Clinton Endorses Biden, 2A in serious danger. READ MORE
NRA-ILA
Despite ongoing speculation as to whether a deteriorating Joe Biden will even be the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee, on April 28 failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton endorsed the former vice president’s White House bid. The endorsement took place during a socially distant “Women’s Town Hall,” where the lifelong politicians focused almost entirely on the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinton noted that the pandemic “would be a terrible crisis to waste” and urged that it should be used to enact permanent government interventions.
On the issue of gun control, the former secretary of state and the former vice president are a perfect match. Both Clinton and Biden support the prohibition and confiscation of common firearms owned by law-abiding Americans. Moreover, both reject the core holding of the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller – that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms “in common use” for lawful purposes.
During an October 2015 campaign event in Keene, N.H., then-presidential candidate Clinton expressed her support for Australia-style gun confiscation. A member of the audience told the former first lady that Australia “managed to …take away …millions of handguns, and in one year, they were all gone.” He then asked her, “Can we do that?”
The candidate responded that both Australia and the United Kingdom were “good example[s]” of how countries should respond to a “mass killing.”
“The Australian example,”she said, “that was a buyback program.”She went on to explain that the Australian government “offered a good price” for “buying hundreds of thousands of guns, and then they basically clamped down going forward ….” They were thus able, she explained, “to curtail the supply” of guns and “to set a different standard for gun purchases in the future.”
Clinton went on to say, “I think it would be worth considering doing it on the national level if that could be arranged,” adding, “certainly the Australian example is worth looking at.”
As NRA has repeatedly pointed out, an involuntary “buyback” is gun confiscation.
These Clinton-endorsed gun confiscation measures are right in line with what Biden has in mind for American gun owners.
When asked about commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms during an August 5, 2019 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Biden and Cooper had the following exchange.
Cooper: So, to gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden administration means they are going to come for my guns.
Biden: Bingo! You’re right, if you have an assault weapon.
In addition to wanting to ban and confiscate America’s most popular firearms, Clinton and Biden also share denial of the Second Amendment.
During the 2016 presidential race, Clinton repeatedly made clear that she does not believe the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms as the U.S. Supreme Court held in D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago.
On September 25, 2015, Clinton attended a private campaign fundraiser in Greenwich Village, New York City. An audio recording of the event captured Clinton telling those gathered, “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”
A May 30, 2016 New York Magazine article shed more light on Clinton’s radical position. The article described a scene at a Clinton campaign rally at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. While speaking with a family that lost a loved one in the Sandy Hook shooting, Clinton told them her plans for gun control. During the interaction, Clinton described District of Columbia v. Heller as “a terrible decision.”
Given the opportunity to clarify her extreme position, Clinton refused to back off her incorrect interpretation of the Second Amendment. During the June 5 edition of ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Clinton, “Do you believe that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right – that it’s not linked to service in a militia?”
Clinton evaded the question, prompting Stephanopoulos to reiterate, “Do you believe that [the court’s] conclusion that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right?” Refusing to concede that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, Clinton responded, “If it’s a constitutional right, then it, like every other constitutional right, is subject to reasonable regulations.”
Clinton will feel right at home in Biden’s camp.
Even two years after her loss to President Donald Trump, Gallup measured Clinton’s favorability rating an all-time low of 36 percent. With numbers like that, it’s unclear from a political standpoint why Biden would seek out a high-profile endorsement from the two-time presidential loser. From an anti-gun policy standpoint, it makes perfect sense.
If President Trump endorses gun-control legislation, it will take 13 Senate Republican votes to pass the measure, assuming the entire 47-member caucus of Democrats and Independents backs it. READ MORE
Ted Cruz
SOURCE: The Hill, by Alexander Bolton
Conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) say any proposal that goes as far as the 2013 amendment sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) will face a backlash from the right, meaning 60 votes will be necessary to break a filibuster.
The Manchin-Toomey proposal, which is basis of current Senate negotiations, would expand back to include all sales over the Internet and at gun shows but exempt sales between family, friends and coworkers.
Here are the 13 Republicans crucial to passing gun-control legislation:
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) Toomey is the lead Republican sponsor of Manchin-Toomey, which was first offered after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
His amendment was negotiated in 2013 in an attempt to win support from the National Rifle Association, which ended up opposing it.
Toomey was one of four Republicans to vote for the measure, along with Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Mark Kirk (Ill.). McCain and Kirk are no longer in the Senate.
Toomey has spoken to Trump several times since the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, last month gave new urgency to the issue of gun violence.
“It’s time to act. This is the time to do what we can to help make our communities as safe as we can. There is a bipartisan opportunity to expand background checks to cover all commercial sales. And while there have been many ideas that been floated, this is one that I think has the most resonance, the most saliency and the best chance of becoming law,” Toomey told reporters in his office last week.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) Graham is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has primary jurisdiction over gun control, and is a close ally of Trump.
He voted against Manchin-Toomey in 2013 and 2015 and expressed some ambivalence earlier this past week when asked about expanding background checks.
Graham, however, also told reporters that Trump is interested in expanding background checks and will likely endorse whatever proposal the president puts forth.
He is weighing legislation sponsored by Toomey and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Conn.) to require that law enforcement officials are notified if someone who attempts to purchase a firearm fails a background check.
He also is working with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on so-called “red flag” legislation that would provide grants to states to empower law enforcement to confiscate firearms from individuals judged to be dangerous to themselves or others.
Graham faces re-election next year and will be cautious about endorsing any proposal that significantly expands background checks, an idea likely to spark controversy in conservative South Carolina.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) Collins in one of only two Republicans currently in the Senate who has backed Manchin-Toomey.
Even if Trump doesn’t back a gun-control measure, Collins might support it.
She faces re-election next year in a state won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has come under fire from Democrats for confirming Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) Romney told reporters last week that all commercial gun sales should be subject to background checks and expressed willingness to support legislation along the lines of Manchin-Toomey.
“It certainly should be applied to commercial sales and finding a more comprehensive way to make sure that people are in the system that ought to be in the system,” Romney told reporters Monday.
Romney told The Hill last Thursday that he is talking with Manchin and Toomey about possible changes to their legislation to make it easier for people in rural areas to comply with background-check requirements when they buy or sell firearms from individuals who are not licensed gun dealers.
“They’re still working on some of the very detailed elements of it and I have spoken with them in some depth. I’m not looking for changes, I’m looking to see where they land. One of the areas of concern of course is how to make sure any kind of background-check technology would contemplate people in rural areas that live a long way from a licensed dealer that might have access to a background check terminal,” Romney said.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Multiple Republican senators say McConnell is involved in the talks to put together a gun-violence package and has signaled interest in passing legislation as long as it has Trump’s support.
“He would like to get something done,” said a Republican senator involved in the talks.
McConnell told WHAS radio in Kentucky last month: “What we can’t do is fail to pass something.”
“The urgency of this is not lost on any of us,” he said.
A GOP poll last month showed that women voters in key suburban districts rate working to prevent gun violence as their top issue and that 72 percent of suburban women say gun laws should be more strict. McConnell in an interview with reporters in April identified suburban voters as the key to keeping Republican control of the Senate in 2020.
McConnell last month asked three chairmen, Graham, and Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to explore various legislative proposals to respond to recent mass shootings.
Publicly, McConnell has kept his cards close to the vest, declining to tell reporters what policies he would support before Trump weighs in with his own recommendations.
“I’m going to wait and assess the proposal that actually could become law and at that point I’ll be happy to explain my vote one way or the other,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) Gardner, like Collins, faces a difficult reelection race in a state that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
He wasn’t in the Senate when the chamber first voted on Manchin-Toomey in 2013 but he voted against it in a lower-profile vote in December of 2015, which Democrats forced after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.
Gardner this past week declined to say whether he would consider voting for Manchin-Toomey and expressed interest in knowing what changes might be made to the legislation.
“Are they talking about changing it? I haven’t looked at the recent changes,” he said.
Gun-control has had a mixed record in Colorado. Two Democratic state senators were removed from their jobs in recall elections in 2013 after the Democratic-controlled statehouse passed several gun control measures.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) McSally is another top Democratic target up for re-election in 2020.
Her expected Democratic opponent is Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and prominent gun-control advocate whose wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) was seriously injured in a mass shooting in 2011.
Kelly, the co-founder along with Giffords of Americans for Responsible Solutions, has been at the forefront of the national debate over gun violence and is expected to make it a major issue in next year’s campaign.
McSally could insulate herself from political attacks if she supports legislation to expand background checks, which has garnered strong support in public polls, especially among suburban women.
McSally this past week declined to comment on whether she would support a variation of Manchin-Toomey or any other gun-control legislation.
