I missed this last week, and so may many who didn’t notice Instapundit’s link to the Greeley Gazette’s post on the White House’s efforts to impose gun control through executive-branch regulatory adventurism. Jack Minor caught this anecdote buried below the jump on a Washington Post Lifestyle profile of Steve Croley, first published six weeks ago. Described as “the White House’s point man on gun regulation policy,” the Post includes this rather telling quote from President Obama on the issue of gun control from March:
On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.” Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
Minor noted that this under-the-radar anecdote matches up with other reporting:
The statement reinforces an article in the Huffington Post describing how the administration is exploring ways to bypass Congress and enact gun control through executive action.The Department of Justice reportedly is holding meetings discussing the White House’s options for enacting regulations on its own or through adjoining agencies and departments. “Administration officials said talk of executive orders or agency action are among a host of options that President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering. “
That also matches up with Obama’s approach on … nearly everything, it seems. Regulatory adventurism has been a hallmark of every other Obama priority, whether it be health care, financial-services reform, labor policy, and now on gun control. When his agenda is too radical for Congress, Obama simply plans to bypass Congress and rule by decree.
Glenn Reynolds headlined this under the banner “TRANSPARENCY.” That’s fitting, but “RADICAL” and “DISHONEST” work well, too. Here’s the problem for Democrats: Ever since the Clinton years, they have avoided gun control like the plague, and the courts have taken a libertarian view of the Second Amendment. How many of the incumbent Democrats in the Senate want to defend Obama on his power play to impose gun control by executive fiat in the dark? How will that fly in places like Missouri, Nebraska, and West Virginia? How about in open seats like Virginia’s, which Democrats hope to hold?
Update: I meant “executive fiat,” not “legislative fiat.” The latter is an oxymoron, obviously.
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UN Gun Control Coming to Your Neighborhood?
Having been stymied in their efforts to enact more gun control at home, U.S. politicians are going global in a back door effort to restrict the firearms of American citizens.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is spearheading an effort to get the World Court to do what the courts in our country have refused to do -- namely, find gun makers guilty for the damages caused by their products’ misuse.
Chicago’s frivolous lawsuit was dismissed by a liberal Supreme Court in Illinois six years ago. So now, Mayor Daley is trying to get the international court to go after U.S. gun makers.
Daley compared guns to poison saying, “If we ship over poison to a country, don’t you think we should be responsible for it?”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported on April 27 that Daley has managed to convince more than a dozen mayors from around the world to join him in approving a resolution urging “redress against the gun industry through the courts of the world.”
Not to be outdone, President Obama is also trying to stick it to American gun owners.
According to Bloomberg News, the Obama administration voted “aye” late last year at the United Nations in support of continued talks that are aimed at regulating firearms. The Obama administration’s vote reversed the Bush Administration’s strong opposition to any arms control treaty that would impact the rights of American gun owners.
To be sure, gun owners can expect any UN small arms treaty to limit their rights.
The Heritage Foundation, a think-tank based in the nation’s capital, has followed the arms control discussions at the UN very closely. They report that a UN small arms treaty would require all signatory nations to adopt the “highest possible standards” in keeping guns away from criminals and terrorists.
But as the think-tank notes, this standard is intended as an assault on the Second Amendment right of all Americans because, ultimately, “there is no guarantee that any privately held gun in the U.S. will never be used in criminal activity.”
Hence, Americans could expect to see licensing restrictions, bans on most semi-automatic firearms, an end to private sales at gun shows, and much more.
President Barack Obama made promises to protect Second Amendment rights during his campaign. But he seems perfectly happy using the United Nations to enact gun restrictions that he cannot otherwise get passed in the Congress.
Remember the President’s startling proclamation during the State of the Union speech in January? When the Senate voted down a commission he wanted, he said this: “Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward.”
In other words, the Separation of Powers be damned! “If Congress doesn’t give me what I want,” he seems to tell us, “then I’ll just go around them using my Executive Order pen.”
There is no regard for the Separation of Powers; no desire to limit himself to the boundaries set by the U.S. Constitution, a document he swore to uphold. For Obama, the United Nations has become a convenient surrogate to get his anti-gun agenda enacted.
One hopes that if an international arms treaty were to pass, our country could just ignore its edicts. That would be the best-case scenario.
Of course, there will be many in Congress and at the White House who will then dust off their copies of the Constitution (which they love to ignore) and argue that treaties are the supreme law of the land, according to Article VI. We will then see anti-gun liberals -- and the rest of the world -- use the treaty as a stick to beat us into compliance.
