our practice. We'd go over there, we'd shoot a hundred rounds, put in one hole and come home every Sunday."
Today, though, the Brazilian government has enacted some of the toughest gun-control laws in the entire world. The Gracie family knows what happened in Brazil, and they see the warning signs in America today.
"What happened in Brazil, it's coming to America. Little by little, they take away the gun rights, making it impossible for you to buy a gun. Very expensive, impossible for you to carry. You're not allowed to carry in Brazil. And that's coming to America," Gracie said. "I can see the changes. Growing up in Brazil, the gun culture, as far as I remember, was very similar to America. But then they start to create new rules, new laws. And slowly, little by little, they start to implement them and taking the rights from the law-abiding citizens."
Firearm owners and supporters of the Second Amendment have to remain strong in the face of gun-control efforts, and according to Gracie, the best way to do that is to join and support the National Rifle Association.
"The best way to describe NRA is NRA is the front line of resistance," he said. "They're educators. They're here to educate the people from young age to adults, men, women, doesn't matter the age, about how to use a gun, how to, to be aware of the dangers of the gun, to be aware of what the gun can do and how to treat the gun and how to to teach about guns. NRA is the front line of resistance against the government trying to take our Second Amendment rights away."
