PA Bill Number: HB2542
Title: In the Secretary of the Commonwealth, further providing for powers and duties of the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Description: In the Secretary of the Commonwealth, further providing for powers and duties of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. ...
Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT
Last Action Date: Aug 21, 2024
FOAC's Weekly Message For Sunday February 24th 2019 :: 02/24/2019
With their newly acquired Majority power, Congressional House Democrats seem to have dropped all pretense of standing for the Constitution and their Oath of Office and are forcing dangerous gun control bills to be acted on. Do not accept acquiescence from your Republican representative…
Having assumed ‘control’ in the US House, the anti-Second Amendment party has gone right to work pushing dangerous gun control bills, three bills particularly which are slated to run ‘THIS’ week in the full US House of representatives. In short, H.R. 8 (Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019) makes private firearms transfers a crime, while H.R. 1112 (Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019) establishes a nationwide waiting period for gun purchases and H.R. 1263 (Amends IRS Code to Subject Any Semi-Automatic Rifle that Accepts Detachable Magazines to National Firearms Act) this would force every owner/purchaser of any Semi-Auto rifle to register, and pay $200, as machine gun.
Although bills such as these seem like “Democrat” bills that would never make it through the Republican-held Senate, don’t be so sure. As it stands, these bills are labeled “bi-partisan” because some less reliable Republican lawmakers (read: RINOs), have co-sponsored them. This allows for the following scenario:
- If these bills have bi-partisan support, they’ll likely pass the House easily, even if a few conservative Democrats vote against them. As it stands, no less than five Republicans have signed on to H.R. 8. So far, H.R. 1112 has only one Republican co-sponsor, but it can still be labeled bi-partisan, and is quite likely to pass the House. Other than the co-sponsors, it’s anyone’s guess how many other unreliable Republicans will vote for one or both of these bills. While H.R. 1263 has no Republican Sponsors as of yet.
- If there are Republicans in the House who sign on to these oppressive gun control laws, who’s to say that certain “moderate” Republicans in the Senate won’t do the same?
- While it’s true that we have a Republican president, it’s also true that President Trump has dithered on questions of ‘Beltway Style’ Gun Control. He has supported so-called “red flag” laws, which arbitrarily deny due process and strip citizens of their Second Amendment rights by bureaucratic whim. Also, by executive fiat the president recently banned bump stock devices. By these examples, you can see there is no guarantee that the president would veto a gun control bill, and there is even reason to believe that he would happily sign into law certain gun control measures.
In the very possible scenario highlighted above, one can see that there is real risk here. Clearly, it’s up to us, the people, to stop this. Please contact your representative and demand that he or she continue to recognize and vigorously defend guaranteed human rights. Below, see how you can easily email and phone your Republican US House Representative and demand these very things.
PHONE AND EMAIL YOUR REPUBLICAN US HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE: If your House rep. is a Republican, inform him or her that you are well aware of the gun control bills being proposed in the US House (H.R. 8, H.R. 1112 and H.R. 1263). Insist that he or she oppose these bills, and by doing so, vigorously defend the Natural rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Tell him or her that nothing short of unwavering resistance to these leftist gun control bills will be acceptable.
If you don’t know your Congress critters contact info, click here to find that information. (IF you don’t know ‘who’ your Congress Critter is; make sure to sign into your profile on the website and then go to the ‘Legislation’ Tab (on the Home Page) and then to the ‘Your Federal Legislators’ tab. You will be shown ‘all’ your Federal Legislators on that page along with all their contact info.
Before you read further, please consider taking a moment to view this video as it presents a truly thought provoking of the Cost of Freedom and why it matters and where we are as a nation:
A Visitor From The Past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6H12dyS8FI
More Information on H.R. 8 & H.R. 1112 & H.R. 1263
Sometimes understanding what's going on requires us to connect the dots on things that don't immediately appear to be connected. Looking at recent events, it's now possible to see the plans of the gun banners.
It's much worse than almost anyone imagined.
First, what happened? 1) H.R. 8, a bill in the House, would end the private sales of guns, would end being able to give a gun to someone, and would criminalize even loaning a gun to someone -- unless you got the permission of the FBI each time you want to buy, sell, loan, or borrow a gun. In other words, there could be no legal transfer of a gun in the U.S. unless the government approves each transaction. 2) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened that a Democrat President could declare a national emergency on gun violence. 3) A separate bill -- H.R. 1112-- would eliminate the 3-day safety-valve provision under the federal firearms background check system that prevents the government from enacting an indefinite delay of firearm purchases for law-abiding Americans. 4) H.R. 1263 seeks to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to force the requirements of the National Firearms Act on all semiautomatic rifles that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine. In short, this bill looks to add ARs, AKs, Precision Rifles, and ANY semi-automatic rifle that is CAPABLE of accepting a detachable magazine to the National Firearms Act, aka NFA. That's right, $200 Tax Stamp on all.
