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The anti-gun Left is always looking for ways to push gun owner registration.

In a move which should get him disbarred, New Hampshire Attorney General and former Democratic legislator Joseph Foster has misrepresented the law and the facts to the New Hampshire Supreme Court — and now proposes to illegally turn in the names of Granite Staters to the NICS system.  

At dispute is language added to the state’s ObamaCare (Medicaid) extension bill, which was drafted by GOA’s legislative counsel. The provision says: 

No person, organization, department, or agency shall submit the name of any person to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) on the basis that the person has been adjudicated a “mental defective” or has been committed to a mental institution, except pursuant to a court order issued following a hearing in which the person participated and was represented by an attorney. 

The amendment was explicitly intended to keep the ObamaCare extension from being used to strip Granite Staters of their Second Amendment rights by bureaucratic fiat, in the same way that 257,000 veterans have lost their gun rights as a result of a psychiatric diagnosis. 

Like the Richard Burr amendment in Congress — supported by a majority of U.S. senators in April, 2013 — the Medicaid amendment prohibits Foster from doing something which, we suspect, he was intending to do by fiat. 

Barack Obama’s subsequent efforts to turn in Social Security names to NICS only confirm our suspicion. 

But Foster, in a letter to new Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Linda Delianis, now claims that this language gives him previously non-existent authority to give NICS the names of various gun owners.

In the first place, the gun language is standard legislative boilerplate intended to prohibit government action. But it doesn’t authorize the government to do anything. 

Aside from that, the language explicitly requires participation in the commitment procedures by the person affected — and an actual attorney representing the person in those procedures. 

This clause arose out of our counsel’s personal experiences, where his 89-year-old mother was stripped of all of her rights and appointed a guardian in a “star chamber” procedure in which she was “deemed’ to have waived the right to be present and have an attorney. 

It appears that many of the persons whom Foster proposes to summarily strip of their constitutional rights are in the same position. Thus, Foster is explicitly and erroneously representing to the state Supreme Court that the individuals he proposes to subject to a gun ban were present, participated, and were represented by counsel. This appears to be a lie. 

Even a person found incompetent to stand trial is subjected to that finding based on a determination that he cannot meaningful participate in his defense. 

Foster appears to be the latest in a line of Democratic activists at the federal and state level who have used their law enforcement positions to implement gun control by executive fiat when the legislatures refused to do so. When Virginia’s attorney general unilaterally stripped Virginians of their reciprocity rights earlier this year, gun activists mistakenly negotiated with him to get their rights back. 

In this case of Foster, who has apparently lied to the tribunal and the legislature about the facts and the law, the solution is not to reward him for his misconduct. The solution is to reaffirm the rule of law. 

ACTION #1: Contact your state representative by either calling phone or email.  Here is what GOA wants every state representative to understand:

We need to get as many signatures as possible on a letter that Rep. J.R. Hoell has drafted.  Rep. Hoell is demanding that the Attorney General suspend his opinion until the legislature has had an opportunity to ask for a non-partisan opinion from the state Supreme Court. So all Reps. must sign this letter.

ACTION #2: Cut-and-paste the message below and email Speaker Shawn Jasper at [email protected].  

Encourage him to urge Attorney General Joseph Foster to voluntarily suspend the anti-gun application of his letter of July 8, 2016, where he misrepresented the law and the facts to the New Hampshire Supreme Court — thus proposing to illegally turn in the names of Granite Staters to the NICS system. 

Subject Line:  Rein-in Joseph Foster’s Anti-Gun Interpretation

Dear Speaker Jasper:

I am asking you to contact Attorney General Joseph Foster and to urge him to voluntarily suspend the application of his letter of July 8, 2016.

In a move which should get him disbarred, Attorney General Foster has misrepresented the law and the facts to the New Hampshire Supreme Court — and now proposes to illegally turn in the names of Granite Staters to the NICS system. 

The disputed language was added to the state’s ObamaCare (Medicaid) extension bill, which was drafted by GOA’s legislative counsel. 

The amendment was explicitly intended to keep the ObamaCare extension from being used to strip Granite Staters of their Second Amendment rights by bureaucratic fiat, in the same way that 257,000 veterans have lost their gun rights as a result of a psychiatric diagnosis. 

But Foster, in a letter to new Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Linda Delianis, now claims that this language gives him previously non-existent authority to give NICS the names of certain gun owners.

This clause arose out of the personal experiences from Gun Owners of America’s counsel, where his 89-year-old mother was stripped of all of her rights and appointed a guardian in a “star chamber” procedure in which she was “deemed’ to have waived the right to be present and have an attorney. 

It appears that many of the persons whom Foster proposes to summarily strip of their constitutional rights are in the same position. Thus, Foster is explicitly and erroneously representing to the state Supreme Court that the individuals he proposes to subject to a gun ban were present, participated, and were represented by counsel. This appears to be a lie. 

Even a person found incompetent to stand trial is subjected to that finding based on a determination that he cannot meaningful participate in his defense. 

Foster appears to be the latest in a line of Democratic activists at the federal and state level who have used their law enforcement positions to implement gun control by executive fiat when the legislatures refused to do so. 

In this case of Foster, who has apparently lied to the tribunal and the legislature about the facts and the law, the solution is not to reward him for his misconduct. The solution is to reaffirm the rule of law. 

So please tell Attorney General Foster to back off his anti-gun interpretation, until the legislature has had an opportunity to ask the Supreme Court to give its interpretation of the Medicaid gun language. 

Thank you.