Posted on 11/12/2002 5:10:09 PM PST by chuknospam
Millions More to Be Barred from Gun Ownership -- Immediate Action Needed
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151 Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408 http://www.gunowners.org
November 12, 2002
The House has passed H.R. 4757, the so-called "Our Lady of Peace Act." Its chief sponsor is the rabidly anti-gun Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York.
Not surprisingly, one of the other rabid anti-gunners from New York, Senator Chuck Shumer (D), has sponsored the companion bill in the Senate (S. 2826).
The bill would require states to turn over vast numbers of sometimes-personal records (on potentially all Americans) to the FBI for use in connection with the Instantcheck. These records would include any state record relevant to the question of whether a person is prohibited from owning a gun.
This starts with a large volume of mental health records, but the FBI could also require that a state forward ALL of its employment and tax records in order to identify persons who are illegal aliens. It could require that states forward information concerning drug diversion programs and arrests that do not lead to prosecution, in order to determine whether a person was "an unlawful user of... any controlled substance...."
The bill would also help FBI officials to effectively stop millions of additional Americans from purchasing a firearm, because they were guilty in the past of committing slight misdemeanors. You might remember the Lautenberg Gun Ban which President Bill Clinton signed in 1996? Because of this ban, people who have committed very minor offenses that include pushing, shoving or, in some cases, even yelling at a family member have discovered that they can no longer own a firearm for self-defense.
But the anti-gun nuts in Congress are upset because many of the states' criminal records are incomplete. As a result, the FBI does not access all of these records when screening the background of someone who purchases a firearm from a gun dealer. The McCarthy-Schumer bill would change all that and keep millions of decent, peaceful citizens from owning a firearm because of one slight offense committed in their past.
The bill also reaches for a gun owning prohibition on nearly 3 million more Americans who have spent time in mental health facilities. This group has no more involvement in violent crime than does the rest of the population. But even assuming that those with (often minor and treatable) mental health histories are "bad" guys, this bill is NOT about keeping bad guys from getting guns. Bad guys will ALWAYS be able to get guns, no matter how many restrictions there are.
This bill is all about control. Schumer and McCarthy want to keep pushing their agenda forward, making it impossible for more and more Americans to legally own guns! But if it is OK to ban gun ownership for certain people who have engaged in a shouting match with another family member, or who have stayed overnight in a hospital for emotional observation or who have been written a prescription for depression, then who will be next on the McCarthy-Schumer hit list? People who drink an occasional beer? People who take "mind altering" cold medicines -- Nyquil, TheraFlu, etc.?
H.R. 4757 and S. 2826 are major, anti-self defense bills that will only make the country safer for criminals while opening the door to invading the privacy of all Americans.
A near-total gun ban on the island of Great Britain has resulted in England suffering from the highest violent crime rate of any industrialized country. Why would a less oppressive form of gun control work when an outright ban has failed to keep guns out of the wrong hands?
ACTION:
Please contact your Senators and demand that this bill be stopped. A pre-written message is provided below. To identify your Senators, as well as to send the message via e-mail, see the Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm on the GOA website.
----- Pre-written message -----
Dear Senator:
I am shocked that the Senate has before it a bill (S. 2826) that would prohibit millions of Americans from owning a gun for self-defense. Those who would be banned present no greater risk of committing violent crimes than does the rest of the population. Are all the rest of us next?
Please vote against this monstrosity (also known as the Our Lady of Peace bill) if it comes to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Gun Owners of America will be using this vote for their rating of Congress.
I would like to hear from you about whether you support this massive increase in gun control.
****************************
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A third time I'll ask.
Please don't tell me what is, but what, in your opinion, should be the rules for denying someone the right to arm themself?
I proudly joined the NRA at 16 (over my parent's objections), and remained a member for 17 years, donating thousands of dollars during that time. (Once, during a particularly difficult political battle, I sent them my entire take-home pay for the month, minus tithe of course.)
