The German Democratic Republic or East Germany was ruled by the Communist Party with an iron hand until things began to break apart with glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall. To enforce the will of the Party was the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit aka the Stasi.
His network of 85,000 full-time domestic spies and 170,000 ‘voluntary’ informers kept tabs on millions of people. So many people collaborated with the Stasi that when the records were opened, it was discovered that in every public building, at least one of its members kept the Stasi informed about everything that happened within it.
In a move aimed at emulating Erich Mielke and the Stasi, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is now trying to build a network of spies in that New Jersey city to turn in their neighbors who have guns.
I guess it comes as no surprise that a mayor intent on emulating one of the worst features of the Stasi has won the 2009 Sarah Brady Visionary Award from the Brady Center.
When candidate Barack Obama was running for President in 2008 he was highly critical of then-President George W. Bush’s use of what are called signing statements. These are written pronouncements by a president when he signs a bill into law. From Wikipedia.org:
A study released by then-Assistant Attorney General, 1993–1996, Walter Dellinger[3] grouped signing statements into three categories:
Constitutional: asserts that the law is constitutionally defective in order to guide executive agencies in limiting its implementation;
Political: defines vague terms in the law to guide executive agencies in its implementation as written;
Rhetorical: uses the signing of the bill to mobilize political constituencies.
In recent usage, the phrase “signing statement” has referred mostly to statements relating to constitutional matters that direct executive agencies to apply the law according to the president’s interpretation of the Constitution.
Here is candidate Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2008 responding to a question about signing statements.
That was then and this is now.
Two days before Christmas, President Obama was presented with HR 2055 – the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 – and he signed it. He also concurrently released a presidential memoranda or signing statement saying he objected to parts of it. From the political newspaper The Hill:
President Obama said Friday he will not be bound by at least 20 policy riders in the 2012 omnibus bill funding the government, including provisions pertaining to Guantanamo Bay and gun control.
After he signed the omnibus into law Friday, the White House released a concurrent signing statement saying Obama will object to portions of the legislation on constitutional grounds.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 is a 486 page document that contained Congressional appropriations for most agencies and departments of the Executive Branch. Contained within it were three provisions that are considered wins for gun owners. The NRA-ILA released a statement on these provisions that said in part:
Stopping Your Tax Dollars From Funding Anti-Gun Studies
One of the protections expanded and strengthened can be found in Sec. 218 of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education (Labor-H) division of the bill. This section prevents the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from using taxpayer dollars to promulgate junk science designed to paint legal gun ownership as a public health hazard. Since 2002, the NIH has spent nearly $5 million on this “research” even though their counterparts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been prevented from funding similar studies since being blocked in 1996 by a NRA-backed provision.
No Tax Dollars to Lobby and Promote Gun Control
The second is a new NRA-backed provision that is found in Sec. 503 of the Labor-H division. This section prevents federal funds from being used for lobbying efforts designed to support or defeat the passage of legislation being considered by Congress, or any state or local legislative body. Too often, community action groups are utilizing federal money to lobby for increased regulation of firearms including trigger locks, bans on semi-automatic rifles, regulated magazine capacity, etc. This funding subverts the Second Amendment and allows anti-gun Administrations to fund grassroots gun control efforts using taxpayer dollars. We are grateful that H.R. 2055 prohibits further use of this gun control scheme.
Protecting Historic Firearms and Spent Brass Casings from Destruction
Finally, a long-standing provision, found in Department of Defense (DOD) Sec. 8017 division A, preserves the opportunity for American gun owners to purchase surplus firearms that are no longer of use to the U.S. military. This includes M-1 Carbines, M-1 Garand rifles, M-14 rifles, .22 caliber rifles, .30 caliber rifles and M-1911 pistols. Starting in 1979, different versions of this language have prevented these firearms from being needlessly destroyed. In 2009, Congress amended this language at the urging of the NRA to prevent the destruction of spent brass casings, a boon for gun owners and reloaders concerned about the rising price of ammunition.
Additional provisions in this bill, including section 8013 of Division A and section 218 of Division F, purport to restrict the use of funds to advance certain legislative positions. I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress’s consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient.
Section 218 which relates to the funding of the National Institutes of Health says:
SEC. 218. None of the funds made available in this title may
be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.
The Second Amendment Foundation was handed another win today in the Washington State Court of Appeals for District 1. The court unanimously upheld a King County Superior Court ruling that said a City of Seattle ban on guns in city parks was invalid.
The Second Amendment Foundation continues to secure gun rights one lawsuit at a time!
Their release on the win is below.
APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS SAF VICTORY IN LAWSUIT V. SEATTLE PARKS GUN BAN
For Immediate Release: 10/31/2011
BELLEVUE, WA – The Washington State Court of Appeals for Division 1 today unanimously upheld a 2010 King County Superior Court ruling against the City of Seattle’s ban on firearms in city parks in a lawsuit originally brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, other gun rights groups and five individual plaintiffs.
SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said he had always been confident that the Appeals Court would rule “in favor of the law and against the attempt by Seattle to dance around it.”
“We told former Mayor Greg Nickels he was wrong,” Gottlieb said, “and we have reminded the city under Mayor Mike McGinn that it was wrong, and now the Appeals Court has confirmed our position.”
SAF was joined in the lawsuit by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the National Rifle Association and Washington Arms Collectors.
Writing for the Court, Presiding Chief Judge Ann Schindler noted, “We hold that under the plain language of RCW 9.41.290 and RCW 9.41.300, the city’s attempt to regulate the possession of firearms at designated park areas and park facilities open to the public by adopting the Firearms Rule is preempted by state law.”
“This is not only a victory for the citizens of Washington State,” he said, “but also for the State Legislature, which had the wisdom in 1983 and 1985 to pass and strengthen our preemption statute. This law has become the model for other state statutes across the country.
“The ruling is also an affirmation of Judge Catherine Shaffer’s original trial court ruling last year,” he continued. “She had the foresight to include observations about our state constitutional right to bear arms but also the Second Amendment.
“Now that the Second Amendment has been incorporated to the states through our victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago,” Gottlieb concluded, “it is going to be impossible for anti-gun politicians in the Evergreen State to defy our preemption statute and our constitutional rights. Such local rules and ordinances are illegal, and now they know it for sure.”
In other words, the vast majority of Americans support reasonable gun control measures; only a small fraction is actually opposed to gun control.
This finding is confirmed by other recent polling that shows that Americans support measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. According to one poll, 89 percent of respondents support requiring all gun buyers to pass a background check at gun shows, 94 percent support requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen, and 69 percent support requiring those buying ammunition to pass a criminal background check. Another poll showed 86 percent of respondents supported background checks for every gun buyer.
And what are the polls that they use to “confirm” this? None other than the discredited push polls commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg and his Illegal Mayors. I think that says about everything.
UPDATE:Thirdpower has more on this and examines some of the comments made supporting the Media Matters’ spin on gun control.
SAF SAYS NEW GALLUP DATA SHOWS AMERICANS VALUE THEIR GUN RIGHTS
For Immediate Release: 10/26/2011
BELLEVUE, WA – Today’s revelation by Gallup that a record low number of Americans support a legal ban on handgun possession by private citizens demonstrates a positive change in the public attitude about personal protection and the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment Foundation said.
According to Gallup, only 26 percent of Americans favor a handgun ban. The annual Gallup Crime poll was conducted Oct. 6-9.
“American citizens have become increasingly aware that they are the true ‘first responders’ when a crime happens in their presence,” noted SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “The public’s attitude about gun ownership has changed dramatically in the last decade, and especially since the Supreme Court’s Heller ruling in 2008 and our victory in the 2010 McDonald ruling, affirming the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right.
“The public has also realized that all the doom and gloom rhetoric from gun prohibitionists about more crime and violence associated with increased gun ownership has been wrong,” he continued. “More Americans today own firearms than they did a generation ago, yet violent crime rates are at their lowest levels in many years.”
According to Gallup, there is also greater opposition to a ban on semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, often wrongly identified as “assault weapons.” Only 43 percent of those polled think these guns should be banned, down ten percent from the 2001 poll. Support for stricter gun laws has also declined, with 44 percent believing laws should be left as they are, and 11 percent favoring less strict laws.
“The pendulum has definitely been swinging in favor of expanded gun rights,” Gottlieb observed. “For too long, people were fooled by hysteria and misinformation from gun prohibitionists and their cheerleaders in the press. But their alarmist rhetoric has failed the test of time, and now Americans by greater percentages than we’ve seen in generations are realizing that gun rights are important, to our security as a nation and to public safety in our own neighborhoods.”
Emily Miller is a senior editor at the Washington Times. She also lives within the District of Columbia and wants to have a handgun for self-protection. In a series of articles, Ms. Miller is finding out just how hard it is to obtain a handgun in the District of Columbia. If it is this hard for someone who presumably is well connected, just imagine how hard it is for ordinary people to obtain the tools for self-defense in the District of Columbia.
And the city will continue to spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to ensure that women are more likely to be raped and strangled than defend themselves w/ a firearm. Remember, it’s law abiding citizens w/ firearms that are a danger to society.
Chicago resident Jesus Duenas has a FOID card and after the New Chicago Gun Law was enacted in response to the city’s loss in McDonald v. Chicago, he purchased a handgun legally. (As an aside, my guess is that his handgun was a Taurus Judge as the story mentions it fired a .410 shotgun shell.) However, at the time because he couldn’t find a range in the City of Chicago to get the required training, he didn’t get a Chicago permit nor did he register the handgun with the city. Of course he couldn’t find a range in the city because they were forbidden by law at the time!
Fast forward to March of this year. After neighbors called the police because of a party at his house, he was arrested when the police entered his home without a warrant in search of a firearm. When they asked him where his gun was, he showed them where it was in the bedroom in a locked case. His arrest was for being in violation of Chicago’s gun laws.