“Sorry, I got to go vote,” she said as she raced past reporters to the Senate floor last week.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) Alexander is a moderate Republican and close ally of McConnell.
He is retiring at the end of next year and would be free to vote for legislation to expand background checks or address gun violence in other ways without fear of reprisal from the National Rifle Association.
McConnell has tasked Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with exploring strategies under his jurisdiction to combat gun violence.
GOP senators say Alexander will focus on legislation to address mental health issues and their contribution to gun violence. Any chance of passing such a bill will rely on attaching it to some expansion of background checks that can win Democratic support.
“Our nation cannot ignore these mass shootings,” Alexander declared in a press release last month. “I am ready to do more, especially on background checks, to identify those who shouldn’t have guns.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) Tillis faces a competitive election next year in which suburban voters will be crucial to victory.
Tillis hasn’t ruled out voting for a variation of Manchin-Toomey but, like McConnell, says he will wait for a recommendation from Trump before announcing his position.
Tillis says whatever legislation comes to the floor must have “proper due process for law-abiding citizens.
“Hopefully we can find a way to work to the middle and not necessarily pursue a path that just gets us into a political debate with no outcome,” he recently told reporters.
“I’ve spoken to Sen. Toomey,” he added. “I’m open to anything, again, that we can get bipartisan consensus on and also make sure we’re not overreaching and really beginning to threaten the rights of law-abiding citizens, of which the majority of people who own guns are,” he said.
Tillis said Trump’s support for gun-violence legislation, however, is “critical.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) McConnell has tapped Cornyn along with the chairmen of the Judiciary, Health and Commerce Committees to explore proposals to include in a gun-violence package.
Cornyn was the lead sponsor of the last significant gun-control measure to be enacted into law, the Fix NICS Act of 2017. That bill implemented penalties for federal agencies failing to report relevant information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Trump signed the bill into law last year.
Two recent mass shootings took place in Cornyn’s home state, in El Paso and Odessa, giving him a special stake in the Senate debate.
Cornyn is also up for re-election next year in a state that is trending more Democratic and where suburban voters, who tend to favor stricter gun control, will be crucial to victory.
A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll last year showed that 54 percent of Texas voters strongly support mental and criminal background checks for all gun sales.
Asked about Manchin-Toomey, Cornyn said: “I’m not adverse to that — to considering, to voting on it but there are a lot of other things I think would be in the mix.”
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) Portman represents Dayton, Ohio, where ten people were killed by a gunman on Aug. 4 and has a long track record of working on bipartisan deals.
Portman voted against Manchin-Toomey in 2013 and is keeping abreast of discussions on how to modify that proposal to pick up more GOP support.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) Rubio’s home state was the site of one of the nation’s most high-profile mass shootings last year, when a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida.
Rubio and fellow Florida senator Rick Scott (R) have come under pressure from the parents of students killed in Parkland to support gun-control legislation.
Rubio hasn’t ruled out voting for a version of Manchin-Toomey but he says legislation to empower police to confiscate firearms from individuals deemed to be dangerous would be a more effective way to prevent future tragedies.
“I just think it would be more effective. If we knew who the people were that were a threat and were able to get to them before they took action, that would be far more effective in preventing the tragedies that have brought us to this point. And I also think it’s a bill that can pass,” he said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) Murkowksi along with Collins is a prominent moderate who has shown she’s not afraid to buck leadership on big votes, such as her vote against the 2017 effort to repeal ObamaCare.
She also demonstrated her independence last year by opposing the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Murkowski, however, is keeping her distance from the Senate negotiations on expanded background checks and waiting for the dust to settle.
“I know there have been talks going on, that’s as much as I know,” she told The Hill.
Murkowski also declined last week to comment about whether she would support a revamped version of Manchin-Toomey.
Bill and Hillary Clinton just don’t draw like they used to. READ MORE
SOURCE: NRA-ILA
Shunned by much of his own party, (described by one Vanity Fair commentator as “2020’s bubonic plague”) the former president has been relegated to providing lazy commentary on the issues of the day. Such was the case this week when the would-be first gentleman penned an op-ed touting one of his presidential administration’s abject policy failures, the so-called “assault weapons” ban.
Enacted in 1994 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Clinton semi-auto ban prohibited several models of semi-automatic firearms by name and prohibited other commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms based on certain cosmetic characteristics. The measure also banned standard capacity magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds. The legislation contained a 10-year sunset provision and required the Department of Justice to study the efficacy of the ban. The ban was not renewed in 2004.
