Gun Issues Coming Up

 

Several Gun Issues Coming Up Soon
— Call your Senator and Majority Leader Trent Lott

by Gun Owners of America

(Tuesday, September 10) — With only a month left on the Senate calendar, your Senators need to hear from you on the following issues (1-800-962-3524 or 202-224-3121):

Gun Ban Repeal v. Government Terror Bill #2

The Senate plans to vote on the terror bill that was passed by the House in August. Included in the House bill (H.R. 3953) was a study on placing taggants in gunpowder. GOA opposed the House version on the grounds that Congress has no business ordering a study on an issue when there is no constitutional authority to regulate it. (As stated by Rep. Harold Volkmer (D-MO), this study will only be a first step. “I think this study brings us to where you do have taggants in black powder,” Volkmer said on August 2. “That is where it leads us, right down that road. That is another reason to vote against this thing.”) In addition to being unsafe, putting tracers in gunpowder will inevitably lead to the registration of ammunition.

Besides the taggants issue, the President and many Senators plan to include several other objectionable provisions in their version of the terror bill. For example, the President is seeking to give even more wiretapping authority to the FBI (even though less than 0.2 percent of almost 10,000 wiretap applications between 1985 and 1993 were for terrorist-type offenses). Clinton also wants to expand the ability of officials to prosecute gun owners for Title II firearms registration offenses. (And yet, published reports indicate that only one registered machine-gun has ever been used in a crime in this country.)

HERE’S WHAT TO DO:

In addition to registering your opposition with your Senators, please call Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) at 1-800-962-3524 or 202-224-6253, fx: 224-2262. Urge him to NOT bring the terror bill up for a vote, but to bring up the House-passed version of the gun ban repeal instead. The terror bill is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, although there are rumors it could be offered as an amendment to a spending bill.

Spanker Gun Ban

According to Senate sources, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) plans to introduce his domestic violence gun ban on as many bills as he can. This provision would remove guns from a home where someone has been convicted of a misdemeanor involving domestic violence. While this provision opens the door to depriving firearms to all misdemeanor offenders — including non-violent ones (such as traffic violators, etc.) — this provision also threatens to permanently disarm parents in those jurisdictions where officials have successfully prosecuted parents for merely spanking their children. Ask your Senators to oppose the Lautenberg amendment.

CDC’s Anti-gun Research

Not too long ago, the House purged the federal budget of any tax dollars going for anti-gun research. But several Senators are expected to try and restore these dollars to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), which is a branch of the Center for Disease Control.

The NCIPC has come under fire in recent months for its blatant anti-gun agenda. As noted by the New Gun Week, the NCIPC frequently churns out its “anti-gun propaganda, which has been labeled ‘junk science’ by informed doctors and scholars.” NCIPC research would end up being published in articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and, from these sources, into the general media.

The Senate fight — over whether to keep tax dollars from going for anti-gun research — will come as an amendment to the Labor-HHS bill (H.R. 3755). Ask your Senators to oppose any effort to restore anti-gun research funding to the NCIPC.