But one day in my early 30's, during a time of fasting and prayer, I felt strongly led by the Lord to resign my NRA Life membership. Emotionally, it was one of the hardest things I ever did -- even though I knew it was God's will, it still felt like treachery -- and I never understood why He required me to do it.
Until now.
If a man can't be trusted with a gun, he shouldn't be trusted to walk the streets at all.
The law that these people are trying to enact is a natural outgrowth of GCA '68 and the Instant Check system. What point is there in prohibiting people from selling firearms to wife beaters, criminals, and the mentally ill if you have no way of finding out if someone falls into that category?
The data required to enforce the law is not available to those charged with following the law and those charged with enforcing it, because of the absence of state records.
Instead of attacking this bill, you should be attacking GCA '68, because this bill is just part and parcel of that package.
But if you're so insistent on my opinion, here it is: I think that the state of affairs prior to the enactment of the National Firearms Act of 1934 is the proper state of affairs with respect to firearms. I think that the United States Supreme Court should have been asked to strike it down on the basis of the precedent set by Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., [259 U.S. 20], in 1922, to wit:
Grant the validity of this law, and all that Congress would need to do, hereafter, in seeking to take over to its control any one of the great number of subjects of public interest, jurisdiction of which the states have never parted with, and which are reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment, would be to enact a detailed measure of complete regulation of the subject and enforce it by a socalled tax upon departures from it. To give such magic to the word 'tax' would be to break down all constitutional limitation of the powers of Congress and completely wipe out the sovereignty of the states.
After all, what is the NFA but a "detailed measure of complete regulation of the subject," enforced by a "socalled tax on departures from it?" When it was enacted, it imposed a $200 tax on a $5 shotgun.
I also agree with Samuel Adams' qualification of the Second Amendment:
The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.I think that we, as peaceable citizens, should hold the legal authority as a society to disarm those who are not peaceable, just as we hold the legal authority to deprive them of their freedom or, in many states, their very lives. That is, at least until our society deveops to the point of L. Neil Smith's Confederacy, where schoolchildren carry guns on their hips.
A couple of years ago gun owners were calling for enforcement of the laws on the books, remember? Well, this bill makes that possible.
Indeed, the headline to this article is very misleading. "Millions more" will not be barred from gun ownership. In fact, nobody who is not already prohibited from owning a gun will be barred from gun ownership by this bill. They may have bought a gun by virtue of the invisibility of their state wife-beating conviction to the NICS, but that doesn't mean they bought it, or possess it, legally.
Sorry, you're mistaken:
(3) APPLICATION TO PERSONS WHO HAVE BEEN ADJUDICATED AS A MENTAL DEFECTIVE OR COMMITTED TO A MENTAL INSTITUTION-(A) For purposes of paragraph (1), an adjudication as a mental defective occurs when a court, board, commission, or other government entity determines that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease--
(i) is a danger to himself or to others; or
(ii) lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.
(B) The term `adjudicated as a mental defective' includes--
(i) a finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and
(ii) a finding that a person is incompetent to stand trial or is not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b).
(C) EXCEPTIONS- This paragraph does not apply to--
(i) a person--
(I) in a mental institution for observation; or
(II) voluntarily committed to a mental institution; or
(ii) information protected by doctor-patient privilege.
Nope. The bill's §102(b)(3)(C) exempts voluntary commitments.
Having worked for Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, a drug for bi-polar disorder, I can assure you that there are millions of people in this country that take this drug on a daily basis. I am sure you know people who take Prozac, but you are probably unaware that they do. In fact, you might find that some of your buddies down at your local gun club take Prozac.
I take Celexa myself, and have found that it runs in my family, back generations. But the claim that HR 4757 includes some sort of provision for barring those who have been written a prescription for anti-depressants from owning firearms is at best, outlandish hyperbole designed to elicit contributions, or simply an outright lie.
The text of the bill passed by the house is available on the THOMAS system. And none of the three versions include any mention of prescription drugs or clinical depression.
The bill would also help FBI officials to effectively stop millions of additional Americans from purchasing a firearm, because they were guilty in the past of committing slight misdemeanors.