The ban was allowed to lapse because in infringed on the constitutional right of law-abiding Americans, and, more simply, it didn’t work. The primary focus of the ban was the prohibition on certain configurations of semi-automatic rifles. Rifles of any description are rarely used in crime. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data shows that in 2017 there were nearly four times as many individuals listed as killed with “knives or cutting instruments,” than with any type of rifle. Rifles were also listed as being used in less homicides than “blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)” or “personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.).
A pair of DOJ studies on the ban found the ban ineffective precisely because the banned firearms were rarely used in crime. A 1997 DOJ study explained that “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.” A 2004 DOJ study reiterated this point, noting “AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban” and that “relatively few attacks involve more than 10 shots fired.” The study went on to determine, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
In his commentary, a strident Clinton proclaimed that his gun ban ameliorated mass shootings. Regarding such shootings, the 1997 DOJ study explained,
We were unable to detect any reduction to date in two types of gun murders that are thought to be closely associated with assault weapons, those with multiple victims in a single incident and those producing multiple bullet wounds per victim.
The 2004 DOJ study found, “it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability to fire more than 10 shots (the current limit on magazine capacity) without reloading.”
In promoting further gun controls, Clinton pointed to a wide-ranging 2018 RAND Corporation study of the firearms issue. The former president must not have bothered to read what RAND had to say about so-called “assault weapons” bans. After surveying the available research on the topic, RAND researchers noted, “We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated” The outcomes the researchers investigated included “violent crime” and “mass shootings.”
Prodding lawmakers to reenact his failed policy, Clinton wrote,
The gun lobby often invokes the Democratic losses in the 1994 midterm elections after passing the assault-weapons ban and the Brady background-check bill to try to scare lawmakers of both parties into maintaining the status quo.
Clinton went on to assure lawmakers that “it’s a different world now.”
First, it is not just gun rights supporters that point to the 1994 midterm elections. Clinton himself has repeatedly acknowledged the devastating toll pro-gun activism and the Clinton gun ban exacted on Democratic incumbents.
Recalling the 1994 election in his autobiography “My Life,” Clinton explained,
On November 8, we got the living daylights beat out of us, losing eight Senate races and fifty-four House seats, the largest defeat for our party since 1946…. The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you`re out. The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on its hit list. They did at least that much damage….
Hillary Clinton reiterated this point in her 2017 book, “What Happened.” Hillary wrote,
In the 1990s, my husband fought hard to pass both a ten-year ban on assault weapons and the Brady Bill, which, for the first time, required background checks on many gun purchases at federally licensed firearms dealers… The NRA funded an intense backlash to the new safety measures and helped defeat a lot of Democratic members of Congress in the disastrous 1994 midterm elections. Then, in 2000, the NRA helped beat Al Gore.
Second, Clinton is correct that it is “a different world now,” just not in the way he thinks. Banning commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms has become less popular over the last 25 years. A March 1993 Gallup poll found that 66 percent of respondents supported an “assault gun” ban. When asked in a October 2018 Gallup poll about an “assault rifle” ban, 57 percent of respondents opposed the measure and only 40 percent supported it.
Aside from a general recognition of the failure of the Clinton’s ban, it is easy to see why public opinion has shifted on this issue. There are now well over 16 million commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles possessed by Americans. Since the end of the Clinton gun ban, the AR-15 has become the most popular rifle in the country. Further, Americans now own hundreds of millions of magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. As ignorance about these firearms and magazines has receded, so too has the unfounded prejudice against them.
For a whole host of reasons, much of the Democratic Party has chosen to move on from Bill Clinton. The party would be wise to move past his stale and ineffective gun policies as well.
Don’t believe the smoke screen: the anti-gun agenda won’t rest until they’ve got your gun… READ MORE
SOURCE: NRA-ILA
The May 11, 2018 headline of the USA Today op-ed said it all. Anti-gun Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) last week advocated for legislation to ban an as-yet undetermined class of semi-automatic firearms and to “go after resisters” who refuse to relinquish their lawfully-acquired firearms. Lest anyone mistake his intentions, Swalwell followed up with a lengthy NBC News interview this week in which he made clear that his own proposal is a departure from prior gun bans that allowed those who obtained the firearms when they were lawful to keep them. Swalwell said that after thinking “about the different ways to address it … I concluded the only way to do this is to get those weapons out of our communities.”
