This new addendum — also to be cloaked in secrecy — would empower the U.S. Attorney General to deny a person the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights to purchase a firearm.

While it is not surprising that some members of Congress are again using fear of terrorism to implement a gun-control agenda, the openly unconstitutional legislative language proponents are employing is troubling.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) is leading the effort in the Senate, while another well-known gun control advocate — Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) — is directing the House initiative. They have introduced identical bills — the “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009.” This proposal would give the attorney general the power to unilaterally and in secret develop a watch list of persons believed to be unworthy of possessing a firearm or any explosive.

This new “dangerous terrorist” watch list would include names based not on hard evidence of criminal activity, but on nothing more than the subjective conclusion by the attorney general that a person is “appropriately suspected” (whatever that means) of engaging in some manner of assisting or preparing for acts of domestic or international terrorism. The American people would never be privy to what criteria might be employed by the attorney general to determine whether someone is an “appropriate suspect,” and they would have no way of knowing why they might be denied the ability to purchase a firearm.

If a person were to be refused “permission” to purchase a firearm or explosive, and if they subsequently filed a lawsuit in federal court to find out why, the government still could keep such information secret. In other words, the attorney general could deny a U.S. citizen the ability to own a firearm, and never have to give the reason. Read more

Source: Thebarrcode blog

Imagine that.  The Senate confirmed this week, by a vote of 62-35, a gun
banner who stays up at night thinking of ways to impose more gun control
upon American citizens.

Harold Koh is that gun grabber, and he was confirmed yesterday to be the
Legal Adviser at the State Department.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans attempted to kill the Koh nomination
with a filibuster — until eight of them crossed the aisle to help
Democrats confirm Koh.

The back-stabbing Senators are:  Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Susan Collins
(R-ME), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Mel
Martinez (R-FL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and George Voinovich (R-OH).

Once the filibuster was thwarted, Koh's nomination passed easily.  The
vote on final passage can be viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/m4m2f5

Koh is eager to assume his post at the State Department, having lamented
that there is only so much that can be done from the outside to push gun
control treaties, and that ultimately we need people like him in
positions of power.  The chief lawyer for the State Department is just
the position someone like him needs to push more gun control through
international treaties.

GOA will continue watching for any attempt by the Obama administration
to foist an international gun control treaty upon the citizens of the
U.S.

Source: gunowners.org

Gun Digest Gun Rights Forum »

At Lautenberg’s request, the Government Accountability Office recently studied firearms and explosives purchases among terror watch list members. It found that people on the list tried to buy guns 963 times in the last five years, and nine out of 10 times they were successful because nothing else in their background disqualified them.

That sounds outrageous, but consider this: The FBI refused to divulge details about who was able to buy a gun and what their connection to terrorism might be. That itself makes conclusions rather hard to draw.

Then there’s the watch list itself, which has a number of problems, the first being its size. At last count, the list had more than 1 million names representing 400,000 people, and it’s growing quickly. Just four years ago, the list stood at one-fourth of its current size.

It’s also rife with errors. While much of the criticism can be attributed to cases of mistaken identity – such “false positives” have snared the likes of Sen. Ted Kennedy and members of the Federal Air Marshal Service – the list itself is also suspect.

Just last month, the Justice Department inspector general found that the list included the names of at least 24,000 people who may not have belonged on it. Other names that should have been on the list weren’t.

But the most significant concern is the secrecy surrounding such intelligence tools, which doesn’t necessarily make much room for due process. Read more

Source: thenewstribune.com

A measure sponsored by Senators Sandra Bolden Cunningham and Teresa Ruiz, which would prohibit the sale and purchase of more than one handgun per person, within a 30-day period was approved today by the full Senate by a vote of 21 to 15.

Unless I'm missing a state or two somewhere, that makes New Jersey the fourth to pass this kind of law (or fifth, if you count South Carolina, which repealed its version of the law in 2004, after finding it to be ineffective at reducing violent crime).  The others that still have such a law are California (no surprise there, with it's Brady Campaign Number One Tyranny Rating), Maryland (again, no surprise, with Maryland ranking almost as “high” as California), and Virginia.  The fact that Virginia is one of only three (soon to be four) states with such a law is probably a surprise to some.  Virginia, after all, is blamed for having “lax gun laws” that contribute toward it being part of the so-called “Iron Pipeline” of guns that end up illegally in places like New York City.

The professor, Dr. Howard Andrews, testified that 90 percent of the guns recovered in New York crime investigations from 1996 to 2000 had been bought out of state. A large number came from five states with lax gun laws: Virginia, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The idea of “one gun per month” laws, supposedly, is that they pose a serious obstacle for gun traffickers.  The very New York Times editorial cited above, in fact, makes this claim:

Perhaps the most effective tool is a ”one gun per month” law, which bars anyone from buying more than one handgun in a month. These laws stop gunrunners from buying in volume, a limit that reduces their profits substantially.

It's a bit difficult to reconcile that with the fact that one of only three states to have such a law on the books is also considered one of the major source states for gun trafficking.

New Jersey already has extraordinarily draconian gun laws (it's ranked second only to California by the Brady Bunch, even before passage of the rights rationing bill).  The purchase of each and every gun must be prefaced by acquisition of a permit from the police (which must be applied for in person, I believe).  The permit, if nothing in the applicant's background prevents its issuance, is supposed to be issued within 30 days.  No one is surprised, apparently, when it takes half a year or so, though.  One would think that if restrictive gun laws worked to keep criminals disarmed, that permit process would do it.  Actually, given New Jersey's insistence on blaming Pennsylvania's “lax gun laws” for NJ's violent crime, it seems that New Jersey has thought it already had the laws it needed, and that the problem was other states. Read more

Source: St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner