Posted on 04/30/2013 6:09:45 AM PDT by Castigar
I sent an email to Senator Toomey urging him to oppose the Senate gun control efforts even in the face of his Manchin-Toomey legislation. Here is his response - I'm sure it's canned:
Dear (Castigar),
Thank you for contacting me about national firearms policy. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.
Like many Pennsylvanians, I have long been a supporter of the Second Amendment. Americans have an individual right to bear arms for self-protection, hunting and recreation. In fact, during my tenure in the House of Representatives (1999-2005), my record of supporting gun owners' rights earned me an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
As important as Second Amendment rights are, our society recognizes that these rights do not apply to criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. Writing for the conservative majority in the landmark Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court struck down the D.C. gun ban, Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill...or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." In other words, Justice Scalia affirmed that laws preventing criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from obtaining firearms do not infringe on the Second Amendment.
As you know, I recently introduced an amendment, along with Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), to the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013 (S. 649). Our amendment had three parts. The first was to improve state compliance with the existing National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The second part was to expand background checks to commercial sales at gun shows or through the internet. These first two parts of our amendment were designed to make it more difficult for criminals and dangerously mentally ill persons to acquire firearms. The third part would have provided law abiding citizens with expanded opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment Rights.
With regard to the first part of the amendment, NICS relies on states to provide records of persons who should not possess firearms. Compliance varies greatly with some states providing very few records. The amendment requires states to completely participate in NICS in order to be eligible for certain types of federal grant funding.
Full state participation in NICS would help prevent the kind of tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech in 2007. Prior to that mass shooting, in which 32 people were murdered and 23 were injured, shooter Seung Hui Cho had been found mentally ill by a Virginia judge. However, Virginia did not submit that court record to NICS. The absence of this critical information in NICS enabled Cho to pass a background check and purchase the handguns he used for the shooting. This is one example of how the threat of gun violence can be reduced through improvement of the NICS system, a salient objective of the Manchin-Toomey amendment.
The second part, expansion of background checks to other venues such as gun shows, is not a new idea. In the aftermath of the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999, the NRA supported expanding background checks at gun shows during consideration by the House of Representatives of the Mandatory Gun Show Background Check Act (H.R. 2122). I agreed with the NRA then, and so did many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who voted in favor of this legislation.
Current law already requires a background check through NICS for all sales conducted through a federally licensed gun dealer. The Manchin-Toomey amendment would have required individuals seeking to purchase firearms from a non-dealer at a gun show to undergo the same background check as required for purchases from licensed dealers. The amendment would not have mandated "universal" background checks. Personal, non-commercial transfers would not have required background checks.
The third part of our amendment would have been achieved through a number of measures. These measures included allowing active duty military service members to buy a gun in their home state and providing a new legal process for restoring the Second Amendment rights of veterans who, under current law, can be unfairly prevented from acquiring a firearm. Another benefit included protecting law abiding gun owners from arrest or detention by fixing interstate travel laws.
Contrary to some reports, the amendment would not have created or enabled a national gun registry. I have always strongly opposed a gun registry, so our amendment prohibited the creation of a registry and would have established a new felony offense, punishable by a 15-year prison sentence, for any official who attempted to create a federal registry.
Senator Manchin and I posted the text of our amendment on our websites on April 11, 2013, thereby providing six days for our colleagues and the public to review the 49-page measure before a vote. On April 17, 2013, despite bipartisan support and a 54-46 vote in favor, the amendment was defeated due to a 60-vote threshold that was agreed to by unanimous consent.
I acknowledge that some will disagree with the Manchin-Toomey amendment. I am under no illusion that the amendment would necessarily prevent a determined criminal or dangerously mentally ill person from acquiring a firearm. No system can be 100 percent effective in denying firearms to those that should not have them, but that does not mean we should not try to improve the current system. In my view, keeping guns out of the hands of these people is not gun control, but common sense.
Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.
Sincerely,
Signature
Pat Toomey U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania
Send that in to them- They NEED to hear from real peopel and NEED to understand that we hired them to protect our constitutional rights and innalienable rights- NOT to bargain them away bit by bit
That response is as canned as pork and beans. What a bunch of sh!t. Toomey should be ashamed, but I’m sure he’s not.
Is he your Senator?
