If anyone really believes that the Republican Party is a bastion of small government and the leaders for individual rights… Think again!
Posts Tagged ‘Law’
H.R. 2324 more of the same old same old
May 8, 2009The usual haters of freedom and liberty are back at it despite what the impostor in chief says about interfering with the rights of the people. Using the same tired old arguments and the same tired old lies the anti-liberty crowd is back to finding a cure for a problem that doesn’t exist.
On May 6, at a press conference with Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, U.S. Representatives Michael Castle (R-Del.) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) introduced H.R. 2324–the “Gun Show Loophole Closing Act.” Masquerading as reform, H.R. 2324 would impose severe bureaucratic restrictions aimed at shutting down gun shows.
The bill is essentially a re-introduction of the failed H.R. 96, introduced in the 110th Congress. Despite changes from the Lautenberg juvenile justice amendment of 1999, on which the measure is based, H.R. 2324 fails to address gun owners’ most significant concerns. In several areas it is even more restrictive than past attempts to regulate gun shows. H.R. 2324 would create gun owner registration, massive new government red tape, and allow harassment of gun show organizers, vendors and attendees. The bill also ignores a glaring problem–multiple government studies prove gun shows are not a source of “crime guns.”
Anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced a companion bill (S. 843) in the U.S. Senate in late April.
Please be sure to contact your U.S. Representative and urge him or her to strongly oppose H.R. 2324; and please be sure to contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to strongly oppose S. 843! You can call your U.S. Representative at (202) 225-3121, and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121.
Apparently, they haven’t heard the news…
WASHINGTON — Amid a wave of publicity about drug-related gun violence along the Mexican border and police killings in U.S. cities, an increasing number of Americans oppose new government efforts to regulate guns.
Recent nonpartisan polls show shrinking support for new gun-control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead. So strong is the shift in public opinion that a proposed assault-weapons ban — once backed by 3 in 4 Americans — now rates barely 1 in 2.
Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, told reporters Tuesday that “every bit of data is showing us that Americans are getting more conservative about gun control.”
A CNN poll conducted in April found that 39 percent of Americans wanted stricter gun-control laws, down from 50 percent in 2000.
Forty-six percent said the gun laws should stay as they are, while 15 percent said they should be loosened — up from 9 percent in 2000.
When asked to identify the best way to reduce gun violence, 61 percent of Americans said stronger enforcement of existing laws, while 27 percent opted for stronger laws, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll, also conducted in April.
Even an assault-weapons ban is not the political “sure thing” it once was. An April 23-26 poll by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found that support for curbing the sale of assault weapons and semiautomatic rifles has dropped from 75 percent in 1991 to 53 percent today.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said the latest polls confirm what his gun-rights group has been saying all along.
“We have adequate gun laws on the books to address every situation,” he said.
The shifting public mood on gun issues is one reason the Democratic administration is not trying to reinstate the assault-weapons ban that Congress let expire in 2004.
Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs says President Barack Obama believes that “we can make a significant dent in gun violence . . . through enforcement of the existing laws.”
Elected officials in California and Pennsylvania have responded to the killings of four police officers in Oakland, Calif., and three in Pittsburgh by calling for restoration of the decade-long ban.
Gun-control advocates have also pushed to revive the ban as a way to stem the flow of firearms illegally smuggled from the United States into Mexico.
But despite support for limits from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, Congress seems unlikely to act.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, called diminished public support for gun-control measures “a good thing.”
He said the recent poll findings will help lawmakers “resist pressure from this administration to pass more gun-control legislation.”
Killing the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAPP)
May 8, 2009Is this “Aiding and abetting” an invasion of the United States? I am of a mind that it is in fact nothing less than that. Unfunded mandates from the federale’s is nothing new but this takes it to new heights as the impostor in chief and his crime partners still refuse to enforce our laws. At least the ones that they decided are not worth enforcing. Our borders need to be secure, period. This is not an issue about citizens of a failed state called Mexico, it is about national security. American national security. Congress determined some time back that terrorist’s were indeed among us, with many of them gaining access to the United States via the people pipeline from Mexico. Yet Congress does nothing about it. The nation is in a deep recession, if not depression, and yet Congress does nothing about illegals coming into America and working here when Americans and legal immigrants go without any work, much less meaningful employment.