The worst-case scenario for gun owners involves the United Nations directly enforcing compliance. As noted by the Heritage Foundation, the International Criminal Court could be “an alternative avenue of enforcement.”
The Foundation states that this World Court could investigate and charge U.S. policymakers who, wanting to help freedom fighters in other countries, vote to send them arms. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Could we see the international court rule against gun owners for refusing to lock up their firearms? What happens if one of our guns is stolen and is later used in a crime or the gun is smuggled south of the border?
Americans are not used to seeing UN Peacekeepers donning their blue helmets in our country. For most Americans, the presence of international troops here would not be welcome.
The enforcement question is a huge question mark and necessitates that gun owners continue to watch these arms control talks very closely and hold their policymakers accountable.
[source]UN Agreement should have all gun owners up in arms
It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.
What, exactly, does the intended agreement entail?
While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N. and ratified by our Senate, it will almost certainly force the U.S. to:
- Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.
- Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course).
- Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull – one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).
- Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.
- In short, overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.
Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support. In January 2010 the U.S. joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution that will establish a 2012 conference to draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for Senate ratification.
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”
Although professing to support the Second Amendment during her presidential election bid, Hillary Clinton is not generally known as a gun rights enthusiast. She has been a long-time activist for federal firearms licensing and registration, and a vigorous opponent of state Right-to-Carry laws. As a New York senator she ranked among the National Rifle Association’s worst “F”-rated gun banners who voted to support the sort of gunpoint disarmament that marked New Orleans’ rogue police actions against law-abiding gun owners in the anarchistic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
President Obama’s record on citizen gun rights doesn’t reflect much advocacy either. Consider for example his appointment of anti-gun rights former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as an alternate U.S. representative to the U.N., and his choice of Andrew Traver who has worked to terminate civilian ownership of so-called “assault rifles” (another prejudicially meaningless gun term) to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Then, in a move unprecedented in American history, the Obama administration quietly banned the re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectable antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that were left in South Korea following the Korean War. Developed in the 1930s, the venerable M1 Garand carried the U.S. through World War II, seeing action in every major battle.
As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama was an aggressive advocate for expanding gun control laws, and even voted against legislation giving gun owners an affirmative defense when they use firearms to defend themselves and their families against home invaders and burglars. He also served on a 10-member board of directors of the radically activist anti-gun Joyce Foundation in Chicago during a period between 1998-2001when it contributed $18,326,183 in grants to anti-Second Amendment organizations.
If someone breaks into your home when you are there, which would you prefer to have close at hand: 1) a telephone to call 911, or 2) a loaded gun of respectable caliber? That’s a pretty easy question for me to answer. I am a long-time NRA member, concealed firearms license holder and a regular weekly recreational pistol shooter. And while I don’t ordinarily care to target anything that has a mother, will reluctantly make an exception should an urgent provocation arise. I also happen to enjoy the company of friends who hunt, as well as those, like myself, who share an abiding interest in American history and the firearms that influenced it.
There are many like me, and fewer of them would be alive today were it not for exercise of their gun rights. In fact law-abiding citizens in America used guns in self-defense 2.5 million times during 1993 (about 6,850 times per day), and actually shot and killed 2 1/2 times as many criminals as police did (1,527 to 606). Those civilian self-defense shootings resulted in less than 1/5th as many incidents as police where an innocent person was mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).
Just how effectively have gun bans worked to make citizens safer in other countries? Take the number of home break-ins while residents are present as an indication. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, nearly half of all burglaries occur when residents are present. But in the U.S. where many households are armed, only about 13% happen when someone is home.
Recognizing clear statistical benefit evidence, 41 states now allow competent, law-abiding adults to carry permitted or permit-exempt concealed handguns. As a result, crime rates in those states have typically fallen at least 10% in the year following enactment.
So the majority in our Senate is smart enough to realize that the U.N.’s gun-grab agenda is unconstitutional, politically suicidal for those who support it, and down-right idiotic—right? Let’s hope so, but not entirely count on it. While a few loyal Obama Democrats are truly “pro-gun”, many are loathe to vote against treaties that carry the president’s international prestige, causing him embarrassment.
Also, don’t forget that Senate confirmation of anti-gun Obama nominee Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Many within the few who voted against her did so only because of massive grassroots pressure from constituents who take their Constitutional protections very seriously.
Now, more than ever, it’s imperative to stick by our guns in demanding that all Constitutional rights be preserved. If not, we will surely lose both.
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