Currently, if a firearms retailer submits the background check to the FBI, and it is delayed, after three days the dealer is free to legally transfer the firearm. This provision in the current law is the safety valve. It guards against the government shutting down background checks (through incompetence, technical snafu, or even political activism) and stopping gun sales from dealers. (Private sales currently would be untouched.)
Pelosi's threat didn't just pop into her head. This idea has been in the works.
Consider those three actions. The expanded background check provision requires that all gun sales, and gifts, and loans -- any transfers -- must go through the FBI NICS system. H.R. 1112 would kill the protection of allowing retailers to sell guns when they don't get a 'denial' from the FBI in three days. If those two provisions were in place, I fully expect a Democrat president to act after a highly-publicized shooting to declare a national emergency and shut down the NICS checks for 90 to 120 days. Maybe even a year. That would be so that we could have a 'national conversation' about gun violence. America's gun owners would suffer a 'mere inconvenience' the banners will say. Except that most privately-owned gun stores could not survive three or four months with no gun sales.
This is not happenstance. It's not an accident. It's not a coincidence. The gun ban lobby is not dumb. This has been the plan all along.
1. Kill off all private sales, forcing all legal gun sales to go through dealers.
2. Kill the provision in current law which protect gun owners from a government shutdown of the background check system.
3. Declare a national emergency and close background checks, which stops all legal gun sales.
Make no mistake. This is part of the larger plan to confiscate ('mandatory buy-back') your guns.
Naturally, there would be legal challenges. The current makeup of the Supreme Court favors -- ever so slightly -- the hope that the high court would stop such a thing. If it took months to work its way through the courts, however, massive damage would be done. Thousands of businesses would close and tens or hundreds of thousands of people would be thrown out of work. Naturally, to the 'if it saves one life' crowd, that's a price they are willing to pay. Well, they would pay for it. We will.
And that doesn't even touch on the subject that no one wants to talk about. We'll leave the very real possibility of armed resistance for another day.
How do we stop this?
We stop it the old-fashioned way. We beat it at the polls. We beat it by speaking up in our churches. We beat it with peaceful activism in the streets.
We spend money. A lot of money. We stop complaining about requests for donations. We donate annually an amount equal to the price of a new gun. How about a dollar a day? We actually do call the offices of our Congressional representatives monthly and talk politely with the staff there about our concerns on Second Amendment matters. We volunteer for campaigns. We go to the school board, city council, and state legislature meetings and hearings. We show up.
Two things must happen.
First, you have to look in the mirror and admit you haven't done enough/much/anything. No one else can do this. Each of us must have a conversation with ourselves and take an honest look at what we have and have not done. And what we can do.
This is a total lifestyle change. It's a change in where you spend your money and your time.
Second, each of us has to bring along a friend into this activism. I'm not talking about taking someone to the range, though that's always worthwhile. I'm talking about convincing more friends that each of you really must donate a buck a day. A lot of dough? Less than many of us spend on coffee. Times a million gun owners.
For us ... for our children ... for our grandchildren ... we simply must stop the gun confiscation movement now. We win or we lose right here. Right now.
Pelosi’s National Gun Emergency Threat, Forewarned and Forearmed
In the military there is a saying, “never get in your enemy’s way when they are self-destructing.” I cannot think of a better adage when it comes to the insidious, absurd, and, yes, stupid, things emanating from the progressive socialist left . . . the folks who have taken control of the Democrat Party.
This week’s recipient of the “Stuck on Stupid Saturday” award is none other than Ms. “We have to pass the bill in order to find out what is in it,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday issued a warning to Republicans poised to support President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency at the southern border: the next Democratic president, she said, could do the same on guns.
“A Democratic president can declare emergencies, as well,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.” Pelosi noted that Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 students and faculty dead. She argued that the real national emergency is not illegal border crossings, but gun violence in the U.S.
So, what does this mean? It’s simple, Barack Obama said that he had a pen and a phone and the Democrats cheered. Now, Nancy Pelosi has told us exactly what will happen if We the People are stupid enough to vote in Democrat president — they will declare national emergencies to enact their ideological agenda.
The first objective would be gun control, disarming the American people. That is worthy of being declared a national emergency by a Democrat president.
Thanks so very much, Nancy, for being so stupid as to let the American people know what your plan is for America if a Democrat president is sworn into office in January 2021. You are indeed deserving of the “Stuck on Stupid Saturday” award, and we thank you for being such a dunce. We are now forewarned . . . and we shall forever be forearmed!