Use the GOA or NRA web pages to contact your elected representatives and tell them what you think about this horrid set of affairs.
Hat Tip to Anthony for bringing this to our attention!
Obama budget nixes aid for jailing illegal immigrants
| Posted: 05/08/09 09:24 AM [ET] | |
| President Obama voted in the Senate to provide additional funding for a program targeted for elimination by his budget that provides states a federal subsidy to offset the costs of jailing illegal immigrants.
Killing the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAPP) would save $400 million, according to Obama’s budget for fiscal 2010 released Thursday. It’s one of the largest non-defense discretionary cuts proposed in the president’s budget. The program is popular with border-state politicians on Capitol Hill, however, making its elimination a tough sell to lawmakers, particularly from California. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has repeatedly pushed for additional funding for the program, and lawmakers from other states that have costs associated with illegal aliens have also offered support. A bipartisan trio of House members from California have drafted a letter urging the House Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies to restore funding for the SCAAP program. The three members, Reps. Mike Honda (D), Adam Schiff (D) and Jerry Lewis, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, are also asking the rest of the California House delegation to sign the letter, Honda’s office said. As an Illinois senator, Obama co-sponsored an amendment offered by then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), now Obama’s secretary of state, that would have provided additional funding for the program. It also would have established a grant program to defray local government healthcare and education costs for non-citizens. “Each year, the SCAAP program is underfunded,” Clinton said in 2006 comments urging support for her amendment. She cited a 2005 Government Accountability Office study that found local governments get only 25 percent of their costs reimbursed through the program. “Throughout our country and in my state, there are counties and municipalities that are covering the costs of dealing with education, healthcare, and law enforcement without adequate or any federal reimbursement,” Clinton said. “So we have left our local and state governments to fend for themselves. They should not be left to bear these costs alone because it is not they who are making federal immigration policy.” Another Obama Cabinet member, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, then a senator from Colorado, was also a co-sponsor. Obama voted for the amendment, but it was defeated 43-52. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that has called for tougher border security, predicted it is “very unlikely” that Obama’s proposal to cut the program will be accepted by Congress. He noted that the Bush administration repeatedly tried to zero out the program, but always ran into opposition in Congress. Krikorian, like Clinton in 2006, argued immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and if state and local jails are incarcerating illegal immigrants, it is because of failed federal policies. According to the fiscal 2010 budget, Obama’s administration thinks resources used for the program could be better used to enhance federal efforts to curb illegal immigration. “In place of SCAAP, the administration proposes a comprehensive border enforcement strategy that supports resources for a comprehensive approach to enforcement along the nation’s borders that combines law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to investigate arrest, detail, and prosecute illegal immigrants and other criminals,” the budget states. It emphasizes that the budget will provide funding for an additional 20,000 The Office of Management and Budget did not respond when contacted about this story.Should Obama’s budget cut all subsidies to states for jailing illegal immigrants? Sound off here! |
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Ken Salazar: Stupid is as stupid does redux
May 7, 2009Ken Salazar is a nice guy. That said he is a near total incompetent in the realm of public service in mine, and the opinions of many others. It is beyond me why on earth he was selected by the impostor in chief for the position that he currently holds. His only true claim to fame in public service is the Great Outdoors Colorado Amendment, and that, by all accounts was suggested to him, no initiative there. Some point to his service as State Attorney General with pride. What I saw was mysandry, and later siding with Ex Governor Roy Romer in pardoning a woman that put an axe through her sleeping husbands head. That woman should still be in prison, just like every man that has murdered his wife and been convicted has. I am perhaps being too harsh on him, after all, he had the good sense to oppose listing grass rats that infest the state as “endangered” after all. Perhaps my biggest problem with him is what I see as a lack of courage in refusing to go on air with people like Gunny Bob, or even soft ball pitchers Caplis and Silverman.
Then he goes and does this…
Gov reacts strongly to Salazar’s wind power comment
CHEYENNE — Depending on where you stand, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s comment this week that wind energy could replace coal-fired power in the United States was either welcome news, or so much hot air.
