Diane Feinstein is getting on her closing the foreign felon loophole hobby horse again. For those unaware, about six years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the Gun Control Act’s prohibition, worded that someone convicted of certain offenses “in any court,” only applies to convictions and adjudications in American Courts. Feinstein wants to extend that to foreign courts, because clearly we can’t have Cuban dissidents, or other such dangerous persons who were not good Comrades, and displeased the party.
The fact that foreign courts routinely defecate on what we would regard as due process, even in civilized countries such as Japan, apparently is not a concern to DiFi. This is not surprising, since I doubt she’s all that thrilled about due process here, at least not when it comes to rights not valued by the left.
Does that mean a foreign kangaroo court could bar her from holding public office in the US?
I just love her bizarre logic
Feinstein opposes private gun ownership at every opportunity, even if she has to make up the opportunities. She would prohibit private citizens from owning guns for parking tickets if it came to a vote.
So, how many more federal bureaucrats are going to have to be hired to analyze foreign court convictions? More clerks, secretaries, administrators, translators, IT people, janitors and investigators, not to mention all the foreign travel that would be involved. Feinstein has no problem expanding government and spending more of our money during these tough economic times. Another definition of a communist is someone who thinks that she knows how to spend your money better than you do, and is therefore entitled to it. Feinstein meets that definition too, among others.
Senator Feinstein should sit down, shut up, go back to Commiefornia, and stay there. She’s a hideously ugly woman, and she doesn’t look good either.
A good response would be to make a list of Nobel Prize winning dissidents and such who are currently felons in their home countries. Heck, even if the USSR is gone I don’t think that makes the actual convictions of its courts disappear.
Anytime this is posted or brought up someone posts or reads the list.
I’m thinking Aung San Suu Kyi, Solzhenitsyn, Mandela (setting aside the terrorist thing, make them bring it up), Benizar Bhutto, and others…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents
If they want to play “foreign felons are bad” make them own the fact that “felon” /= “violent criminal”.
You might want to read this article I wrote for July 1, 2005 Shotgun News about what was wrong with this decision.
Given that foreign nationals who commit serious felonies overseas can lose their immigration status, just what is it the Feinstein thinks she’s solving with this? Can it really be something as weird and petty as enforcing this against Cuba’s enemies?
I’d go so far as to say that even most domestic felons shouldn’t be banned from firearms. In Clayton’s article, he even gave the example of someone who alters the VIN of a vehicle.
Besides the fact that so many minor things are becoming “felonies”–a troubling trend, in and of itself–I at least hope for the day that non-violent felony bans of arms are declared unconstitutional.
And then the next step would be to adopt the TSA “we think you committed a crime overseas even if you haven’t been formally charged so No Fly For You” approach, effectively barring thousands of US veterans (I know many of my official activities were considered crimes by the Soviets, Cubans, ChiComs and North Koreans).