A retired Air Force officer has launched a petition he says aims to protect the gun rights of U.S. citizens against two of America’s most respected military leaders.

Since June 25, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel David Bolgiano has garnered nearly 2,600 signatures on his petition — called “Veterans and Military Members in Support of the Second Amendment” — to counter a gun control effort led by retired Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal.

“These two leaders in no manner ‘speak for the rank and file’” of the military, Bogliano told The Stream. “They are politicians’ vice servant leaders. Stan McChrystal is a lifelong liberal Democrat. I have at least two retired General Officers — LTG Jerry Boykin and MG Gary L. Harrell (both former commanders of Delta Force) — who have already signed the petition.”

Last month, Petraeus and McChrystal joined former astronaut Mark Kelly to start Veterans Coalition for Common Sense. Kelly and his wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, run a different group with the same goal of gun control. McChrystal strongly endorsed gun control in 2013, and the group founded in June aims to have stronger background checks and prevent veteran suicide, reports The Hill. Other high-profile Coalition members include retired military leaders like Admiral Thad Allen and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

Kelly and Giffords became gun control activists after the latter was shot by a mentally ill man in 2011. Kelly did not respond to The Stream’s request for comment for this story.

While his petition isn’t yet at his goal of 20,000 signatures, Bolgiano told The Stream that he already has backing from groups like the Special Forces Association (SFA). SFA members voted in June to formally oppose the McChrystal and Petraeus effort, according to The Daily Caller.

The petition cites constitutional, “natural law” and a right to self-defense, among beliefs of signers.

Asked how America could reduce its level of gun violence, Bolgiano described the term as “a neutral issue.”

“I have personally and lawfully used ‘gun violence’ to shoot an armed robber here in the States and to shoot at radical Islamists in Iraq,” he explained. “So, when used unlawfully, guns are merely the instrumentality of criminals. In late 18th Century Russia, the violent crime rate was much higher than it is now in 21st Century America. The criminals then used bludgeons and edged weapons to [commit] their crimes, yet no one historically talks about ‘bludgeon violence.’”

Bolgiano said tougher laws against “recidivist violent criminals” could help reduce unlawful gun violence, as could reducing “incarcerating young people for nonviolent crimes.”

“We have way too many people in jail, which only becomes a breeding ground for hardened violent criminals,” he said. “A subsidiary of this is that our ‘War on Drugs’ has been an abysmal failure. The US population, a small fraction of the world’s, consumes close to 70% of illicit drugs. We need to start focusing on demand reduction and treatment. This, in turn, will defund the violent drug trade that is plaguing our urban areas.”

Lastly, said the former officer, “nationwide reciprocity for Concealed Carry laws” could save lives. “I find it sadly amusing that our highest rates of ‘gun violence’ are in jurisdictions that have the strictest gun control laws,” he said, citing what he described as peer-reviewed evidence.

Bogliano does say he wants “law-abiding citizens … properly trained in order to responsibly carry concealed,” something he says he’s been doing for 35 years. Pointing to Orlando “and other sites of large-scale violence,” he says proper arming and training of “even a few persons” at those locations could have reduced the number of dead.

“It takes an average of 14 minutes for law enforcement to respond, so ‘let the police handle it’ does not cut it for me,” he concluded.