Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102
Springfield, VA 22151
(703)321-8585
Monday, October 4, 2004
What part of "Constitution" don't they understand?
In a frightening move, House Republicans -- members of the party that supposedly favors "limited government" -- are pushing an Orwellian nightmare in Congress in the name of "national security."
In the wake of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, the Senate -- unlike the House -- has prepared legislation which would closely track that Commission's findings by reorganizing the intelligence services in the federal government. The Senate bill is relatively innocuous compared to the House version, HR 10.
Unfortunately, many of the so-called Republicans in the House are pushing this nightmarish legislation which would:
* Create a massive government database containing personal information on every American man, woman and child;
* Standardize (i.e., nationalize) the process of issuing driver's licenses -- thereby taking the final step toward creating a national ID card; and
* Set up a system whereby any employer or industry identified by the Attorney General would have to submit employment applicants to the government for approval -- complete with fingerprints or other "biometric identifiers."
Now, let's look at how each of these problems could affect your rights -- gun rights in particular:
(1) The government database is created by section 2173 of HR 10, a bill introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. It would allow airline passengers to be screened against lists containing "all appropriate records." What would be "appropriate" would be within the exclusive discretion of the bureaucrats, but could include medical records, confidential financial records, library records, and gun records.
(2) The driver's license standards are in section 3052. They would allow the federal government to set standards as high as desired to determine who may or may not obtain a driver's license. Please note that you need a driver's license (or similarly regulated state-issued photo ID) to purchase a gun from a dealer. But, increasingly, you also need it to travel on any form of transportation (airplane, bus, train, car), to get a job, to open a checking account, to cash a check, to check into a hotel, to rent a car, or to purchase cigarettes or alcohol. If the federal government can set standards so high as to deny you a driver's license or photo ID, it has effectively turned you into a non-person.
(3) Section 2142 would allow the U.S. attorney general to promulgate any regulations he desires concerning (a) what employers must submit the names and fingerprints of all employment applicants to the FBI, (b) what standards the government will use in approving or disapproving the employment applicants, and (c) whether or not the government's "disapproval" will prevent the applicant from being hired.
There is nothing in section 2142 which would prohibit an anti-gun attorney general from (a) requiring the resumes and fingerprints of every employment applicant in the country, (b) disapproving them on the basis of gun ownership or, for that matter, any factor he viewed as not being politically correct, and (c) prohibiting any employer from hiring an applicant thus blacklisted.
ACTION: Write your representative. Ask him, in the strongest terms, to vote against any "9/11 legislation" that (1) creates a government database of personal information on law-abiding Americans, (2) moves toward the use of a driver's license as a National ID Card, or (3) sets up a system for fingerprinting and approving job applicants in the private sector.
