GUN LAWS UPDATE

This from Gun Law Update LINK HERE Alan Korwin’s Page Nine web log.


Gun Law Update -- Early Brady Plans Revealed


Plenty of gun-ban speculation is flying.I have this quote direct from Sarah Brady in a letter addressed to me:

On Election Day, we helped deliver a strong victory for President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden. They will be two of the most powerful allies we have ever had."

This is what Obama meant when he told you to your face that he respects the Second Amendment. He is the acknowledged champion of the anti-rights gun-ban movement.


POINT ONE

Most of you already know that phony talk about "gun-show-loopholes" was a smokescreen. Sarah and her team now confirm this. They are planning for: "universal background checks for EVERY gun sold in this country." (Her emphasis, not mine).

Gun shows, she says, are now merely "included" in that plan, this will appear as proposed legislation shortly after inauguration day.

POINT TWO

Campaign talk about making the phony "assault-weapons" ban permanent has morphed into "enact a stronger, comprehensive federal ban on military-style assault weapons." They're drafting it right now (Congress doesn't draft these things, interest groups do and hand it to them on platters).

The only thing that could be "stronger" than Clinton's total ban on the sale of new products would be to go after existing firearms in civilian hands, which Clinton left alone. That would require contrabanding, outright confiscations or at a minimum, registration schemes. We'll have to wait for the bill to drop to see what they plan.

"Comprehensive," and "military-style" seem like code words for "more guns banned," far greater lists and categories than Clinton was able to get enacted. Normal capacity magazines like police use will undoubtedly be included, and if the past is prologue, the lists of guns will include standard household firearms the public has safely owned for decades, with little concern for criminals who misuse firearms (already strictly illegal and widely unenforced). Never forget -- "assault" is a type of behavior, not a type of hardware.

POINT THREE

Sarah Brady is asking Obama to "close the deadly holes in our current laws that allow terrorists to buy guns." This is a solution in search of a problem, since terrorists already can't legally buy guns. Brady president Paul Helmke talks instead of blocking "suspected terrorists." That could mean anyone.

It's a back door way to vastly expand the NICS Index -- the list of prohibited possessors that reportedly includes more than ten million Americans. Once you're on, it can be next to impossible to get off, so making it larger serves the goal of the gun banners wonderfully. Many (but not all) currently in the NICS index are violent felons and other low-lifes who belong there.

It's not completely clear who they'd like to add, but in the past, an effort was made to grant arbitrary authority to the Attorney General to add names to terrorism "watch lists." This would prevent those people from air travel and place other restrictions on civil liberties. Sort of like Guantanamo detainees without the need to be caught shooting at Americans on a battlefield. Anyone on that list would be automatically banned by a NICS check, and those checks would no longer be limited to retail purchases from dealers.

FYI, if you're placed on the NICS list, it suggests you're a prohibited possessor whether you are or not, so any guns or ammo you already own or even touch could then constitute a felony. To a zealous cop or judge, a NICS listing might require you to prove your innocence, a nightmare of legal problems. That list should be scrupulously accurate and easily corrected, tasks government is known to do worse than their "management" of the economy.

POINT FOUR

Sarah (Brady, not Palin) included one bald deception in her message by saying "we achieved a major victory when the first federal gun law in over twelve years passed." She refers to the NICS improvement act, for which both the Bradys and NRA took credit. It expands the NICS index by helping states add nut cases (the non-technical description) to the list (a rule Brady rightly applauds). It also lets falsely accused or no-longer-ineligible people get off the list, which you couldn't do previously (a rule NRA rightly applauds).

The 12-year part is laughably inaccurate, but no one expects the media to point out the lie so I will, for just this century, including:

--The PATRIOT Act (which redundantly disarms terrorists and broadens the definition of who the government can label and treat as a terrorist);

--The Aviation and Transportation Security Act (which arms passenger pilots and eventually cargo pilots);

--The Homeland Security Act (which arms all sorts of new federal agents);

--The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (HR218, which arms retired, off-duty and traveling police officers of every description across all state lines, exactly what the Second Amendment is supposed to but no longer protects for the public);

--The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act (which protects firearm manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits);

--The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act (which stops authorities from gun confiscations after storms and disasters like Katrina);

--And that's just the bigger ones in the past eight years.