“The idea that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning power today is a very real possibility,” Salazar said, according to The Associated Press. “It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”
Here in Wyoming, the nation’s No. 1 coal-producing state, Salazar’s comments drew a mix of responses.
Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said it’s important to look carefully at what Salazar actually said.
The key word in the secretary’s comments, Loomis said, was “potential.”
“To say that the potential is there is true,” Loomis said. “Just like it’s true with nuclear or oil shale. It’s another thing to say you’re going to switch from the traditional sources to something that would be impossible.”
That said, Loomis agrees that wind energy will doubtless play a larger role in the nation’s energy generation.
“But it will be difficult to approach anything close to what coal is providing in any realistic foreseeable time frame,” Loomis said. “Coal is going to be around for a long time.”
Gov. Dave Freudenthal put it even more bluntly.
“Ain’t going to happen,” Freudenthal told reporters at an impromptu new conference Wednesday that mostly focused on other topics.
Freudenthal said Salazar’s comments were a “dumb thing to say,” and may provide a teachable moment in which the new interior secretary will learn the wisdom of “not making gratuitous statements.”
Freudenthal added that the importance of coal in the nation’s energy mix is a reality, despite any creative hypotheticals by those in the Beltway.
“That potential (for wind energy to replace coal) is never going to be realized,” said Freudenthal, adding that Salazar’s comment was out of step with other messages from the Obama Administration.
For example, Freudenthal said, the federal economic stimulus package includes millions of dollars to develop technology for clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration.
He also pointed out that the administration has signaled its desire to restart the FutureGen clean coal initiative, a $1 billion project to install cutting-edge carbon capture systems on new coal-fired power plants.
“It’s kind of an interesting comment” by Salazar, Freudenthal said. “But it’s inaccurate; ain’t going to happen.”
Laurie Milford, executive director the Wyoming Outdoor Council, a Lander-based conservation group, had a slightly different take.
Milford praised Salazar for “looking seriously at renewable sources of energy.� But she also accepted that coal is a major part of the nation’s energy future.
“We have to be realistic about that,” Milford said. “It’s an important bridge fuel for decades to come. And yet while we’re still using coal to make energy, we need to be working to make coal less dirty.”
Milford also praised efforts by the state to develop more environmentally friendly coal-based energy, including efforts to perfect underground carbon storage methods, and the General Electric-University of Wyoming partnership to develop coal-to-fuels technology.
“I really think that everything the state of Wyoming is doing to make coal viable in a carbon-constrained economy is important,” Milford added. “We’ve got a long ways to go, but Wyoming is getting quite serious about it and I’m encouraged.”
Salazar, who hails from Colorado, made the comments at a public hearing in Atlantic City, N.J., on how the nation’s offshore areas can be tapped to meet America’s energy needs.
Salazar said ocean winds along the East Coast can generate 1 million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3,000 medium-sized coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now operating in the nation.
One wind power company official estimated it would take hundreds of thousands of windmills to harness that volume of energy. Efforts to develop even small-scale wind projects off the East Coast have met considerable resistance from those who live there.
A spokesman for Salazar said Monday that the secretary does not expect wind power to be fully developed, but was speaking of its total potential if it were, according to the AP.
Wyoming coal mines produced more than 450 million tons of coal in 2007, or nearly 40 percent of the nation’s coal, according to the Wyoming Mining Association.
Politics, and blindfolds, as in Lady Justice
May 7, 2009The impostor in chief is about to have the opportunity to not only make history yet again but to put his stamp on generations to come. How so? With at minimum one appointment to the Supreme Court.
Justice is supposed to be blind, not filled with emotion. Not issuing rulings based upon personal desires, but upon law. This is most important when one is a Justice on a Supreme Court, be that of an individual state or the United States Supreme Court. The rulings that are made in those places have an effect all the way down to the individual citizen. They determine how one lives, or dies too as far as that goes.
