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Chucky Schumer's DC Gun Grab
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Nothing's SacredChucky Schumer's DC Gun GrabKyle LohmeierThe attack of Sept. 11 should have reminded all Americans to be ever vigilant against the enemies of American freedom. This is true even if the attack was not masterminded by the most dangerous enemy of freedom. That's right, as much as he might like to be, Usama bin Laden is simply not the biggest threat to American freedom on Earth. Sure, he can terrorize us and, on rare occasion, he can kill us. Make no mistake; Sept. 11 was a disgusting and horrific display of one desperate, deluded fanatic's attempt to destroy America. But despite the horrific toll those attacks took, in many ways, it utterly failed because it drew Americans together in a way we haven't seen in ages.The fact is, bin Laden, despite all his efforts, doesn't have the ability to destroy the very fabric of American freedom. It is for this reason he must take a backseat to other enemies of our freedom, enemies who are far more capable of destroying our precious liberty.Just who is number one, you ask? Who is the biggest, most dangerous enemy to our freedom? Well, he's definitely not a starving, backward jihadi freezing his * off in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. No, this enemy of our freedom lives right here in the good old U S of A, and for his dastardly work draws a paycheck from our tax dollars that is likely worth more than the annual salaries of all of your faithful Texas Mercury writers put together. I am, of course, referring to the senior senator from New York, the despicable Charles Schumer.Riding on the wave of hysteria generated by Sept. 11, he is pushing a bill that will grant him what was earlier denied him by Attorney General John Ashcroft, a comprehensive list of gun owners, what they own, and where they live. Upon taking office, Ashcroft was roundly criticized by the senator for upholding the law, which stated that reports generated by the National Instant Check System couldn't be kept for longer than 24 hours. The Reno Justice Department had been illegally keeping the records much longer than that, turning the NICS into a de-facto national gun registry. Ashcroft's just and swift squashing of this practice outraged gun-grabbers from the Left, most notably Schumer. So, as promised, he's pushing a bill called the "Use NICS in Terror Investigations Act", the language of which makes no reference to terror investigations and puts no limits on what government agencies can use the records generated by NICS and for what purposes. It is, in a nutshell, a national gun registration plan and history teaches us national gun registries always lead to national gun confiscations. This is precisely why Schumer is far more dangerous to our liberties than Usama bin Laden could ever hope to be. Bin Laden's hatred of our freedoms is impotent, whereas Schumer is free to act on that disdain in a more meaningful way, a way that could actually destroy our liberties by taking from us the only means we have to safeguard them: our firearms.Now, gun-grabbers and fence sitters on the Second Amendment will think I've gone a bit far in accusing Schumer of being a bigger threat to our freedom than bin Laden. Well friends, history has this infuriating habit of repeating itself. By 1939 Adolph Hitler had every privately owned firearm in Germany listed on a national registry. Shortly thereafter there were no privately owned firearms in the hands of the German people. Soon after that "undesirable" Germans were herded onto railcars bound for extermination camps. With no firearms to shoot back at the brownshirts, German Jews and other persecuted people were powerless to resist. Don't think it can happen here? Must be nice to be such an optimist. As for me, I'll bank on my Smith & Wesson and my Remington long before I count on the good nature of people like Charles Schumer, who, by the way, doesn't have one.Now, there are two plausible explanations why Schumer wants a national registry of gun owners. One would be the stated purpose of the bill, to better assist law-enforcement with the apprehension of violent criminals and terrorists who use firearms in the commission of a crime (never mind that no Islamist terrorist has ever used a firearm in the commission of a crime in the United States). The other reason would be that it's impossible to dispatch members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to collect privately owned firearms without a list to work with. We all know the latter is the wet dream of Schumer, Ed Kennedy, Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and the other avowed gun-grabbers in the Senate and their counterparts in the house.Let us naively assume, however, that the former is the real reason Schumer wants a national firearm owner registry. Okay, so lets pretend he gets his way and every privately owned pistol, shotgun and rifle is catalogued and cross-matched by serial number to the name and address of the owner. Now, let's say we have a mass-shooting at some public place involving oh, say, a terrorist using a Browning Hi-Power. The jihadi is wounded in the exchange and flees, dropping the pistol, but he gets away. So, now the cops have this pistol there and should be able to simply punch the serial number into their database, wait for it to come back with the name and address of the owner and then simply go around and arrest him. Wow, how easy, right? Wrong. We'll even assume the serial numbers weren't obliterated on the Hi-Power before being misused by the criminal and the cops are able to enter the number into Schumer's proposed database. The result will be the same over 99 percent of the time; the gun will have been reported stolen from the person whose name is in the database some time long before the crime was committed.Why? Criminals aren't stupid. If they know the only way to buy a gun from Gander Mountain would involve having their name, social security number and driver license number linked to the pistol's serial number in the database, they won't buy the gun from Gander Mountain or any other Federal Firearms License holder. Instead, they'll buy it from the guy who's got a trunk load of stolen pistols in his `83 Chevy Impala. Why? Because stolen guns sold on the black market are both cheap and untraceable. So, if guns criminals use aren't included on Schumer's database, whose guns will be on there? The answer is simple: Mine, yours and those belonging to every law-abiding citizen who owns guns. Why? Because the only people who bother to register their guns, or bother to buy them in the appropriate manner are law-abiding citizens, just like we're the only ones who bother to get a concealed carry permit before carrying a concealed pistol. Criminals tend to skip that whole getting-a-license-to-carry step. Why? By definition, criminals do not obey the law. I suspect that, despite his statements to the contrary, Schumer knows this, but wants the government to compile that list anyway.So, this brings us to the central question: Why does Chucky Schumer and his gun-grabbing buddies on Capitol Hill want a comprehensive list of what Americans lawfully own which guns? I don't know, he and his staff declined to return any of the calls I placed to his office. Therefore, we can only guess at why he wants a list of privately owned firearms. I'm guessing this is because he knows that once in place, the list will exist longer than the Ashcroft DOJ will. Eventually, the evil little creep figures, a rabid gun-grabber like himself or Janet Reno will be in the Attorney General's seat in some future Democratic Administration. When that day comes, Schumer wants that gun-grabbing Attorney General to have his comprehensive list of gun owners at his disposal. Then, if there's another particularly nasty round in the War on Terror being waged and the political climate of the country shifts just a few more notches toward accepting totalitarianism, the letters can go out "inviting" gun owners in for an interview just like Arabic visa-violators were "invited" to come talk with the FBI. Those of us who, like me, decline the invitation can expect a visit from the wonderful men and women of the BATF, and we all remember how the BATF makes house calls (think Waco, Texas, in late February of 1993).Of course, I could just be paranoid. Maybe Schumer has perfectly innocent reasons for wanting to know the make model and serial number of every firearm I own. Maybe he really has no intentions of compiling that list for the express purpose of seeing it put to use in a not-to-distant future national firearm confiscation. Maybe. But, seeing as I don't trust Charles Schumer as far as I could throw Ed Kennedy, I'd rather he not have a list of what firearms every law-abiding citizen in the U.S. legally owns. Since the "legitimate" uses of that information by law-enforcement will be so limited and will never be worth the time and money spent compiling, updating and maintaining such a registry and the potential for abuse is so great, it would be far better if Schumer's bill died in committee.Kyle Lohmeier http://www.thetexasmercury.com/articles/lohmeier/KL20011223.html
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