Hawaii Legislature Seeking State-Sponsored Anti-Gun Propaganda
If you really stop and think about it, it’s just plain miraculous that we still have the right to bear arms in 2019. Sure, we need to give credit to the founding fathers and their foresight, but that alone isn’t enough. Liberal gun grabbers are ruthless, tireless, creative and entirely unscrupulous in their efforts. They find genuinely brilliant ways to subvert the conversation, and every time they do, more Americans fall into their trap.
If we’re being completely honest, only the equally tireless and uncompromising efforts of a very small minority have kept the gun grabbers at bay. Well, this new tactic might tip the scales.
The New Bill
The Hawaii legislature is hard at work on their 2019 gun-control agenda. It isn’t the goal that’s new, that’s always been the same—to take the state’s residents firearms away. Instead, it’s the tactic that represents a shift from the tried and true methods. To simplify, Hawaii is trying to create a state-sponsored propaganda outlet.
In better detail, this comes in the form of HB 1541. The bill is filled with legal terms and obfuscation, but if you get past the excrement, it boils down pretty neatly. The bill seeks to establish the Hawaii Gun Violence Prevention Center. You can already see how the propaganda is at work. This name sounds nice. After all, everyone wants there to be less gun violence.
It’s Not About New Laws; It’s about Enforcing the Ones We Have
The murders in Aurora, Illinois, reveal the inability or unwillingness of many in authority to ensure that our existing laws are working. The convicted felon who murdered five at his workplace last week should never have had a gun. We need to know why that happened so it can be fixed so it never happens again.
We already have the laws we need to stop the criminal misuse of guns. Drafting/enacting new laws, especially since nearly all proposals affect only the law-abiding, distracts us from the real solutions that are at hand. Getting these priorities backwards can and does cost lives.
We need political leaders who will assume responsibility for ensuring law enforcement agencies have the resources and authority to carry out their responsibilities. Those agencies must ensure they are doing what the law was intended to do.
Implementation is the Hard Part
That process, accomplished out of the public spotlight, is a whole lot harder than holding press conferences and passing new laws. Successful implementation of laws and continuing oversight does not make news. Lax, inadequate, misfocused or neglected enforcement does make news in the form of tragic incidents.
Since the news broke in the Illinois case, we’ve learned the murderer had been convicted for felony aggravated assault in Mississippi in 1995. One report said he’d bludgeoned and stabbed his girlfriend, which was documented in the victim’s own words in police records.
He served less than three years of a five-year prison sentence and continued to tangle with law enforcement. He was arrested six times by Aurora Police for traffic and domestic violence issues, including a 2008 arrest for violation of a protective order. Nearby Oswego police arrested him in 2017.
Despite his 1995 conviction, this felon was granted an Illinois Firearms Owner Identification Card (FOID) in 2014.
Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said the man’s past record “would not necessarily have shown up on a criminal background check conducted for the FOID card.” Successful applicants must not have been convicted of a felony. Disqualifications include domestic battery offenses. Just days after being issued this FOID, the murderer purchased a handgun.
Sending Out a Letter?????
Only when the murderer applied for a concealed carry permit did authorities ascertain his criminal past and that he was a prohibited person. They denied the permit and sent an FOID revocation letter to him, but no one acted to recover the firearm they knew he had. One report noted that Illinois State Police lacks the manpower and relies on an “honor system.”
The result of this poorly thought-out system is that the murderer took a gun he should have never owned, and the State Police knew he possessed, into his workplace. Moments after being fired, he began killing his co-workers.
Giffords Law Center rated Illinois “B+” for enacting strict gun control measures, ranking it 8th among all states for strengthening extreme risk protection orders, violence intervention programs and extended firearms purchase waiting periods. Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws on the books.
Where is the grade for the oversight to ensure that those laws work? It’s not enough to pass a law and move on.
Passing a new law is exactly what the Illinois legislature did. In a move that will do nothing to make our communities safer, Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed a duplicative law to regulate firearms retailers already subject to federal regulation. Legislators are considering more new laws, including additional taxes on guns, requirements to turn over social media accounts to buy guns and bans on entire classes of firearms.
Presidential Hopefuls Want More Laws
It’s not just Illinois, of course. Democratic presidential hopefuls call for more laws. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar tweeted that America needed universal background checks, despite these very checks failing to stop the Illinois murderer.
California Sen. Kamala Harris cites the need to ban so-called “assault weapons,” despite most murders being committed with handguns. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren blames the NRA for a public health emergency she claimed could be cured by more research. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand demonizes the firearms industry for what she said is indiscriminately selling guns to criminals, terrorists, children and the mentally ill.