All too often high courts thwart the intentions of the people that had laws passed in order to achieve their own (the courts) personal agenda. Be that a State Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Of note, or example, would be the Colorado Supreme Court trashing the Tabor Amendment, and the U.S. Supreme Court by endorsing ex post facto law that also takes away unalienable rights for less than felony indiscretions. Or mysandry based regulation or law founded within the realm of political correctness.
Part of the duty of those courts is the protection of minority groups, be those racial, political or based upon gender. We have all but put away the arguments based upon racial superiority in America, at least within the legal concept. Racism does still exist in America, as well as everywhere else in the world but we are making headway on that front where as in many other parts of the world it is lip service at best. On the other two fronts we have not really changed much at all. We have simply exchanged one evil for the extreme opposite. That, is where things become incredibly difficult when choosing a Supreme Court Justice.
What follows is from yesterdays Patriot Post about this subject. You read, and decide if someone should be appointed, for life, to a position of near unbridled authority based upon the contents of their crotch, personal penchants, and ability to go with the flow. Or, upon personal integrity, honor, and sense of duty.
“[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.” –Johns Adams
Rule of men: “Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice (David) Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as president, so I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.” –President Barack Obama
From the gun grabbers: “[T]he Supreme Court has ruled in a direction that gives more opportunity for people to have guns. We never denied that right. We don’t want to take their guns away. We want them registered … and we have to rid the debate of the misconceptions that people have about what gun safety means.” –Nancy Pelosi
Non Compos Mentis: “Welcome to Cinco de Cuatro — Cinco de Mayo at the White House.” –Barack Obama (click here for video)
Quite taken with himself: “Everywhere I go, crowds spontaneously assemble. They start to cheer, whether I go to a play on Broadway or I’m going home to Wilmington, Delaware. I walk on the train. People stand up and clap.” –Vice President Joe Biden
Tacky: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.” –Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), who fits in just fine with his new party **”Specter’s use of Kemp’s death is not only tasteless but nonsensical. If Republicans killed Kemp by blocking cancer research, how is it that the research they blocked prolonged Specter’s life?” –James Taranto
“That President Obama has made ’empathy’ with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much further the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process. Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with ’empathy’ for groups A, B and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y or Z? Nothing could be further from the rule of law.” –Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell
“Mr. Obama will make Supreme Court history, all right. He will become the first president in American history to make lawlessness an explicit standard for Supreme Court justices. … He has boldly proclaimed that he intends to make sure his nominees to the Supreme Court don’t harbor any crusty fealty to the written Constitution, or the millenniums of Western law that undergird its principles, or to the timeless truths that underlie our Declaration of Independence.” –Judicial Confirmation Network counsel Wendy E. Long
“There is a reason that Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Justice is supposed to be blind to the race, gender, finances, politics — and every other ’empathy’-eliciting — characteristic of those who seek it in good faith.” –columnist Carol Platt Liebau
“It is dangerous in this day and age to use the word ‘fascism’ lightly. Liberals sling around the term ‘fascism’ without regard to its meaning — for the Left, ‘fascism’ applies to everything from religious social perspectives to conservative tax cut prescriptions. But economic fascism has a precise, defined meaning. And Barack Obama’s economic policy fulfills that meaning in every conceivable way.” –radio talk-show host Jerry Doyle
“Liberals do not win elections for Republicans. Conservatives win elections. Whenever conservatives try to placate liberals and show how sensitive and caring and in touch with the feelings and concerns of the other party they are, they lose. But when Republicans stand on principles and demonstrate conviction and give evidence that their ideas work, they win.” –columnist Cal Thomas
“The killer virus for Republicans hasn’t been intolerance inside the party for moderates. What cost Republicans control of the White House and Congress was alleged conservatives behaving too much like Democrats, especially on spending.” –columnist Brendan Miniter
All quotes by former Congressman Jack Kemp (1935-2009)
“As the GOP stumbles around Washington trying to be the party of Herbert Hoover, it’s sad to see so many Republicans drifting so far and so fast from the Reagan model that helped pave the way for the great, non-inflationary economic and jobs expansion of the past 25 years.”
“Democrats are quick to draw parallels with the stock-market crash of 1929. The irony is that it’s mostly the Democrats who want to repeat the mistakes that turned the Crash of ’29 into the Great Depression.”
