Category: Gun Rights

Don’t let this stop you from contacting your Critters, but this is welcome news:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tossed cold water on the prospect of reinstating the assault weapons ban, highlighting Democrats’ reluctance to take on gun issues.

Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect Wednesday that the administration would push to bring back the ban. But Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Thursday that he never talked to her. The Speaker gave a flat “no” when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban.

“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “I think it’s clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.”

That’s not a clear “we’re not going to do it,” but it’s about as close as you’ll get from Pelosi.  Keep pressure on Congress.  I will be doing a more detailed analysis later to see which critters should be targeted for calls, letters, etc.  That’s not to say all them shouldn’t be, but some are more important than others.  If the “blue dog” dems get hounded (no pun intended) with calls just from Holder opening his yap, it gives them a reason to remind the White House and leadership not to put them in a difficult spot.  It makes it less likely we’ll have to fight a bill.

Hat Tip to Blog o Stuff

Gillibrand is changing her position on Tiahrt, but still sticking to her “needs to fixed” language:

Gillibrand acknowledged backing Tiahrt’s repeal by signing the letter, an aide said, but denied making a 180-degree turn on the measure. Gillibrand said instead that Tiahrt needs to be “fixed.

“I have always supported law enforcement having access to all of the information they need to keep us safe, fight against gun violence and keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” she said in a statement.

Gillibrand said there is language in Tiahrt that “specifically says that it will not limit data sharing for law enforcement.”

But she said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others “have made clear that the law does, on occasion, obstruct information-sharing for law enforcement.”

I don’t regret donating to her, because she’ll still be better than than likely alternatives.  McCarthy as a Senator would be a disaster for us.  If this is the issue she picked to part with us on, that’s fine if it helps her avoid a primary challenge from the left.  But it calls into question her reliability on other gun rights issues, and is why I put her down as a maybe on the AWB.  Remember that one of her predecessors, Al D’Amato, voted against the 1994.  It’s not out of the question that she will stick with us on that.  We need to pressure her, and give her reasons not to vote yes.

Oklahoma Democrat, Dan Boren, is forming a Second Amendment Task Force in The House, which “will be charged with monitoring legislation regarding the Second Amendment during the 111th Congress.”  Jason Altmire, from the Pennsylvania delegation, is also in the group.

The group is bipartisan.  Might be a wise idea to contact your Congress Critter and ask him to join Boren’s task force.  This sends a message to the Administration and Pelosi that this is not an issue to bring up in the 111th Congress.

According to MS-NBC:

At a press conference announcing the arrests, Holder also suggested that re-instituting a U.S. ban on the sale of assault weapons would help reduce the bloodshed in Mexico, where last year 6,000 people were killed in drug-related violence.

U.S. officials have a responsibility to make sure Mexican police “are not fighting substantial numbers of weapons, or fighting against AK-47s or other similar kinds of weapons that have been flowing to Mexico,” Holder said.

So we are going to lose our gun rights because our government can’t secure its borders, and the Mexican government can’t secure law and order and weed out corruption in its military, which is no doubt a large source of firearms for drug cartels.

Interestingly enough, it was not in his prepared remarks, so it must have been in a question. This is from the Administration, folks.  Obama may be willing to burn political capital on this issue.  Get ready.

UPDATE: Exact quote [previous article changed, quote now can be found here] “As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Mr. Holder said. “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”

Remember 1994.  That’s all I have to say.  We’ll do it again.  Don’t believe us?  Try it.

UPDATE: Wayne LaPierre will make an appearance on Cam and Company in a few minutes to talk about this.  Tune in to NRANews.com

Montana is getting closer to the idea, via SayUncle:

Under a proposed law before the Legislature, firearms, weapons components and ammunition made in Montana and kept in Montana would be exempt from federal regulation, potentially releasing some Montanans from national gun registration and licensing laws. The legislation could also free gun purchasers in the state from background checks.

I don’t see how this gets past Gonzalez vs. Raich, where The Court ruled that Congress may regulate intrastate commerce in items where such a scheme of regulation is meant to control the national market in a certain good.  But that’s not really the point.  States shouldn’t feel they have to accept every ruling that comes down the pike.  They should undertake more measures like this to assert their interests as separate sovereigns in our federal system.  The Supreme Court does not have a monopoly on interpreting the constitution.

They pushed for ammunition restrictions in the home, now they want to the whole kaboodle:

He said a national register had to be created to keep track of the weapons, something police had long been seeking.

Lang said the weapons had to be “banished” from homes.

Barbara Weil, of the Swiss Medical Association, said it had been scientifically proven that if the guns were less freely available the number of suicides would drop.

Despite the fact that the Swiss have one of the lowest rates of crime in the industrialized world, the anti-gun groups in Switzerland managed to get registration, and now, what do you know, they are pushing for confiscation.

Confiscation always seem to follow registration.  It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

Dave Kopel has an excellent article in the National Review that’s well worth reading, offering Senator Gillibrand some very smart political reasoning for sticking to her position on gun rights:

Thanks to the New York media, if there’s one thing that New York voters know about Kirsten Gillibrand, it’s that she’s pro-gun. For most of those voters, the gun issue is not a top priority one way or the other; New York has elected quite a few pro-gun candidates, including Ronald Reagan twice, Sen. Al D’Amato three times, Sen. James Buckley once, and Gov. George Pataki, who ran as a pro-gun candidate and unseated Mario Cuomo in 1994, three times.

Read the whole thing.  Hopefully, she’ll listen.