Lautenberg latest attacks Second Amendment
This week, the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on two radical anti-gun bills sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).
One of the bills, S. 1317, would allow the Attorney General to deny the purchase of a firearm to any of the more than 400,000 people on the “terrorist watch list.” Under this bill, the Attorney General (the current AG, Eric Holder, is extremely hostile to gun rights) is permitted to strip away the civil liberties of Americans without due process of law and without the accused even knowing the details of the suspicion.
This bill takes the responsibility of determining a person’s guilt or innocence out of the hands of the courts and places it in the hands of the Attorney General, who is not required to produce evidence for such a determination, let alone prove it.
The second bill, S. 2820, would require that if an individual on the government terrorist watch list purchases a firearm, the record of the purchase must be retained for ten years. The same objections apply here as to S. 1317.
But there is a much more sinister aspect to this bill. It also requires information obtained on ALL firearms background checks be kept for AT LEAST six months.
Currently, most information obtained through background checks of firearms purchasers must be destroyed within 24 hours. The Lautenberg bill would gut such privacy protections and create de facto gun owner registration.
Frank Lautenberg has long been an anti-Second Amendment activist, so no one should be fooled by his latest assault on freedom. It’s not just suspected terrorists that Mr. Lautenberg wants only to disarm—if he had his way guns would be banned entirely. His strategy is to constantly nibble away at the Second Amendment until only the police and the criminals have guns.
The intent of the Founding Fathers and the liberties of the people are apparently as meaningful to Lautenberg as is the oath that he swore to uphold the Constitution.
GOA and its members will continue to work for the defeat of these two blatantly unconstitutional bills.