On Wednesday, November 18, Eric Holder testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the Obama administration decision to treat terrorists who committed war crimes as civilians and hold their trial in New York City.  The Fort Hood massacre by a Muslim jihadi, Major Nidal Hassan, was also before the committee. The following is an excerpt from that hearing.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder
Testimony Before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee
Novemer 18, 2009

Questions and answers, transcribed from C-Span tape, Morning Session.  Emphasis added.

Section 1, The so-called ‘Terror Gap’

First key exchange begins at counter number 1:11:08

Senator Feinstien:

“In June of 09 the GAO released a report indicating that individuals on terrorist watch lists succeeded in purchasing guns an astonishing 865 times between 2004 and 2009.  This dangerous loophole in federal law is known as the ‘Terror Gap’ and its continued to allow the individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watch list to purchase guns despite the fact they are not allowed to fly on an airplane.  The Bush administration’s Justice Department drafted and supported federal legislation to close this gap in the 110th Congress; and identical legislation has been introduced in the 111th Congress.  Does the Justice Department support closing this gap and will you support that legislation?”

AG Holder:

“Yes, we will support that legislation.  It seems incongrous to me that we would bar certain people from flying on airplanes because they are on the terrorist watch list and yet we would still allow them to posess weapons.  I think that the legislation that was intially proposed by the Bush administration was well conceived and we will continue to support that.”

Senator Feinstien:

“Excellent.”

Section 2, Law Enforcement obtaining, retaining and sharing gun owner’s data

Second key exchange begins at counter number 1:46:22

Senator Schumer:

“There are restrictions on even notification, so for instance the people in one end of the justice system, the Joint Terrorism Taskforce, were not notified when Major Hasan bought a gun.  Thats not talking about whether the law should allow it or not, but clearly there should be notification.  Now the Tiahrt amendment, the 24 background check requirement gets in the way of that.  My question is: Will the Justice Department remove the Tiahr24 hour background check destruction requirement from its 2011 budget to allow the FBI to keep records of guns purchased by subjects of terrorist inquiries? I am just limiting it to that issue, like Major Hasan.”

AG Holder:

“The position of the Administration is that there should be a basis for law enforcement to share information about gun purchases.  Fully respect the Second Amendment, fully respect the Heller decision.  It does not seem to us that this is inconsistent to allow law enforcement agencies to share that kind of information, for that information to be retained and then to be shared by law enforcement.”

Senator Schumer:

“I would encourage you to write that into the budget that you are going to bring to us.”

AG Holder:

“I believe it is.  But I will have to check.”

End Transcript

Source of transcript: Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA)

Click here to view the video of the hearing on CSPAN

The anti-gun zealots at the Brady Campaign will not let one tragedy go by without exploiting the victims to further their gun control aims, and the recent shooting at Fort Hood is no exception.

When Brady head Paul Helmke heard of the tragedy at Fort Hood, he says, “we were in the midst of planning a response to the latest dangerous legislative proposal from the gun lobby in the United States Senate–language to automatically restore access to guns to veterans designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Justice Department as ‘mentally incapacitated’ or ‘mentally incompetent.’”
 
Actually, the legislation in question, S. 669, would only safeguard two of the most fundamental of American’s Constitutional rights: due process of law and the right to keep and bear arms
 
Since 1999, over 100,000 U.S. military veterans have been stripped of their Second Amendment rights on the basis of psychiatrists’ opinions for issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

(Incidentally, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter was an Army psychiatrist, one of the very people in a position to deem others too troubled to possess a firearm.) 

S. 669, sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), simply requires that a veteran cannot lose his or her gun rights “without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.” 

In other words, the bill would put an end to the practice of psychiatrists subjecting veterans to a lifetime gun ban.  Helmke and the Brady Bunch apparently have as much respect for the Fifth Amendment (No person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) as they do for the Second.
 
Helmke continues: “America has seen an epidemic of horrific gun violence at churches and synagogues, workplaces, health clubs, high schools, universities, police stations and now Army bases.  This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.  Enough is enough.”
 
There have, indeed, been a number of violent acts at places of worship and other locations.  But guess what?  Many of these places are gun free zones.  There is a federal “gun free schools zones” law; many states prohibit firearms in churches; law-abiding adults can carry concealed firearms in 48 states, but are prohibited from carrying a gun for self-defense in most state universities.

