Posted on 12/20/2001 7:08:10 AM PST by Jean S
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 — I want to meet the syntactical alchemist that turned the phrase “fear, uncertainty and doubt” into “mandated loss of privacy” and shove that person back through the rip in the time space continuum that was America in the good ol’ days of pre-9/11. It wouldn’t be gentle shove.
IT SEEMS EVERY other morning since the September attacks this lawmaker or that is shooting his or her mouth off, ranting about the immediate need for another piece of privacy-stripping legislation in the name of protecting America and fighting an undeclared war on terrorism.
The latest proposed legislative debacle comes from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and would create a de facto registration database of all legal gun owners. The bill flies in the face of current law. The only thing that could make Schumer’s bill more ludicrous would be if it contained a sub-section mandating the registration of serial numbers on all box cutters.
And here’s the really scary part: in opposing this bill I’m siding with the National Rifle Association. The NRA says the proposal is an attempt by “anti-gun extremists” to “create the mechanism to establish a registry of law-abiding gun purchasers.”
I’m not a gun owner, though I grew up with guns and hunted often with my father. My personnel preference is for stricter gun control laws and that’s me in the corner raising my hand when asked “who would like to see an end to sales at gun shows?”
That said, Schumer’s proposed bill, dubbed “Use NICS in Terrorist Investigations Act” (S. 1788) is bad on principle and despicable in its genesis: a hysterical atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and doubt, better known in the cyber world as FUD.
FUD is a kind of mind-fog; it clutters the debate with scare tactics and hyperbolic scenarios. FUD is found daily on Capitol Hill and has been in abundant supply during any congressional hearing on computer crime.
The National Instant Check System (NCIS) is used to check the background of persons wanting to purchase a firearm. The names and information input into NCIS are supposed to be temporary, the law creating the NCIS says to “destroy all records… relating to the person or the transfer” as it relates to the sale of a gun by a licensed dealer.
But Schumer’s bill would mandate the permanent data warehousing of that information and make it available to every law enforcement official in the country, down to the local sheriff in some rural municipality.
When the NRA says such a proposal is a not so subtle attempt to create “gun owner registration, plain and simple” it’s right.
BLIND-SIDED BY FEAR
Schumer and co-sponsor Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., coughed up this hairball legislation in the aftermath of a hearing in which they grilled Attorney General John Ashcroft for having denied the FBI’s request to access NCIS data in the course of the bureau’s ever widening investigation into terrorism on the home front.
But the NCIS was never intended to be used by law enforcement as a means of tagging legal gun owners, yet Schumer’s bill allows just that, blatantly stripping away the privacy rights of any legal gun owner.
As a non-gun owner, I should care less, the law doesn’t affect me. But it does, if for no other reason than it is marching lock step with a rash of recent privacy crushing legislation and presidential directives. First, the bill runs roughshod over existing and well vetted law that includes privacy safeguards. Second, it turns a benign technology — a database — against the people.
And unlike a lot of other hysterical legislation being passed under the cloak of protecting the home front from the threat of terrorism, the language of this bill has no so-called “sundown” provision that requires it to be revisited and re-approved at a predetermined date or be stricken from the books.
And if you still need convincing that this proposal is just anti-privacy legislation sleeping in the tall grass, the word “terrorism” doesn’t appear anywhere in its language except for the title.
Indeed, the meat of Schumer’s bill reads: ”[A]llow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access NICS audit log records for the purpose of responding to an inquiry from any federal, state, or local law enforcement agency in connection with a civil or criminal law enforcement investigation.”
If the bill passes, law enforcement suddenly has an electronic rolodex of all law abiding gun owners. Guns today, box cutters and copies of the Qur’an tomorrow? It wouldn’t surprise me.
The left is starting to discern the slippery-slope. It's not his copy of the Qur'an he's worried about having registered. There's something in his closet, and he's worried his is next...
Where has this guy been? Can't he see the coming refrain "well, nobody's privacy has been invaded in Kalifornia, so what have YOU got to hide?"
"We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!"
U.S. Representative Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York, quoted on NBC, December 8, 1993
"We're here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true..."
U.S. Representative Charles Schumer, quoted on NBC, November 30, 1993
"There may be other things that will happen later... It may not be the end... the bottom line is what we are seeking now is the Brady Bill."
U.S. Representative Charles Schumer, interviewed on CNN Crossfire.
"Gun traffickers have found a new avenue for dealing guns to criminals, to the mentally ill, and the under-aged — the Internet. The firepower available on the Internet is chilling. Machine guns, assault weapons and cheaply made pistols are available in cyberspace for the taking. And they are available to those who could never buy a gun under the Brady law."
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, March 16, 1999. Class III applications are easier to get approved than Brady paperwork?
"There is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights."
USA Today - Richard Benedetto, "Gun Rights Are A Myth", December 28, 1994.
"Law-abiding Americans have no unconditional right to firearms access."
New York Post - "Time For Gun Control" - August 12, 1999
"The debate over gun control offers a revealing case study of the misuse of the Constitution...The idea that the Bill of Rights guarantees each individual a right to own a gun...is a constitutional illusion."
The San Francisco Barrister - Dennis Henigan, "The Right To Be Armed: A Constitutional Illusion" - December, 1989.
"The sale, manufacture, and possession of handguns ought to be banned...We do not believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual the right to keep them."
The Washington Post - "Legal Guns Kill Too" - November 5, 1999.
"There is no Constitutional guarantee for private ownership of firearms."
Austin American Statesman - "A History of the Second Amendment" - April 3, 2000.
"There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun."
Usa Today - Michael Gartner - Former president of NBC News - "Glut of Guns: What Can We Do About Them?" - January 16, 1992.
"The Second Amendment...protects only the right to "bear arms" for the purpose of service in the "militia," and..not..firearm ownership unrelated to militia service."
United States v. Timothy Joe Emerson(5th Cir.1999)(No.99-10331) - Brief for an Ad Hoc Group of 52 Law Professors and Historians as Amici Curiae at 3.
"The individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well regulated militia.' Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected."
ACLU - Policy statement #47, 1996.
Bush knows - or, if he isn't bright enough, he has advisers who are - that he won in 2000 only with the support of 100% of the Red Nation counties that voted for him. And he knows that if he alienates any one county in Red Nation - where guns are loved - he can forget reelection, because enough of us will either just not vote for president at all in 2004, or will vote Buchanan. And every GOP congresscritter who will be running for reelection also knows it.
Bush knows that we did in Bush Daddy in 1992 this way - by just either not voting for president at all, or voting for Perot due to Bush Daddy's constant dissing of gun owners and other social conservatives. If he doesn't know that social conservatives won't support a GOP that doesn't support us, Bush Daddy can tell him.
Scandals of antigun politicians - from Kalifornia to New York City!
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them... "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in," I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here.""Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of Americans to feel safe."
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, quoted by the Associated Press, November 18, 1993
"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993
"Nobody should be owning a gun which does not have a sporting purpose."
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno
"Gun registration is not enough."
U.S.Attorney General Janet Reno on "Good morning America," December 10, 1993
This guy shows he is only half smart!
HOW GUN CONTROL "WORKED" IN JAMAICA
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