Yesterday, a judge in Chicago dismissed the charges against him. While he now has his Chicago registration card, the police are now trying to revoke it because he purchased the gun before he got the permit.
While the story doesn’t say anything about this, it is my impression that many in Chicago purchased handguns as soon as the city lost McDonald and enacted the New Chicago Gun Law. All they heard in media reports from the time was that the city now had to allow handguns and the onerous requirements to get a permit were glossed over. Of course, ignorance is no excuse but neither is creating so many impediments to lawful compliance that virtually no one could own a handgun legally within Chicago.
The text of the Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act of 2011 is below. This is the newest gambit by certain Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee to use Operation Fast and Furious as a means to push for more – and superflous – gun control laws. As I noted about in my post about their press release, every illegal act that they are trying to cover is already covered by other Federal laws. Having this law in place would not stop the smuggling of arms and certainly wouldn’t have prevented the ATF from engaging in gunwalking.
The bill does not yet have an assigned number that I can find in the Library of Congress’s Thomas system.
A BILL
To prohibit firearms trafficking.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act of 2011’’.
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON FIREARMS TRAFFICKING.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
§ 932. Trafficking in firearms
“(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for any per3on, regardless of whether anything of value is exchanged, to receive, or to transfer or otherwise dispose of to 1 or more individuals, 2 or more firearms that have been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such conduct will result in the disposing of 1 or more such firearms to an individual—
‘‘(1) whose possession or receipt of the firearm would be unlawful; or
‘‘(2) who intends to or will use, carry, possess, or dispose of the firearm unlawfully.
“(b) ORGANIZER.—It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly direct, promote, or facilitate conduct that violates subsection (a).
‘‘(c) CONSPIRACY.—It shall be unlawful for any person to conspire to violate subsection (a).
‘‘(d) DEFINITIONS.—In subsection (a):
‘‘(1) The term ‘individual whose possession or receipt of the firearm would be unlawful’ means an individual—
‘‘(A) who is under indictment or has a prior conviction for a violent felony or a felony drug offense;
‘‘(B) who at the time of the offense was under a criminal sentence, including on probation, parole, supervised release, or work release, or in escape status;
‘‘(C) whose possession of the firearm violates or would violate section 922(x)(2); or
‘‘(D) whose possession of the firearm violates or would violate paragraph (2), (3), (4), (5), (8), or (9) of section 922(g).
‘‘(2) The term ‘violent felony’ has the meaning given in section 924(e)(2)(B).
‘‘(3) The term ‘felony drug offense’ has the meaning given in section 102(44) of the Controlled Substances Act, and includes a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 924(c)).’’.
(b) PENALTIES.—Section 924(a) of such title is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘(8)(A) Whoever violates subsection (a) or (b) of section 932 shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, subject to subparagraph (B).
‘‘(B) The term of imprisonment imposed on a person who violates section 932 in concert with 5 or more other persons with respect to whom the person occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management, shall be not more than 25 years.
‘‘(C) Whoever violates section 932(c) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.’’.
(c) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.—The table of sections for such chapter is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘‘932. Trafficking in firearms.
Below is the point-by-point “explanation” of the Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act. What makes this more interesting is that the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have included their talking points as well. By doing so, they are explicitly telling the world – and those of us in the gun community – how they plan to push this bill. They are also essentially writing the editorials for their supporters in media.
STOP GUN TRAFFICKING AND STRENGTHEN LAW ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 2011
Section-by-Section
Section 1. Short Title
Section 2. Prohibition on Firearms Trafficking
• Amends Chapter 44 of title 18 to create a new Section 932 to address firearms trafficking.
• Prohibits the transfer of a gun to another where the individual knows the gun will be transferred to a person who is prohibited by law from carrying a gun or to a person who intends to use or actually uses the gun illegally.
• Covers organizers as well as conspiracies.
• A violation carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. Conspiracies receive a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.
• Trafficking kingpins who work in concert with five or more individuals are eligible for up to 25 years imprisonment.
Talking Points
• International drug cartels are trafficking tens of thousands of military-grade assault weapons from the United States to Mexico every year.
• To move guns across our southern border, the cartels have set up a patchwork network of straw purchasers throughout the United States in which the cartels pay individuals to purchase guns on their behalf.
• These guns have fueled the massive outbreak of violence in Mexico that has led to the death of over 40,000 people since 2007.
• In hearings and interviews before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, law enforcement agents said they are hamstrung in their attempts to stop illegal gun trafficking by the lack of a federal gun trafficking bill.
• Under current law, prosecutors are forced to charge straw purchasers and traffickers with mere paperwork violations.
• This bill fills that void by creating a federal firearms law that criminalizes the intentional act of moving a gun out of lawful commerce and into unlawful commerce.
• The bill is narrowly tailored to get the “worst of the worst” gun traffickers, and will have no effect on lawful gun ownership.
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