PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Is The Justice Department About to Make a Move on Gun Rights? :: 06/23/2015
“The U.S. Supreme Court dealt Second Amendment supporters a major defeat by refusing to hear an appeal filed by San Francisco gun owners seeking to overturn that city’s requirement that all handguns kept at home and not carried on the owner’s person be ‘stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock.'” reason.com wrote earlier this month. “The action by the Court leaves that gun control ordinance on the books.”
Justices Thomas and Scalia wrote a stirring dissent (available here). Regardless, the denial of cert highlights a serious problem . . .
compliance with the Constitution is voluntary. Politicians who don’t honor the Constitution may ignore it. They can deny citizens their rights for decades – unless forced to obey the law by the courts. Even then, politicians may foot-drag, delay and obfuscate. Administration officials may go their own way, working to drag Americans down the path of civilian disarmament.
In the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre, don’t be surprised if the Obama administration puts its foot down on the gun control gas pedal. Consider this from an article published last month in The Hill . . .
The Justice Department plans to move forward this year with more than a dozen new gun-related regulations, according to list of rules the agency has proposed to enact before the end of the Obama administration.
The regulations range from new restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements. Chief among them is a renewed effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable or have been convicted of domestic abuse.”
The Justice Department plans to issue new rules expanding criteria for people who do not qualify for gun ownership, according to the recently released Unified Agenda, which is a list of rules that federal agencies are developing.
Needless to say, the DOJ’s selling these proposals as increasing public safety. “Doing something” about “gun violence.” The hidden agenda: disarming the law abiding.
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is looking to revive a rule proposed way back in 1998 that would block domestic abusers from owning guns.
As proposed, the regulation makes it illegal for some who has been convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to own a gun.
The ATF plans to finalize the rule by November, according to the Unified Agenda.
In the 1990s, many states adopted mandatory arrest laws, requiring police officers to arrest the “primary aggressor” whenever a domestic violence call was made. Under these well-intentioned laws, people who caused no injury to others found themselves jailed, their reputations and careers damaged for arguments in moments of stress. Most such laws still exist. The mere idea that a citizen can lose a fundamental right for a misdemeanor conviction is likewise abhorrent.
The ATF is also looking to prohibit the mentally ill from owning firearms, which is attracting even more criticism from gun rights groups.
The Obama administration is trying very hard to disqualify people from owning a gun on the basis that they are seeing a psychologist,’ [Gun Owners of America Counsel, Michael] Hammond argued.
Few disagree that arms should be denied the truly dangerous. The problem: the proposals of anti-liberty activists would sweep-up the law-abiding in a very large net, while doing little or nothing to inconvenience the dangerous. Some sixty million Americans take anti-depressants. Should they all lose their gun rights?
The fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive is spearheading this effort is deeply disconcerting. Setting aside the Bureau’s long history of corruption and extra-legal “enforcement” efforts, the recent decision to team-up with the NYPD to go after “gun crime” indicates the ATF’s desire to expand both their reach and power.
Combine that with the Department of Justice’s “supervision” of rogue police departments; the federalization of policing recently welcomed by Reverend Al Sharpton. If Al and his supporters get their way, there would be no Denver Police Department, only the Federal Police, Denver division.
More and more, defenders of liberty are also defenders of the Second Amendment. It has always been so, by design. If America is to survive, we dare never be complacent. Those who would exploit raw emotion to steal liberty surely aren’t.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/06/mike-mcdaniel/danger-complacency/
