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
Killing two constitutional rights with one stone :: 06/17/2015
Supporters of the Second Amendment have much to be proud of in recent years, from Supreme Court victories such as Heller and McDonald, to the relaxation or elimination of various states’ restrictions on the right to carry and the defeat of federal gun control measures pushed during the emotionally-charged wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.
Moreover, violent crime rates, and gun crimes in particular, have enjoyed a long, steady decline while, at the same time, gun sales and deregulation have increased, providing empirical support for the “more guns, less crime” theory. But this has not deterred the Obama administration from seeking more controls on law-abiding gun owners.
President Barack Obama signed 23 gun-related executive orders in the weeks following the Sandy Hook tragedy, though their effects were limited. The Justice Department recently announced that it is pursuing at least a dozen gun regulations that gun rights organizations contend are infringements upon the constitutional rights of many harmless individuals, including veterans, and would render victims of domestic violence defenseless against abusive spouses. Now, the State Department is revising arms trafficking regulations and redefining them so as to stifle discussion of guns and ammunition specifications over the Internet.
At issue is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which details regulations to implement the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, intended to control the import and export of defense articles and services, from guns and ammunition to fighter jets, ballistic missiles, spacecraft and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Under the State Department’s revisions, numerous definitions and provisions would be (perhaps intentionally) vague and broad.
“Defense article” would be redefined as “any item, software or technical data” contained under separate provisions, and “making technical data available via a publicly available network (e.g., the Internet)” would constitute an “export.” In addition, “technical data” would include “[i]nformation required for the development (including design, modification and integration design), production (including manufacture, assembly and integration), operation, installation, maintenance, repair, overhaul or refurbishing of a defense article.”
“In other words, posting information on virtually any firearm or ammunition could be defined by the Obama administration as being the ‘export’ of a ‘defense article,’” Gun Owners of America maintains. “The language is so broad that it could potentially include virtually any gun-related communication of a functional ‘how-to’ nature.” GOA also notes that 3-D printing plans would appear to fall under these definitions, and that the revisions seem “to be an effort to outlaw this technology by executive fiat.”
“Gunsmiths, manufacturers, [ammunition] reloaders and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled under the rule and unable to distribute or obtain the information they rely on to conduct these activities,” adds the National Rifle Association.
In order to abide by these regulations, one would have to get prior permission from the government, and likely pay a hefty license fee.
Violations are punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
The State Department claims that it is merely clarifying or updating regulatory language, and that they represent “no substantive change.” “But if there’s one unbreakable rule in politics, it’s that, when drafters take the time and effort to add a provision to the underlying text, it is never, never, ever without reason,” GOA cautions. “At the very least, such a convoluted process would have a ‘chilling effect’ on gun-related speech.”
So the Obama administration intends to contravene both the First Amendment and the Second Amendment without so much as a vote of Congress. Gunsmiths or gun owners discussing the technical specifications and functions of commonly-owned pistols and rifles is a far cry from disclosing classified details on the inner workings of strategic bombers to foreign governments.
It makes no sense to classify them as such – unless the goal is simply to deny firearm ownership to as many people as possible.
http://www.pe.com/articles/gun-770655-regulations-export.html