FWIW, if you want to see the uber canned response, send an email to Linda Graham (RINO/D-SC). Sometimes her canned response has nothing to do with your original email.
I view Sen. Toomey as an honorable, honest man. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one, Senator.
Anytime you give government more access to these types of records no good will come of it. In Maryland every regulated firearm purchased since 1998 is now recorded in a state database. Result: Gun registration.
Even the Congress knows gun registration is against the Constitution but Maryland goverment doesn’t care. We get registration. Again, when government has access to the data, government will misuse that data.
And, if we on the Right were to support this kind of law, what are we getting for it? We could trade for open carry in all states, deregulating firearms suppressors, nationwide “stand-your-ground” laws, tougher sanctions on those who committ crimes with guns, etc.?
They play hardball on guns, so should we. We need to move the needle on gun control back to the center.
The thing I’m disappointed in Sen Toomey about is that you cannot trust DemoCRAPs. They have no problem lying or being deceitful to get what they want. Dare I say “Nancy Pelosi”? We have to pass a 2,800 page ObamaCare law to even “see what’s in it?”
Sen Manchin may appear to be an honorable man but at the end of the day he will vote to reafirm Harry Reid and the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world. He associates with those who would allow the media to mischaracterize the Right and for that he can go to h*ll. They (the libs) can all go to h*ll.
An honorable politician is defined as one who when bought stays bought.
A couple questions for you and any other Freeper that may know the answer. This database you speak of - is it public record material? Can it be accessed via FOIA? Also, are the addresses of police public record material?
Toomey, if you are right... it should be ok...but the Marxists in the Senate might do it someday.
Do you really expect Toomey to personally respond to the thousands of emails, letters, faxes, and telephone calls that he received on this issue or just your email? We should be attacking Toomey for his position, not for his failure to personally type an individuial response to every single person who has written him.
This is where trust comes in. When you do a background check on me (and everyone else) at the POS, I'm to trust that no one is keeping records of that background check request?
Tell you what, Mr. politician. Here's your registry......the IRS. Just assume every Social Security number has a gun. That's all you need to know.
Toomey is a worthless POS as far as I am concerned.
Five Zettabytes of storage in the new Colorado data center.
Cisco: to show us just how much data can be fit into one Zettabyte: you can alternatively think of it as the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs, 36 million years of HD video, or the volume of the Great Wall of China if you allow an 11oz cup of coffee to represent a gigabyte of data
We are talking 5 of these people in just one data center, and you can bet they will build more.
If it is in a database, it can certainly be accessed by Big Brother.
His assertion is just plain silly. Almost certainly the nut at Virginia Tech would have avoid scrutiny if only because of his race. IAC, enforcement is everything. Look at Boston. There were plenty of reasons why this guy should have been flagged but wasn’t.
actually the boston bomber was flagged, Saudi Arabia gave the US written warning about him, but our genius officials didn’t want to upset the moslems.
And university officials are just as unreliable. I mean, does he not know that they are all unreliable on such matters?
Toomey doubled down on his treason in an article reported today on CNN. He’s blaming the good guys for not supporting the bill just because they Obama was supporting it. Way to throw your supporters under the bus Arlen Toomey.
So many pols are too clever by half because they come to think of it all as a game and they start flirting with other boys rather than staying with the one they came with. Hard for someone elected to Congress not to forget where they came from. Air conditioning was the worse thing that ever happened to Congress. They should do what they used to do, which is to meet from December to May and then go home.
This "mental health" thing is the slippery slope that will lead to any kid in school who gets diagnosed with "ADD", ADHD", anxiety, depression, autism, etc. Nowadays it almost seems like 90% of kids get diagosed with some "condition" or "disability" and end up on Ritalin or any number of other anti-anxiety pills and so forth. Whatever it takes to assuage lazy parents who can't be inconvenienced with stuff like discipline, and make life easier for lazy teachers while making big pharma happy as a clam. Someday all these kids are going to be grownups who can't buy guns because their names come up on some "mental health" registry. Who needs a "gun registry" when you got a handy workaround like a "mental health registry"?
If we had session limits, we wouldn't need term limits.
180 calendar days -- every two years.
They prefer to shuttle between their districts and DC. In this electronic age, they could stay in their offices at home and just teleconference.
For most of them, "home" is now Washington, D.C.
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