Sen. Gillibrand and these other politicians who run on gun control promises, conveniently ignore the fact that it is the firearms industry that runs programs to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. It’s time our elected officials do the same.
What A Socialist Once Said About Gun Ownership
George Orwell (author of the book 1984) once said: “That rifle hanging on the wall of the working class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
Orwell’s entire career was a battle against totalitarianism on the right and the left, having fought on behalf of the Spanish republic and against both Franco’s fascists and communists supported by Stalin during that country’s civil war. And his essay, “Politics and the English Language,” takes a stand for clarity in language, as opposed to the mealy-mouthed dishonesty among politicians and the people who write about them.
2016 Election and the US Supreme Court and the Right To Bear Arms
Have you considered what we would be facing today if Hillary Clinton had won? At least two additional enemies of the Bill of Rights and the 2nd Amendment would currently be sitting on the bench with Ruth Bader Ginsburg nearly a lock to be replaced soon.
Where would our Rights stand now with a different outcome?
Wonder where Ginsburg stands on the 2nd Amendment? Justice Ginsburg has been hostile to the Second Amendment. She believes it does not apply to the modern world because it is old.
Justice Ginsburg voted against the Heller decision. She voted against the McDonald decision. Her opinion on the Second Amendment is clear. From armsandthelaw.com:
“If the court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new,” she said. “It gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only — and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.””
Ruth's position is to define the Second Amendment out of existence, without any real argument, because she believes it has no purpose in modern society. The fallback position is that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals. That is the essential Progressive position on the entire Constitution. It is old. Therefore, we can ignore it.
News Media Will Kill You and Your Children for Money and Power
Let’s take a step back and walk the world and stepping stones of celebrity violence.
Since its inception in 1980, CNN was one of the first 24-7 news cable outlets. Fox News came years later in 1996. Both had to fill the airwaves with compelling programming. That news environment was a revolution from the measured comments of the Walter Cronkite era. Today, the news can tell us the truth, or it can lie to us, but we’ll turn them off if they bore us for a second.
Enter the mass murder in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996. This was a perfect story for the news media. The story had a bad guy and lots of innocent victims. The media could speculate for hours on end as to why the murderer killed school children.. and they did exactly that. They showed the murderer’s face and said his name for days on end. The media turned the dead murderer into an overnight world-wide celebrity.
A month later we saw the next mass murder in Port Arthur, Australia where a man again murdered innocent victims. This murder, however, was different. The murderer had seen the publicity given to the Dunblane murderer. The murderer at Port Arthur wanted that celebrity for himself.
The truth is in the murderers’ journals, their doctor’s reports, and the police investigations. They told us why they killed. The murderers claim we ignored them when they were alive, but swore that we’d know their name after they murder innocent victims. With the help of the news media, they succeeded.
We can draw a direct line from Dunblane, Scotland to Port Arthur, Australia to Columbine, Colorado, to Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Extend the line onward to the Boston Marathon, the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, to Las Vegas, Nevada, and on to Parkland, Florida. The US news media gives each murder a billion dollars of publicity. The US news media, let alone the world media, turn the murderers into rock-star celebrities.
That billion-dollar publicity campaign is also a casting call that dredges up the next narcissistic murderer.
Psychologists and media experts said that a third or more of these mass murders could be stopped if we changed our media coverage. We know better. We know what to do, but there is a lot of money at stake. The media would have to stop showing the murderer’s face and saying his name. David Hogg is right; the media is reluctant to change if it costs them a dime.
Sensationalized news coverage means more eyeballs on the small screen. That means more advertising revenue for broadcast networks. Money talks, and morality walks. This immorality leaps across the billion dollar stepping stones from mass murder to mass murder. That path leads to our kid's school.
Some organizations want to stop this media inspired murder spree. We’ve done that before. We put journalistic guidelines in place to protect rape victims and stop teen suicides.
Ask your local TV station to refuse to use the face and name of a mass murder. Ask your station to sign on.
In the 'Are You Kidding Me' Pennsylvania State Police - Sanctuary Agency??
In an apparent bow to media and political pressure, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) have adopted a new policy that significantly ties the hands of the Keystone State’s 4,719 state troopers and 1,850 civilian employees when dealing with possible illegal aliens.
Anti-Gunner Statement on Gun Ownership: 'Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you're gonna have,' Sylvester Stallone has said. 'It's pathetic. It really is pathetic. It's sad. We're living in the Dark Ages over there.' Anti-Gun Hollywood Hypocrite-Sylvester Stallone
Founding Fathers Statement on Freedom: 'With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties.' Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms (1775)
Yours in Freedom!
Kim Stolfer, President