Oops, hope they don’t find out about that J-walking thing.
Har de har. Can the hyperbole. I find it rather troubling that they are describing wife-beating as a "slight" misdemeanor. I thought we got over that attitude by the 80's at the latest.
“It could require that states forward information concerning drug diversion programs and arrests that do not lead to prosecution...
Shouldn't we be more concerned with what it actually does require, rather than what it could, or might, or enitrely possibly may require?
You make interesting points, I shall peruse the text of the bill at the link that you have provided.
"Shouldn't we be more concerned with what it actually does require, rather than what it could, or might, or enitrely possibly may require?"
But that has always been the problem with many pieces of legislation, the law of unintended consequences, many pieces of legislation have started out with really good intentions, but what they actually end of being is something completely different.
I mean take a look at many of the social programs that were implemented in the 60's, they all had real good intentions, wasn't going to cost a lot of money, and were something that all decent people should be willing to support. Then take a look at what kind of monsters many of these programs have turned into over the last 30 years.
I find it advantages, when looking at legal questions, to not only look at the immediate problem in front of you that they propose to address, but to also look at the bigger picture of what they might be able to address in the future. Or, to put it another way, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Indeed, that's one of my favorite quotes when it comes to gun control.
But the thing is, we've passed a hell of a lot of mile markers with the 20,000 gun laws on the books today. And though there are people who may have a philosophical problem with preventing criminals, wife-beaters, and dangerously insane people from legally buying guns, the state of affairs we're faced with today has been defined by the other side of that philosophical debate.
And this bill is just part and parcel of the victory that the other side of that philosophical debate won years ago with GCA '68, the Brady Bill, and the National Instant Check System.
And I suppose that is where I am getting confused on the position that you are taking here.
It seems to me that we already have more than enough laws on the books covering gun control, too many in fact. Do we not just need to enforce the laws we currently have instead of spending time passing more?
My point is that this is exactly what this bill is about - enforcing the laws we currently have. It's already illegal for a wife-beater, or a person that the courts have found to be mentally ill and a danger to himself or others, to buy and own a gun, and it's also illegal for anyone to sell a gun to such a person.
This bill does not expand the scope of who is and isn't allowed to have a gun, it is designed to capture the information about existing "prohibited persons," as they're called, that is currently not consistently included in the NICS database.
If you have a philosophical objection to the very concept of background checks being required in order to buy a gun in order to screen out criminals, abusers, and the mentally ill, then that's fine, but if wishes were rifles the beggars would shoot, so to speak.
DITTO !! The "perp" isn't gonna be hampered by any ole rule or law!!
My point was that we had Japanese Americans re-enacting the part of American soldiers, to wit I am not offended by and they were obviously not indignent to represent since they were indeed Americans of Japanese descent. There were no Japanese or Germans there protesting the re-enactment. My point being, is the Kali nuts have gone past PC, they are taking up a cross to which they have no right to bear, like anglo Americans wanting reparations for themselves personally because they helped blacks escape slavery and somehow thing they bore the same burden.
I have a great deal of respect for all men and women in uniform who have served and are serving now and the same respect for the uniform that they wear as well as the flag of this great nation.
No I don't particularly have a philosophical objection to the government taking some steps in seeing that people who quite obviously should not have guns do not have them. There is an obligation of the government to protect that safety of the people.
But just the collection of that information on the populace at large can have alternative usages. Much the same as the collection of DNA can have alternative usages beyond that of identification.
But since we are on the subject, you say that the government should be able, via background checks, to screen out criminals from owning a firearm. What is your definition of a criminal?
Gun-control laws are immoral and should be repealed, not enforced. Gun-control hinders the ability of individuals to defend themselves and makes criminals out of people who aren't criminals. With the stroke of a pen politicians can turn hundreds of thousands of people into felons simply because they own a certain kind of gun.
But then again, as per another discussion that I have going on here, do you not think that some people, such as the mentally deranged, should not have guns?
Would, some control there, not fall under the obligation of the government to provide for the security of the people?
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