“The first order of business must be debunking the Democrats’ notion that higher taxes will lead to a more prosperous America.”
“When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it.”
“Our friends in the other party say the economy is moving forward, and it is. But it is moving like a ship dragging an anchor, the anchor of high taxes, excessive regulation and big government.”
Will the man that refuses to show his real birth certificate choose wisely, or rather based upon political correctness and expediency? Only time will tell.
Freedom of speech, for some at least…
May 2, 2009Freedom of speech or expression is an enshrined right placed within the Bill of Rights. That said, recently there have been way to many occurrences by those that see it as an anachronism. A simple web search will turn up more instances than I can possibly cite for reference but you are free to do so if you wish.
Having said that, I believe that the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights is a complete package. You can’t pick and choose which parts you will support, and those which you will not. They, each right, support one another. Bust the package, and you break the whole thing.
Does this mean that you can’t yell “fire” in a theater? Well, if the place is in fact on fire then I would submit that giving warning about it is in fact a civic duty. Does it mean that members of, by example the Ku Klux Klan or the New Black Panthers can spread what they consider to be legitimate ideology? Yes, it does, like it or not.
If we as a people allow one group to be silenced then any group can be subjected to the same treatment. Think about it.
Free Speech for some:
Former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo was recently invited to the University of North Carolina to share his views on U.S. immigration policy and tuition subsidies. Even before he began his talk in a UNC classroom on April 14, protesters stood with signs and banners, shouted obscenities and otherwise behaved rudely.
Just a few minutes into his speech, when Tancredo made a reference to illegal immigrants, demonstrators moved to the front of the room, blocking the audience’s view of Tancredo with a banner that read: “No one is illegal.” Seconds later, one of the protesters broke a window. University security officers, standing by, shut down the event.
That was it. The speech was vetoed by uncivil, violent dissenters intent on denying Tancredo’s willing audience their right to hear his message.
An angry, chanting mob at UNC labeled Tancredo a racist and a radical. He’s most certainly neither. He’s opposed to illegal immigration, regardless of race. And there’s hardly anything radical about securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. What is radical in this instance is the behavior of these student demonstrators and their implicit notion that the U.S. should have open borders.
Their beef that “no one is illegal” is an offense to liberal, politically correct phraseology. So let’s rephrase it. The immigration status of people who cross our borders or remain in this country without the permission of our government is illegal. There, is that better?
If you treasure our Constitution’s guarantee of your individual right to freedom of speech, you must necessarily extend that protection to others — including those with whom you disagree. You must also take the risk that other people will listen to them, just as you want people to listen to you. If you refuse to make such allowances, your hypocrisy undermines the fundamental principle of free speech and endangers its very existence.
The First Amendment is not absolute in any of its applications, from speech to religion to assembly. Libelous speech is not protected; religious freedom does not extend to human sacrifice; and freedom of assembly doesn’t give you license to trespass on someone else’s property. But one’s free speech cannot legally be muzzled simply because someone else disapproves of it.
How ironic that left-wing college activism was launched at the University of California- Berkeley in the 1960s as the “Free Speech Movement.”
For today’s college lefties, free speech is a one-way street. They justify this double standard with an arrogant, self-absorbed, self- righteous belief that the ends justify the means, that they alone have a monopoly on truth, and that heretics cannot be tolerated. The broken glass that halted Tancredo’s speech is a symbolic flashback to the forebears of these UNC student thugs: the SS and Hitler Youth gangs that terrorized Jews. The violence is only different in degree. Student lefties have pushed pies in the faces of conservative speakers on campus. On principle, that is no less an affront to the First Amendment than clubs or guns.
These militant brats childishly call others “fascists” without understanding the meaning of the term while behaving like fascists themselves. But even more inexcusable is the complicity of grownups, those feckless university administrators responsible for protecting dialog and inquiry at centers of higher learning who allow students to stifle free speech.
Tom Tancredo: We should stop flu at our borders
Silent protest at PC marks Tancredo talk in contrast to the pure thuggery above.