According to the NBC piece, Swalwell is modeling his own proposal on laws passed during the 1990s in Australia. The article then inaccurately states, “But while Australia comes up often in gun debates, almost no prominent figures have proposed national laws that would demand that gun owners turn in existing weapons en masse.”
The truth is that anyone who suggests the United States should adopt Australian-style gun control — a club that includes such infamous gun ban advocates as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — is by definition advocating for the forcible disarming of “resisters.” That, in fact, was the signature feature of the Australian approach.
The widespread disarming of Australian citizens occurred through a comprehensive scheme that proceeded as follows. What is no longer debatable, however, is the true agenda and ideology that lies behind the gun control project in America. It is the abolition of the right to gun ownership in America as we know it … “resisters” be damned.
First, the various political subdivisions within Australia unanimously agreed to a uniform ban on large categories of popular firearms. The ban was both retroactive and prospective.
Second, the government instituted “amnesty” periods, which allowed those who had previously acquired the newly-banned firearms lawfully to surrender them to the government for a fixed and nonnegotiable rate of compensation.
Third, and most importantly, anyone who refused to relinquish their formerly lawful property was to be treated as an armed criminal, with all the physical jeopardy and legal consequences that entails.
The Australian government also uses a “may-issue” licensing scheme for firearm acquisition, which among other things requires an applicant to show a “genuine reason” for needing the gun. Self-defense — which the U.S. Supreme Court considers the “central component” of America’s right to keep and bear arms – is not recognized under Australian law as a permissible reason for the acquisition, ownership, or use of a firearm.
Australian-style gun control, in other words, is completely foreign to and incompatible with America’s history, tradition, and rights of firearm ownership. Simply put, there is no reconciling Australian-style gun control with America’s Second Amendment, a fact which even some gun control advocates in their more candid moments are willing to admit.
If Swalwell has distinguished himself at all from other American advocates of the Australian approach, it’s because he is willing to be more forthcoming about the fact that it would turn millions of formerly law-abiding Americans into armed “criminals” with the stroke of a pen.
In his NBC interview, however, he tried to have it both ways.
First, he insisted:
I’m not proposing a roundup or confiscation. It would be like anything else that’s banned: If you’re caught with it there would be a steep penalty. Any fear of ATF agents going door to door to collect assault weapons is unfounded and not what is proposed here. They don’t go collecting drugs that are banned or any other substance or weapon that’s banned and I’m not proposing that here.
That, of course, is a lie. Law enforcement agents with enough probable cause that someone possesses drugs or other contraband to get a warrant absolutely do go after the contraband. Some might even say they are duty-bound to do so. A quick Internet search will show you what that looks like in the real world.
Anybody who illegally possesses a contraband firearm potentially risks the same treatment. Swalwell, who touts his credentials as a former prosecutor, surely knows that.
But when asked to elaborate about the “stiff penalties” that would supposedly ensure compliance with his scheme, Swalwell seemingly contradicted his no-confiscation stance, stating, “I’d want to first get the gun.”
To their credit, NBC asked Swalwell directly whether he was “prepared for some of the confrontations that might erupt from this,” adding, “You’re surely familiar with the slogan, ‘I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands.’” Swalwell brushed aside the question, indicating that Parkland survivors who have been advocating for gun control have given him “courage” for resolute action.
The actions he is calling for, however, carry inherent risks of further unnecessary loss of innocent life.
But that is what the gun “debate” has come to in America, with at least one gun control advocate so emboldened that he’s openly willing to put violent confrontations on the table to advance the agenda.
Whether Rep. Swalwell is serious or whether he is just hoping to move the Overton Window on what is considered legitimate rhetoric in the realm of gun control policy is perhaps debatable.
What is no longer debatable, however, is the true agenda and ideology that lies behind the gun control project in America. It is the abolition of the right to gun ownership in America as we know it … “resisters” be damned.
Might want to park across the street… Privacy watchdog groups and firearms enthusiasts upset about spy tactics initiated by feds through local police.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals that the federal government has on multiple occasions used local police departments to scan automobile license plates at gun shows. This has been done in an effort to collect and record information on gun show attendees.
The Journal reviewed a series of 2010 emails between the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and police departments in Southern California, including one in Del Mar, near the Mexican border. In the emails, federal agents persuade local police to use license plate readers to randomly scan cars at local gun shows. The agency planned to cross-reference that data with cars crossing the Mexican border to find and prosecute gun smugglers.
