Urgent Alert: Tell Your State Legislators to Oppose Gun Confiscation Orders!

Click on the Take Action button to contact your legislators. Demand that they oppose House Bill 585, the Gun Confiscation Act of 2018.

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Governor Kasich and Allies Push for Gun Confiscation & Semi-Auto Bans

Dear FName:

Governor John Kasich and his Columbus allies are once again attacking the Second Amendment.

Kasich’s attacks on Ohio gun ownership center on House Bill 585 — a bill that he strongly supports and which will enact Gun Confiscation Orders.

This fascist legislation began in virulently anti-gun states like California and is now spreading across the country.

Gun Confiscation Orders would work like this: The police or an angry “ex” would be authorized to convene a secret star-chamber (ex parte) hearing from which the accused gun owner would be excluded. (See p. 68 of HB 585.)

In this Kafkaesque proceeding, they would “allege” that the gun owner presents a “significant risk” of something.

Note, contrary to the constitutional requirement, they would not be required to prove “probable cause.”

And, in fact, they wouldn’t have to allege any crime at all, except, perhaps, an Orwellian “thought crime.”

The standard of proof is “clear and convincing evidence.” But nothing could be more irrelevant.

When the accuser is the only one in the room, a court almost always grants the accuser’s petition.

An exposé by Fox News found that, in its examination of Gun Confiscation Orders granted in Seattle, Washington, only one had been rejected by the court.

And in Massachusetts, a liberal state representative, Barbara Gray, said of much-less-intrusive protective orders: ”I think judges grant the restraining orders without asking too many questions.”

But unlike narrow restraining orders, a Gun Confiscation Order strips a gun owner of every iota of his Second Amendment rights.
And the first thing he learns of the star-chamber order is when the police arrive at his door to ransack his house and, if he resists, to arrest or even shoot him.

Three days later, “Kasich-nakov” generously allows the gun owner to spend $10,000 to hire a lawyer and try to get his rights back.

But guess what? Most gun owners don’t have that amount of money — and most courts aren’t that eager to reverse their earlier judgments.

But Kasich’s opposition to the Second Amendment goes to other provisions in the bill as well.

Kiss your AR-15 goodbye?

Currently, in Ohio, the term “machinegun” means a “machinegun.”

But under the new definition on page 46 of HB 585, a “bump stock” would be a “machinegun” because it allows an AR-15 to fire multiple times with the single PULL of a trigger.

This is true even though the current federal and Ohio definition rely on the single FUNCTION of a trigger. That’s right, by using a bump stock, the trigger FUNCTIONS every time a round is discharged, even though the finger only pulls once.

So HB 585 would set the stage for saying that a semi-automatic fires automatically. And as such, an AR-15 would become the “assault rifle” which gun-grabbers have falsely claimed it to be.

Why does this matter? Well, consider this scenario:

Let’s say President Corey Booker or President Joe Biden or President Elizabeth Warren used the recent Trump “bump stock” regs to ban all semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15’s.

They would do that on the basis of the fact that, once “bump stocks” are defined as “machineguns,” then all AR-15’s can now “readily restored” or “converted” into “machineguns” by adding a “bump stock” (and this makes the AR-15 itself a “machinegun” under 26 U.S.C. 5845(b)).

Gun Owners Foundation would immediately challenge the President Booker or Warren or Biden AR-15 ban. And we expect that we could get the D.C. Court of Appeals to stay the ban until the case had worked its way up to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, however, Ohio would be “joined at the navel” to the challenged federal ban.

And it’s possible that Ohio would be able — or even required — to confiscate all AR-15’s and other semi-automatic rifles while the federal ban was being appealed.

The same is true of Kasich’s efforts to outlaw “armor piercing ammunition” (on p. 48 of HB 585). Remember when Obama tried to use this provision to outlaw AR-15 ammunition?

Well, if the next anti-gun Democrat President tries the same thing, Kasich’s bill would jerk Ohio law into compliance with the wishes of that anti-gun president.

For all these reasons, we need to defat HB 585.

Please contact your two state legislators right away.

Demand that they oppose House Bill 585.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Michael Hammond
Legislative Counsel

P.S. Please contact your state legislators so that we can defeat these Gun Confiscation orders in Ohio. And if you’ve let your membership lapse, make sure to renew your membership in Gun Owners of America today for only $20!