Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins

Posted By Matthew Vadum On January 8, 2013 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 40 Comments

President Obama is planning an aggressive, in-your-face, blitzkrieg-style campaign against Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to self-defense.

After a madman murdered 26 people including 20 young schoolchildren last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama initially urged a reinstatement of the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. The demonstrably useless law lapsed in 2004 and had no detectable impact on crime. It was designed to cater to big-city liberals and their irrational fear of firearms.

But the Obama administration’s plans to assault the Bill of Rights grew more ambitious over the Christmas holidays. The administration has now had an opportunity to brainstorm more extensively with the left-wing gun-grabbing lobby, which is heavily financed by radical financier George Soros.

The president is hoping to use the bloody Newtown massacre to impose sweeping new restrictions on firearms and to create a massive new database to track and spy on law-abiding gun owners. Americans are wise to be wary of such proposals. Governments the world over have used such databases time and time again to crack down on internal dissent, lay the groundwork for gun confiscation, and clear the way for genocidal slaughter.

Citing multiple sources “involved in the administration’s discussions,” the Washington Post reports that the Obama White House is now “weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition.”

According to the newspaper:

A working group led by Vice President [Joe] Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors…

Vice President Biden “guaranteed” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that President Obama would push through sweeping firearms restrictions before February.

“He said, ‘Tommy, I guarantee you, we’ll get it done by the end of January,’” Menino said, according to the Boston Herald. “They’re going to get it done.”

Obama may intend to bribe and blackmail businesses in order to win their support for his assault on law-abiding gun owners, the Post article suggests.

“[T]he White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses,” the article stated.

The Obama White House is coordinating its strategy with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken enemy of the Second Amendment. Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns with Boston’s Menino.

Biden’s working group is reportedly gearing up to present a package of recommendations to the president soon. After that the Community Organizer-in-Chief intends to head up a public-relations campaign to further inflame the public before the passions generated by the Newtown murders cool.

“They are very clearly committed to looking at this issue comprehensively,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which is participating in Biden’s group.

Despite ceaseless cheerleading by their allies in the mainstream media, leftists probably won’t be able to shoot holes in the Second Amendment easily.

Lawmakers from both parties are opposed to further crackdowns on the ownership of guns, which author David B. Kopel notes are already “the most severely regulated consumer product in the United States — the only product for which FBI permission is required for every single sale.”

Newly sworn-in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said gun control proposals now being discussed –including a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to create a national gun registry– are unconstitutional. The federal government doesn’t have “any business having a list of law-abiding citizens” who choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, he said.

After Newtown “within minutes, we saw politicians run out and try to exploit this tragedy, try to push their political agenda of gun control,” Cruz told “Fox News Sunday.”

What happened in Newtown is “a tragedy, but it’s not a tragedy that should be answered by restricting the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) also cautioned against taking aim at gun owners’ rights.

“I think you need to put everything on the table, but what I hear from the administration — and if the Washington Post is to be believed — that’s way, way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about. And it’s not going to pass,” the new freshman senator said on a Sunday TV talk show.

Heitkamp said mental health-related proposals have to be part of any package aimed at reducing violent crime.

“Let’s start addressing the problem. And to me, one of the issues that I think comes — screams out of this is the issue of mental health and the care for the mentally ill in our country, especially the dangerously mentally ill. And so we need to have a broad discussion before we start talking about gun control,” she said.

Obama’s sudden reversal on gun rights shouldn’t come as a surprise. Obama has a long anti-gun track record that he carefully distanced himself from when he began running for the presidency. In his academic days he told a colleague: “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”

As a candidate for state office in 1996, Obama promised to ban “the manufacture, sale & possession of handguns.” Seeking his U.S. Senate seat in 2004, Obama advocated blocking citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits.

This documented antipathy toward Second Amendment rights stands in stark contrast to Obama’s statements on the presidential campaign trail in 2008 when he promised to respect Americans’ individual right to bear arms.

“When you all go home and you’re talking to your buddies and you say, ah ‘He wants to take my gun away.’ You’ve heard it here, I’m on television so everybody knows it. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

>>“Therein lies a risk to us and maybe a goal for the bamster: the only way to enlist the support of the armed forces would be against a seceeding state, they could and would never be engaged in a fight against US citizens, but against a separatist state? Well, as you Well, as you say, Lincoln was the model for that. Just a thought.”
>
>You’re full of crap. Our armed forces are not Nazis, nor gestapo, nor eizengruppen. Got it?
>Don’t ever infer that our Marines and soldiers are Nazis.

He didn't infer that the troops were NAZI, but correctly stated there is American precedent: the Civil War. Further, given some discussions I've had with members of armed forces -- in addition to my own experience -- there really is a tendency to "just follow[ing] orders."

The trial of LTC Lakin also illustrates a glaring gap in military jurisprudence: for the very authority which ordered him to Afghanistan (what his charges stemmed from) must needs be delegated via the Chain-of-Command from the President, and the President gains his authority as Commander-in-Chief from the Constitution. One cannot [legitimately] accept the authority given by the Constitution while simultaneously rejecting the requirements of that Constitution.

The above, therefore, makes me concerned that any soldier rejecting orders to fire upon American Citizens will not be given a just trial, but instead be regarded as one who disobeys orders -- regardless of the legitimacy of those orders.

Now, this is not to say that there won't be some/many who reject such orders; but rather that the military will become fractured should a succession-style (or martial-law) event happen.

“Further, given some discussions I’ve had with members of armed forces — in addition to my own experience — there really is a tendency to “just follow[ing] orders.”
Really?!!? That’s disturbing. My experience is the opposite. Maybe I hang out with a better quality of Americans than you. How about you name this “tendency to follow orders” group so we can send in proselytizers to correct the Nuremberg “following orders” compunction.

Maybe, it certainly wasn't as widespread as you might think; however I encountered it in training environs from the teachers -- which means that it was definitely inserted into the minds of troops; and usually it came in the form of the "[when] you signed up, you signed up to defend the Constitution, not enjoy it[s protections]."

There’s a small gang of commie infiltrators and doom and gloom surrender monkeys here on FR trying to demoralize conservatives. When you post stuff like this, you better have some facts to back up your opinion.

See the above.

Comparing the 1861 Civil War to today is absurd.

Not entirely; there are some parallels -- notably concerning the Rights & Powers of the several States. (Some people would say that governments only have powers, this is generally true, however in a federal system where the states delegate powers there are rights: just like in any legal contractual agreement.)

There’s real life and modern day examples of what happens to dictators who order their army to shot their families in their beds. Kaddhafi tried that and ended up dead on the hood of a BMW SUV, shot dead with his own gold-plated 9mm. His elitist army officers and UN bureaucrats decorated lampposts across the country.

That's true; and one thing the elite are not really considering as they continue provoking the average Joe. That, and the fact that they see killing off at least a tenth of the population of the country as 'necessary' for their plans is not something that instills a confidence in getting a peaceful solution.

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