Conservative commentator and Second Amendment Rights advocate Dana Loesch delivered a powerful speech at CPAC 2017, calling the NRA the “original civil and natural rights group.”

At the beginning of her speech to the CPAC crowd, Loesch explained her new position with the NRA as a Special Assistant to NRA Executive Vice President and CEO’s office of Public Communication. Under this new position she is also deemed an official NRA Spokesperson.

“This is why I’m on board with this group [the NRA]. A couple of years ago I wrote a book called ‘Hands off My Gun’ and I detailed why I do not want to be an unarmed victim,” Loesch explains. “And let me tell you something. We have the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case that’s going to be making its way to the Supreme Court, we have midterms coming up. We always have to protect our natural rights. I had my life protected by a firearm. Now, I get that the people like Shannon Watts and the people like Michael Bloomberg and all of these very well-to-do one percenters that like to outsource their firearms to someone else and they think it’s virtuous because they pay someone to carry them. I’m not a frillion-aire like Sugar Daddy Michael [Bloomberg]. And I don’t think you all are either.”

Loesch goes on to a powerful detailed account of her personal experience where a firearm protected herself and her family.

When I was a kid I was staying with my grandparents. Myself and my little cousin were in my grandparents’ bed and it was a late summer evening, window was open, breeze was blowing through and I was just about to sleep. I heard the evening news on. They were wrapping up their broadcast. And then I heard, from out in the woods, this wailing. It was this inhuman wailing. And at first it didn’t register with me. I kept thinking, ‘Maybe I’m having a bad dream.’ And it got closer and closer to the house.

Now, down in the south, down in the Ozarks, my grandparents never locked their doors. And they also don’t put their guns up in these big giant locked rooms. They keep them in wood cabinets with etched glass in the front, like a china cabinet, but you know, for guns. And this noise got closer and closer. And finally I heard the punching of feet in my grandparent’s gravel driveway. It was my aunt, who had been beaten within an inch of her life, who was running away in the woods, barefoot and bloodied, with broken teeth because her felon of an SOB ex found her, beat her and told her he was going to kill her. And this prohibitive possessor went for his criminally possessed firearm.

And she ran to my grandparents house, the only place she knew she’d be protected. And with that, my grandpa – and I was terrified at that time – he went to the bedroom – this NRA member, World War II Navy vet – went to the bedroom, grabbed his shotgun, went and sat on the front porch, cocked it and started swinging. And that made me feel safe. And I went back to sleep.

Now, when you call the law where my family is, on average, a 911 call has a 20 minute response time, even longer down there. It was about 35 minutes later that the law finally did come. And has it turns out, that abusive ex-con did actually come drive to my grandparents’ house, turned off his light, but when he saw the silhouette of that old vet sitting on the porch with a gun, he thought better of it.

Watch the full speech below: