Obama is trying to ban guns through the back door (again)
Posted by: Jon Dougherty April 27, 2015
•The Second Amendment’s plain language should be enough to prohibit arcane data collection but this is Barack Obama we’re talking about – the president who has yet to meet a constitutional provision he believes is insurmountable
There is nothing a committed Leftist hates more than individualism, liberty, freedom – and a healthy non-reliance on the federal government. Nothing supports and promotes all of those qualities on a personal level than the Second Amendment’s guarantee of citizens’ right to keep and bear arms.
So it should not surprise conservatives and constitutionalists that President Barack Obama – the most Left-wing of all American presidents – has so much contempt for the Second Amendment (and all that it conveys upon the individual) that he would try anything possible to undermine it.
After all, reminds Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., in an op-ed for Fox News, it was then-Sen. (and Democratic presidential contender) Barack Obama who mocked Americans in the heartland for clinging “to guns or religion.”
And undermining the Second Amendment Obama always appears ready to do. As Black points out, “he has proposed bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ and high capacity magazine clips; publicly opposed bipartisan, House-passed legislation to free up public lands for recreational hunting; and his handpicked Attorney General oversaw the illegal transfer of some 2,000 firearms across our border into Mexico as part of the failed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
She further notes that a stealth rule-change in 2012 by Obama’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which revised Form 4473, requires buyers to separately provide their race and ethnicity to the government when purchasing a firearm.
“Besides being highly intrusive, many find the similar back-to-back questions to be just plain confusing and, as a result, check one box or the other instead of both,” writes Black. “This is considered an ATF violation and, when a gun dealer is audited, could result in the loss of their license.”
The rule change falls perfectly in line with the narrative that this president, and his administration, has been the most racially divided in history, further splitting the country along class and party lines.
“Forcing gun retailers to collect racial data on every last customer – and issuing steep penalties to those that do not – is shameless backdoor gun control and a stunning privacy violation to boot,” says Black. “To make the situation even more insulting to gun owners, the ATF cannot rightly say what the information is used for in the first place.”
In response last year to a letter from Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., ATF essentially said it has collected some sort of racial information since the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed – the old we’ve done this all along bit, though the aforementioned form was only recently revised. Gun dealers know the routine imposed upon them by ATF when it comes to selling lawfully purchased firearms, so when they are asking, “Hey, what’s the deal with this new form/new requirement?” something is definitely, well, new.
Black further notes that, in an interview with The Hill earlier this year, Obama’s ATF further honed its talking points, noting that race/ethnicity data “can be helpful when tracing firearms used in crimes.” So, is that some form of official racial/ethnic profiling? It must be, since the percentage of criminals who legally buy a gun and commit a crime with it is infinitesimal.
Also, Black notes, there is another problem with that statement; either it is a lie or a previous statement made by the agency – that the agency never collects or maintains racial information in any of its databases – is a lie.
“Gun ownership is not a special privilege reserved for a select few. It is a constitutionally protected freedom to which the government should be completely colorblind,” writes Black. “That is why, with the help of Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), I reintroduced the Freedom from Intrusive Regulatory Enforcement of Arbitrary Registration Mandates (FIREARM) Act. This simple, one-page bill would prohibit the federal government from requiring Americans to disclose their race or ethnicity in order to purchase a gun.”
The Second Amendment’s plain language should be enough to prohibit such arcane data collection but there really hasn’t been a constitutional provision or law that this president and his stooges find, shall we say, insurmountable.
Still, Black’s efforts should be lauded; she’s trying to rein in an otherwise uncontrollable chief executive using the proper method – the Constitution – which ultimately even Obama cannot sidestep (as in here, here, and here).
“Washington may not be able to agree on much these days, but protecting our Second Amendment should be an area of broad consensus. Law abiding citizens should never have to play a game of 20 questions with Uncle Sam just to access this basic right,” says Black.
You would think that would be the case. But this is Barack Obama we’re talking about.
What do you think of Obama’s ATF rule change and Rep. Black’s attempts to wall the president off? FIRE AWAY below!
Poster Comment:
I was watching an old episode of "The Virginian". In it was a guest star that was a kid from Brooklyn. They told him that out there you could shoot your dinner (deer or elk), or catch it in the stream. Can you do that in Brooklyn?
