Posted on 06/19/2007 10:06:57 AM PDT by EdReform
www.gunowners.org
Jun 2007
ACTION: 1. Please urge your Senators to OPPOSE the gun control bill (HR 2640) which was snuck through the House last week by anti-gun Democrats. Some people are saying this bill is a positive step for gun owners, but realize this ONE SIMPLE FACT: Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and Sen. Chuck Schumer are the lead sponsors of this legislation! These two have NEVER once looked out for your Second Amendment rights!!! 2. Please use the contact information below -- and the pre-written letter -- to help direct your comments to them, and circulate this alert to as many gun owners as you can. It is imperative that we remind gun owners nationwide that gun control DOES NOT work to reduce crime; that, to the contrary, gun control HAS DISARMED millions of law-abiding citizens; and that the answer to tragedies like Virginia Tech is to REPEAL the "gun free zones" which leave law-abiding victims defenseless. |
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Associated Press got it right last week when it stated that, "The House Wednesday passed what could become the first major federal gun control law in over a decade."
It's true. The McCarthy bill that passed will DRAMATICALLY expand the dragnet that is currently used to disqualify law-abiding gun buyers. So much so, that hundreds of thousands of honest citizens who want to buy a gun will one day walk into a gun store and be shocked when they’re told they’re a prohibited purchaser, having been lumped into the same category as murderers and rapists.
This underscores the problems that have existed all along with the Brady Law. At the time it was passed, some people foolishly thought, "No big deal. I'm not a bad guy. This law won't affect me."
But what happens when good guys' names get thrown into the bad guys' list? That is exactly what has happened, and no one should think that the attempts to expand the gun control noose are going to end with the McCarthy bill (HR 2640).
Speaking to the CNN audience on June 13, head of the Brady Campaign, Paul Helmke, stated that, "We're hopeful that now that the NRA has come around to our point of view in terms of strengthening the Brady background checks, that now we can take the next step after this bill passes [to impose additional gun control]."
Get it? The McCarthy bill is just a first step.
The remainder of this alert will explain, in layman's terms, the problems with what passed on Wednesday. Please understand that GOA's legal department has spent hours analyzing the McCarthy bill, in addition to looking at existing federal regulations and BATFE interpretations. (If you want the lawyerly perspective, then please go to Problems With The New Federal Gun Control (HR 2640) for an extensive analysis.)
So what does HR 2640 do? Well, as stated already, this is one of the most far-reaching gun bans in years. For the first time in history, this bill takes a giant step towards banning one-fourth of returning military veterans from ever owning a gun again.
In 2000, President Clinton added between 80,000 - 90,000 names of military veterans -- who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) -- into the NICS background check system. These were vets who were having nightmares; they had the shakes. So Clinton disqualified them from buying or owning guns.
For seven years, GOA has been arguing that what Clinton did was illegitimate. But if this McCarthy bill gets enacted into law, a future Hillary Clinton administration would actually have the law on her side to ban a quarter of all military veterans (that’s the number of veterans who have Post Traumatic Stress) from owning guns.
Now, the supporters of the McCarthy bill claim that military veterans -- who have been denied their Second Amendment rights -- could get their rights restored. But this is a very nebulous promise.
The reason is that Section 101(c)(1)(C) of the bill provides explicitly that a psychiatrist or psychologist diagnosis is enough to ban a person for ever owning a gun as long as it's predicated on a microscopic risk that a person could be a danger to himself or others. (Please be sure to read the NOTE below for more details on this.)
How many psychiatrists are going to deny that a veteran suffering from PTS doesn't possess a MICROSCOPIC RISK that he could be a danger to himself or others?
And even if they can clear the psychiatrist hurdle, we're still looking at thousands of dollars for lawyers, court fees, etc. And then, when veterans have done everything they can possibly do to clear their name, there is still the Schumer amendment in federal law which prevents the BATFE from restoring the rights of individuals who are barred from purchasing firearms. If that amendment is not repealed, then it doesn't matter if your state stops sending your name for inclusion in the FBI's NICS system... you are still going to be a disqualified purchaser when you try to buy a gun.
So get the irony. Senator Schumer is the one who is leading the charge in the Senate to pass the McCarthy bill, and he is "generously" offering military veterans the opportunity to clear their names, even though it's been HIS AMENDMENT that has prevented honest gun owners from getting their rights back under a similar procedure created in 1986!
But there's still another irony. Before this bill, it was very debatable (in legal terms) whether the military vets with PTS should have been added into the NICS system... and yet many of them were -- even though there was NO statutory authority to do so. Before this bill, there were provisions in the law to get one's name cleared, and yet Schumer made it impossible for these military vets to do so.
Now, the McCarthy bill (combined with federal regulations) makes it unmistakably clear that military vets with Post Traumatic Stress SHOULD BE ADDED as prohibited persons on the basis of a "diagnosis." Are these vets now going to find it any easier to get their names cleared (when the law says they should be on the list) if they were finding it difficult to do so before (when the law said they shouldn't)?
Add to this the Schumer amendment (mentioned above). The McCarthy bill does nothing to repeal the Schumer amendment, which means that military veterans with PTS are going to find it impossible to get their rights restored!
Do you see how Congress is slowly (and quietly) sweeping more and more innocent people into the same category as murderers and rapists? First, anti-gun politicians get a toe hold by getting innocuous sounding language into the federal code. Then they come back years later to twist those words into the most contorted way possible.
Consider the facts. In 1968, Congress laid out several criteria for banning Americans from owning guns -- a person can't be a felon, a drug user, an illegal alien, etc. Well, one of the criteria which will disqualify you from owning or buying a gun is if you are "adjudicated as a mental defective." Now, in 1968, that term referred to a person who was judged not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity.
Well, that was 1968. By 2000, President Bill Clinton had stretched that definition to mean a military veteran who has had a lawful authority (like a shrink) decree that a person has PTS. Can you see how politicians love to stretch the meaning of words in the law... especially when it comes to banning guns?
After all, who would have thought when the original Brady law was passed in 1993, that it would be used to keep people with outstanding traffic tickets from buying guns; or couples with marriage problems from buying guns; or military vets with nightmares from buying guns? (See footnotes below.)
So if you thought the Brady Law would never affect you because you're a "good guy," then think again. Military vets are in trouble, and so are your kids who are battling Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Everything that has been mentioned above regarding military veterans, could also apply to these kids.
Do you have a child in the IDEA program -- a.k.a., Individuals with Disability Education Act -- who has been diagnosed with ADD and thought to be susceptible to playground fights? Guess what? That child can be banned for life from ever owning a gun as an adult. The key to understanding this new gun ban expansion centers on a shrink's determination that a person is a risk to himself or others.
You see, legislators claim they want to specifically prevent a future Seung-Hui Cho from ever buying a gun and shooting up a school. And since Cho had been deemed as a potential danger to himself or others, that has become the new standard for banning guns.
But realize what this does. In the name of stopping an infinitesimal fraction of potential bad apples from owning firearms, legislators are expanding the dragnet to sweep ALL KINDS of good guys into a permanent ban. It also ignores the fact that bad guys get illegal guns ALL THE TIME, despite the gun laws!
So back to your kid who might have ADD. The BATFE, in an open letter (dated May 9, 2007), said the diagnosis that a person is a potential risk doesn't have to be based on the fact that the person poses a "substantial" risk. It just has to be "ANY" risk.
Just any risk, no matter how slight to the other kids on the playground, is all that is needed to qualify the kid on Ritalin -- or a vet suffering PTS, or a husband (going through a divorce) who's been ordered to go through an anger management program, etc. -- for a LIFETIME gun ban.
This is the slippery slope that gun control poses. And this is the reason HR 2640 must be defeated. Even as we debate this bill, the Frank Lautenbergs in Congress are trying to expand the NICS system with the names of people who are on a so-called "government watch list" (S. 1237).
While this "government watch list" supposedly applies to suspected terrorists, the fact is that government bureaucrats can add ANY gun owner's name to this list without due process, without any hearing, or trial by jury, etc. That's where the background check system is headed... if we don't rise up together and cut off the monster's head right now.
NOTE: Please realize that a cursory reading of this bill is not sufficient to grasp the full threat that it poses. To read this bill properly, you have to not only read it thoroughly, but look at federal regulations and BATF interpretations as well. For example, where we cite Section 101(c)(1)(C) above as making it explicitly clear that the diagnosis from a psychologist or psychiatrist is enough to ban a person from owning a gun, realize that you have to look at Section 101, while also going to federal regulations via Section 3 of the bill.
Section 3(2) of the bill states that every interpretation that the BATFE has made in respect to mental capacity would become statutory law. And so what does the federal code say? Well, at 27 CFR 478.11, it explicitly states that a person can be deemed to be "adjudicated as a mental defective" by a court or by any "OTHER LAWFUL AUTHORITY" (like a shrink), as long as the individual poses a risk to self or others (or can't manage his own affairs). And in its open letter of May 9, 2007, BATFE makes it clear that this "danger" doesn't have to be "imminent" or "substantial," but can include "any danger" at all. How many shrinks are going to say that a veteran suffering from PTS doesn't pose at least an infinitesimal risk of hurting someone else?
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The Brady law has been used to illegitimately deny firearms to people who have outstanding traffic tickets (see pdf copy of US General Accounting Office Report).
(2) Because of the Lautenberg gun ban, couples with marriage problems or parents who have used corporal punishment to discipline their children have been prohibited from owning guns for life (see The Gun Owners, June, 1998).
(3) Several articles have pointed to the fact that military vets with PTS have been added to the NICS system (see WorldNetDaily or The Washington Post).
CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send your Senators the pre-written e-mail message below.
----- Pre-written letter -----
Dear Senator:
As a supporter of Second Amendment rights, I do NOT support the so-called NICS Improvement Amendments Act (HR 2640), which was snuck through the House last week.
This bill represents the most far-reaching gun ban in years. For the first time in American history, this bill would impose a lifetime gun ban on battle-scarred veterans and troubled teens -- based solely on the diagnosis of a psychologist (as opposed to a finding by a court).
You can read more about the problems with this bill by going to the website of Gun Owners of America at http://www.gunowners.org/netb.htm.
Gun owners OPPOSE this legislation, and I hope you will join the handful of Senators that have placed "holds" on this bill and object to any Unanimous Consent agreement.
Supporters of this bill say we need it to stop future Seung-Hui Chos from getting a gun and to prevent our nation from seeing another shooting like the one at Virginia Tech. But honestly, what gun law has stopped bad guys from getting a gun? Not in Canada, where they recently had a school shooting. Certainly not in Washington, DC or in England!
If you want to know some language that gun owners would support, then consider this:
"The Brady Law shall be null and void unless, prior to six months following the date of enactment of this Act, every name of a veteran forwarded to the national instant criminal background check system by the Veterans Administration or the Department of Veterans Affairs be permanently removed from that system."
Sincerely,
****************************
Since about '86 there has been a procedure to get your name "off the list." Congress took the authority away from the courts and it resides in a BATFE/DOJ bureaucratic black hole that has never been funded. The courts say they don't have authority, the bureaucrats say they don't have funding, so T.S. pal. The only way out is through a presidential pardon!
Why not? Worked well for the Soviet Union.
Makes you stop and think, doesn't it?!
Sorry about yelling, but just wanted to make myself clear.
I am one of the founders of SAS--and we have been plugging along for almost 8 years, now. In all that time, we have sent out 2 fund raising letters, and those were to our membership--no one else.
The last fundraising letter went out several weeks ago.SAS is an all volunteer organization. We have NO paid personnel. Our membership fees help us buy stationery. stamps and other mundane stuff we need to operate. They pay for keeping our website up and running, and for our toll-free phone/fax number, sending mailings like this latest one out to our members, and getting our newsletters out quarterly.
Most of our volunteers have kicked in their own money at times, just to save expenses for the organization We are a totally cyberspace organization. We have no offices anywhere, corporate or any other kind. We work from our homes, giving as much time as we can spare to the organization..
Of course, if we happened to come across a Sugar Mama who wanted to give us a few mil, we'd probably take it--LOL!
They are getting bold now are they not? So much for gun control being on the political back burner as a losing issue.
They're always flying below the radar, planning their next attack. Keep your powder dry.
Theoretically you can petition to have your rights to own a firearm restored.
Under the current laws, a conviction on a felony, which can be some pretty minor crimes, anything punishable by more than one year in jail *regardless of your actual sentence*, is a dis qualifier. That includes offenses in foreign countries, like criticising the local PooBah, or possessing a few rounds of .45 ACP or 9mm cartridges. Theoretically you can petition to have your rights restored. Theoretically, if they turn you down you can petition a federal court. *However* each year the Congress, in it's "wisdom", (read political cowardice) includes in the BATFE budget a provision forbidding them from spending any money processing such petitions, for which the law makes them solely responsible. Meanwhile the federal Courts have ruled that their not acting on your petition is not a denial, and so you can't petition a court for restoration either. I imagine this will be the same sort of deal.