And there’s more… According to the Journal, the emails indicated that this strategy could have been employed elsewhere around the country. ICE has no policy that dictates the use of license plate readers, and nothing would have kept them from continuing the practice from 2010 until now.
No shock: the report has upset both privacy watchdog groups and firearms enthusiasts. It clearly raises Constitutional questions, to say the least.
Erich Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, told the Journal that his group opposes such surveillance: “Information on law-abiding gun owners ends up getting recorded, stored, and registered, which is a violation of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act and of the Second Amendment.”
What ICE doesn’t seem to realize is that, contrary to what the Clinton campaign would have us believe, gun shows are NOT hotbeds of criminal activity. According to an NIJ (National Institute of Justice, the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice) study released in December 1997 (“Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities”), only 2 percent of criminal guns come from gun shows. The vast majority of firearm sales at gun shows are being offered by federally-licensed gun dealers who must ensure that each customer passes a background check, which blocks firearms purchases by most known criminals as well as illegal immigrants. This is likely why, according to the Journal, “There is no indication the gun-show surveillance led to any arrests or investigative leads.”
No one familiar with gun shows would think to target attendees in an effort to locate criminals. Perhaps instead of invading the privacy of law-abiding gun show patrons, ICE should use its taxpayer dollars to target straw purchasers and criminals who steal firearms, both more likely sources of illegal guns than random gun show attendees.
In this informative video, NRA News contributor Dom Raso, a former Navy SEAL and founder of Dynamis Alliance, reminds us that the AR-15 is the best defense against terror and crime — and he points out that banning AR-15s wouldn’t have prevented most of the recent terror attacks.
Raso also offers his common-sense solution to stemming the tide of terror: Law-abiding citizens prepared to deal with the imminent threats.
Raso highlight quote: “After the attack at Pulse night club in Orlando, Hillary Clinton looked past the obvious enemy — radical Islamic terror — and instead said ‘weapons of war have no place on our streets’ and that we need to ban AR-15s immediately. AR-15s are fine for Hillary and her family. They’ve been protected by armed guards who use them for three decades. But [for] average Americans who watch the news and feel genuine fear for their safety and their families’ safety — Hillary wants to deny them the level of protection she insists upon for herself.”
What did you think of Raso’s “Best Defense Against Terror” video?
During a recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Stephanopoulos asked her — directly — twice if the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms. Her answer? Watch the video below, or read the attached transcript:
Stephanopoulos: Do you believe that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right, that it’s not linked to service in a militia?
Clinton: I think that for most of our history, there was a nuanced reading of the Second Amendment until the decision by the late Justice Scalia, and there was no argument until then that localities and states and the federal government had a right, as we do with every amendment, to impose reasonable regulation.
So I believe we can have common-sense gun safety measures consistent with the Second Amendment, and in fact what I have proposed is supported by 90 percent of the American people and more than 75 percent of responsible gun owners.
So that is exactly what I think is constitutionally permissible.
And once again, you have Donald Trump just making outright fabrications, accusing me of something that is absolutely untrue. But I’m going to continue to speak out for comprehensive background checks, closing the gun show loopholes, closing the online loophole, closing the so-called Charleston loophole, reversing the bill that Senator Sanders voted for and I voted against, giving immunity from liability to gun makers and sellers. I think all of that can and should be done, and it is, in my view, consistent with the Constitution.
Stephanopoulos: And the Heller decision also does say there can be some restrictions. But that’s not what I asked. I said do you believe…their conclusion that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right?
Clinton: If it is a constitutional right, then it, like every other constitutional right, is subject to reasonable regulation. And what people have done with that decision is to take it as far as they possibly can and reject what has been our history from the very beginning of the republic, where some of the earliest laws that were passed were about firearms.
So I think it’s important to recognize that reasonable people can say, as I do, responsible gun owners have a right—I have no objection to that. But the rest of the American public has a right to require certain kinds of regularity, responsible actions to protect everyone else.
Is Hillary Clinton nodding in approval as one of her supporters claims that gun and ammunition manufacturers “are making terrorists out of our citizens”? Click the video link below to watch the Democrat Presidential candidate’s reaction to an unbelievable smear of gun builders and gun consumers:
On the campaign trail recently, Hillary Clinton said she thinks it would be a “great idea” for Barack Obama to serve on the high court. The most recent Second Amendment cases at the U.S. Supreme Court have been decided by a 5-4 vote. Would a Justice Obama tip the ideological balance of SCOTUS against gun rights?
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