While it may have come as a surprise to many, the military creates its own disarmament zones.  After the Ft. Hood tragedy, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone reminded reporters, “[W]e don't carry weapons here, this is our home.”  Military bases are for the most part gun free zones, where only military police and other security personnel are allowed to carry firearms. 

The government cannot legislate where a criminal attack will occur.  It could be a school, a hospital, church, or even an Army base.  Various levels of government have only succeeded in producing a morass of mandatory victim zones.
 
Helmke got one thing right; “Enough is enough.”  Criminal safety zone laws should be repealed immediately, starting with the dangerous anti-gun policies on military installations. 

Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) questions Carmen Lomellin, nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), on the CIFTA gun control treaty at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on November 4, 2009:

Letter from GOA Vice-Chairman Tim Macy to Republican National Committee (RNC) members

November 5, 2009

Dear RNC Member:

Gun Owners of America initially opposed the election of Michael Steele as RNC Chairman because of his position on certain gun control issues.

Recently, Mr. Steele has confirmed that he is not fully committed to many of the principles articulated in the Republican party platform, and that he will support—if not prefer, in some instances—the less conservative Republican choice for candidate to office.

These concerns were highlighted in the debacle in the recent election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.  While Mr. Steele may not have hand-picked the Republican candidate, his defense of Dede Scozzafava, even after she dropped out of the race, is troubling.

Gun Owners of America made the decision to support Doug Hoffman in this race over the Republican candidate.  Sure, Scozzafava had made some votes against gun control (along with a couple of anti-gun votes), but she also has close ties to the radical anti-gun group ACORN, whose current leader, Bertha Lewis, co-founded the leftist New York’s Working Families Party—a party that supported Scozzafava in past elections.

That is a clear warning sign that Scozzafava may have been more comfortable in Nancy Pelosi’s office than in the trenches fighting for core conservative principles.

Read more...

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the City of Chicago’s ban on handguns, a case that will test the reach of the Second Amendment.

In last year’s historic Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” 

That ruling shattered years of anti-gun revisionist history and misinformation that claimed the Second Amendment protected a “collective” right of the states to maintain something like the National Guard.

Heller, though, was limited in scope only to Washington, D.C., a federal enclave.  The Court did not address the issue of whether states or localities can prohibit the right to keep and bear arms, or if the Second Amendment was “incorporated” to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court will consider this question in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, a suit filed immediately after the Heller decision.  A lower court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of the city, setting the stage for Supreme Court consideration.

The spotlight is sure to focus brightly on new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  In a case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in January, 2009, Judge Sotomayor ruled that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states. 

When questioned during her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor argued that she was only following Supreme Court precedent, to which she was bound.  Well, now that she is on the Supreme Court, her hands are no longer tied. 

Will she now rule that the Second Amendment should not, unlike many other rights in the Bill of Rights, be incorporated to the states through the Privileges or Immunities Clause or the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Also during her confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Sotomayor was asked a straightforward question by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

“Do you believe,” the Senator asked, “that I personally have a right to self-defense?”

This did not seem to be a particularly difficult question.  Sen. Coburn didn’t even ask about defending himself with a firearm.  He only asked if Americans have a basic right to self-protection.  Her answer?  “That’s sort of an abstract question.”

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a less abstract question.  The right to keep and bear arms is afforded special protection in the Constitution precisely because it is a fundamental right. 

It is a right that predates the Constitution because the Founders wrote the Bill of Rights not to create new rights, but to protect old ones -- our “unalienable” rights -- among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

John Dickison, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Pennsylvania, explained an unalienable right this way: it is something “Which God gave to you and which no inferior power has a right to take away.” 

And so, if our right to life is a natural right, then the right to self-protection necessarily follows from it.  And self-protection, be it protection from individual criminals or a criminal government, was, to the Founders, synonymous with the right to bear arms.

Interestingly, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in great part specifically to protect the gun rights of freed slaves.  After the Civil War, many states passed laws to disarm blacks who were former slaves, such as Mississippi’s post-war law: No freedman “shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition.”

Proponents of the Fourteenth Amendment argued that the amendment was necessary, in part, to stop the disarming of the freedmen -- lest they be little better off than before emancipation. 

One hundred years later, in the 1960s, the Deacons for Defense armed themselves and often successfully defended themselves in areas where civil rights were still not adequately protected and blacks were targets of violence. 

If the right to keep and bear arms is found not to be a “fundamental” right, people in places like Chicago and New York City will find themselves on a 21st century plantation, treated more like subjects than citizens.