So are they pro-2A?
I'm a member of both NRA and GOA (and CCRKBA/SAF). The volume of begging from the NRA is orders of magnitude higher than that from the GOA.
Active duty folks don't carry loaded weapons, except when training on firing range, and in a combat zone. In a combat zone, you can bet their are plenty of nightmares and shakes. The shakes tend to subside when the bullets are actually flying though. They tend to come after the shooting stops, not while it's ongoing.
Besides, I know folks with the shakes, minor ones at least, who can shoot better than I can. They just get in sync with their tremors.
Yep!
Yeah they are still out busting moonshiners and cigarette smugglers. Although the main regulatory and tax functions of the T & F portions remained in the Treasury Department when they were moved into the Justice department in the aftermath of 9-11.
That's not what the BATFE and (federal regulations) says "adjudicated" means.
From the BATFE May 09 2007 letter to FFL's
Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) makes it unlawful for any person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution to possess firearms or ammunition. This prohibition covers two classes of persons—those who have either been (1) adjudicated as a mental defective; or (2) committed to a mental institution. Each of these terms is defined by federal regulation at 27 C.F.R. § 478.11. These regulations are set forth in the ATF Publication 5300.4, the Federal Firearms Regulations Reference Guide, which was provided to you and is available at www.atf.gov.
To assist you and your customers to better understand this provision, ATF is clarifying the Firearms Transaction Record (ATF Form 4473), to make it clear, for example, that any person who has been found by a court, board or other lawful authority to be a danger to self or others is prohibited from purchasing a firearm or ammunition.
Going to the first BAFTE link above, we find that the CFR part 478.11 reads:
Adjudicated as a mental defective. (a) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease: (1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or (2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs. (b) The term shall include— (1) A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and (2) Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found 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.
Also in CFR 478:
Committed to a mental institution. A formal commitment of a person to a mental institution by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority. The term includes a commitment to a mental institution involuntarily. The term includes commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness. It also includes commitments for other reasons, such as for drug use. The term does not include a person in a mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution.
Thus anyone "committed" for counseling for PTSD does fall under the definition if the counseling is mandatory.
You wrote: One of the biggest problems I have with this bill is : who gets to say who is too crazy to own a gun?
That's a very good question. The answer is the very same people who get to say that now; judges. The bill doesn't change the law in that regard. "Adjudicated" will have the same meaning it does under current law. What this bill does is to encourage States to share their mental health data. (Note that I said encourage rather than mandate. A particular State needn't cooperate with the Feds.) GOA is trying to frighten people into thinking that this is some massive gun grab. But as I've said on other threads: Don't believe me; I might just have an anti-GOA bee in my bonnet. Go read the text of the bill yourself.
That was the case in the past, but apparently has now been changed. Foreign convictions no longer count. I discovered this just now in researching the issue of what "adjudicated" meant under federal regulations.
In other words, not on the word of a beat cop, not on the word of a social worker, and not on the word of your Aunt Sophie. Lawful, due process must be followed before someone is declared to be mentally defective. That is current law and will continue to be the case if the bill, as it currently stands, become law.
NICS UPDATE PROPOSAL SHOULD OFFER MORE FOR GUN OWNERS, SAYS CCRKBA
Or "other lawful authority" would seem to leave a lot of leeway. It certainly includes less than a full jury trial as you implied up thread. Just as "domestic violence" order includes "boiler plate" language in "no fault" divorce decrees, with the only "due process" provision being that you must have had an opportunity to challenge. But no jury is required, and no appeal is available. Ask Dr. Emerson.
So are they pro-2A?
unfortunately
carolyn mccarthy = ny 4th congressional
to think this used to be a gop stronghold and now it’s turned into a donkey’s sewer.
I realize that, I was just trying to point out to those that claim that every time GOA puts out an alert that it does not mean that they are doing a fund raiser. To some people on this site you (SAS) are not a worthy pro-gun group just because your name is not being constantly published in the media as being a major player in fighting gun control laws.
Yes, you are correct. You can have 1 expungement/set aside for some crimes.
We have a very good spokeswoman now, and she is beginning to get us some recognition. These things take time, but slowly, I think we will get there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.