Brady Campaign And Lautenberg Unite To Mislead And Control–Again
April 25, 2009More from the masters of mysandry and misdirection.
This week, in a typically misleading move designed to bolster their political agenda rather than reduce violent crime, the Brady Campaign released a report calling for background checks on “all gun sales in America, including at gun shows.” The Brady report was intentionally designed to correspond with, and bolster, a “gun show loophole” bill (S. 843) introduced this week by fanatical anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). In fact, the Brady report was released at the press conference Lautenberg held earlier this week.
Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, said in the group’s press release, “We can do this. It will have no impact on any law-abiding gun owner in the country.” Of course, that is absolutely false—the proposal will ONLY impact law-abiding gun owners, including any law-abiding person selling a firearm to a law-abiding buyer. Does Helmke really think that criminals, drug cartel members, and violent gang thugs are going to start legally purchasing firearms and submitting to a background check? Law-breakers, by definition, break the law. They are criminals; they are predatory, they operate outside of the law. You know that, we know that, Lautenberg knows that, even Helmke knows that.
Lautenberg’s new bill is essentially a re-introduction of the same bill he introduced in the 110th Congress—S. 2577. And as before, S. 843 calls for massive new government powers to register gun show customers, register gun owners, retain information on people who pass criminal records checks when buying firearms, heavily tax both gun collectors and gun sales, and require gun show promoters to police gun show customers, as if they were agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The bill is not about gun shows. Rather, S. 843 is a solution in search of a problem; numerous government studies have determined that gun shows are an insignificant or miniscule source of firearms misused in crime. For instance, a 2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, “Federal Firearms Offenders, 1992-98,” found only 1.7% of federal prison inmates obtained their gun from a gun show. Similarly, a 1997 National Institute of Justice study reported less than 2% of criminals’ guns come from gun shows.
In reality, gun shows are large, public events held in convention centers and banquet halls. But S. 843 defines “gun show” so broadly that it would include a person’s home. Merely “offering” to “exchange” a firearm at an “event” could be banned. The National Matches at Camp Perry and your local gun club’s Sunday trap shoot could be defined as “events” subject to the bill’s provisions. Even talking about a gun at an “event” could be seen as an “offer” to sell a gun. Even if you are not a dealer, but you display a gun at a gun show, and then months later sell the gun to someone you met at the show, you would be subject to the same requirements as if you had completed the sale at the gun show. The restrictions and regulations S. 843 would impose upon real gun shows, and upon gun owners’ personal activities that the bill would preposterously define as “gun shows” and “events,” are unprecedented. S. 843 actually imposes restrictions on “gun show” transactions well beyond those required for firearms transactions at a gun store. And running afoul of S. 843’s numerous, far-fetched provisions could send you to prison for years. Among other things, the legislation calls for:
Gun show customer registration: A person who attends a show, even without a gun, who even discusses the possibility of selling a gun, would be required to sign “a ledger with identifying information.” Gun show promoters would have to retain the ledgers indefinitely for inspection by the BATFE.
Absurd requirement on gun show promoters: Because a promoter cannot know whether a person who attends his show will discuss the sale of a gun, he will have to require every customer to sign the ledger, and check every customer’s identification to verify the information required on the ledger.
Invasion of privacy: In addition to records kept on gun show customers, this bill would allow the FBI to retain, for 90 days, personal information about people who clear instant checks when buying guns.
Gun collector registration: If you are at home with a collection of fifty or more firearms, it would be a five-year felony to “offer” or “exchange” a single gun — even between family or friends — unless you first registered with the BATFE and paid a fee, the amount of which would be at BATFE’s discretion.
The real objective of this legislation is to over-regulate gun shows out of business. Rest assured we will continue to actively monitor the bill and will apprise you of any developments.
Please be sure to contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to strongly OPPOSE S. 843! You can call your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121.
The right to dissent abolished!
April 24, 2009In a dark of the night move that would, and probably has Frank Lautenberg smiling your right to protest was abolished last Tuesday. For years I have been posting about not using terms like “law abiding citizen.” This is precisely what I saw coming. Welcome to the world of felons people!
