McCarthy Bill Moves To The Senate
-- "Compromise" bill represents the most far-reaching gun ban in
years
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
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
http://www.gunowners.org/netb.htm 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
http://www.gunowners.org/ne0706.pdf).
(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
http://www.gunowners.org/news/nws9806.htm).
(3) Several articles have pointed to the fact that military vets with
PTS have been added to the NICS system (see
http://tinyurl.com/ytalxl
or
http://tinyurl.com/23cgqn).
CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action
Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm 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,
H.R. 2640 (more gun control laws)