Hat Tip to Anthony at The Liberty Sphere;
Bill Quietly Becomes Law That Forbids Opposition!
Have you ever heard of legislation in the United States of America that forbids any opposition to it?
Well, we now have it, and it is the law of the land, courtesy of the thugs in the White House and Congress.
Read all about it in my column at Columbia Conservative Examiner.
Thank-you.
Americans are telling us!
April 23, 2009This is from Town Hall from March, is LaPierre a clairvoyant?No, he just didn’t have any blinders on. Enjoy!
Americans don’t need the NRA to tell them that the Barack Obama-Joe Biden administration could spell oblivion for their freedoms: Americans are telling us!
Even during the poorest holiday spending season in almost 40 years, with consumer confidence in a freefall, Americans bought guns like they were going out of style—or going to be banned.
The month Obama was elected, FBI background checks for firearm purchases increased by 42 percent over 2007, setting an all-time record for purchases in a month. Right-to-carry permit applications soared from coast to coast.
It’s easy to see why.
After spending millions of dollars to convince Americans they would never take their guns, Obama and Biden, just three days after winning the election, posted a Web page detailing how they planned to do just that.
Their preliminary agenda included:
• “Making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent”—despite the fact that even after 10 years, the Clinton-Reno Justice Department couldn’t spin it as anything more than a total failure;
• Opening sensitive federal gun-trace data for abuse by politicians seeking to sue the firearms industry out of business for the criminal acts of third parties; and
• “Making guns childproof” through government mandates requiring nonexistent, unworkable or prohibitively expensive technologies, ultimately leading to bans on non-“childproof” firearms.
If gun bans are their goal, Obama and Biden have plenty of experienced players to run with the ball.
The leader of Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, where he helped mastermind the strategy of using frivolous lawsuits to bankrupt America’s firearms industry through “death by a thousand cuts.”
Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a key Clinton administration strategist on gun bans before he went to Congress, where he introduced the very gun ban that the administration now admits it seeks.
Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, also served in the Clinton administration—as Attorney General Janet Reno’s lead salesman for various gun bans.
Last year, Holder signed a “friend of the court” brief defending the Washington, D.C., gun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court in the historic Heller case, arguing that “the Second Amendment does not extend an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
Now, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under his control, Holder will have the power not only to suppress gun sales through increased fees, regulations and harassment of dealers—just as Bill Clinton did when he drove 80 percent of gun dealers out of business—but also to bring suit in federal court to prevent the landmark Heller ruling from being applied to cities and states, or to quash it altogether.
For more than a decade at the United Nations, dictatorships have been working with global gun-ban groups funded by billionaire financier George Soros to impose a gun ban treaty upon the United States.
In 2010, the United Nations convenes a major gun-control conference. But you can bet that, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. delegation won’t oppose the U.N.’s gun-ban dictates, as it did in the past, but will now embrace American gun bans in the name of “international law.”
Under Obama, hunters may be as much of an endangered species as gun owners.
Obama’s pick for EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, held a similar post in New Jersey, where, in 2006, she shut down the state’s bear hunt—even after overabundant bears had begun killing livestock, invading homes and attacking kids. Could she shut down shooting ranges and hunters nationwide by regulating lead bullets out of existence as an “environmental toxin”?
If so, she surely won’t meet much resistance from Cass Sunstein, Obama’s choice to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. “We ought to ban hunting if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun,” Sunstein has said. “That should be against the law.”
In fact, in his book “Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,” Sunstein wrote, “Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives.”
It’s easy to laugh, but this is no joke. Anti-gunners now control every lever of federal power. With the White House, nearly veto-proof majorities in Congress, and the ability to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal bench and the vast federal bureaucracy with anti-gun extremists, they can attack your rights from every direction—executive, legislative, judicial, regulatory, even international.
If you agree with us, then join us. This is no time for silent assent or passive agreement. We must let those in power know we’re watching and we’re listening. We must stand with deeper ranks and broader strength and more resolve than ever.
So that if it becomes necessary—and I believe it will—the NRA will have the size and strength to swiftly act with the formidable unity and dogged resolve that have proven us the singular and most potent guardian of this freedom so essential to a free state.
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