Senator Feinstein's Constitutional End-run

Senator Feinstein's Constitutional End-run
By Alan P. Halbert

There's more than a touch of hypocrisy in the recent exploitation of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy by the MSM, Obama, and the Democrats. All the wanton murders due to Fast & Furious (estimated at 300 or more) do not appear equal to one life lost at Sandy Hook. The administration paid criminals to illegally arm drug cartels in Mexico, choosing to supply them with none other than "assault weapons", mostly AK-47's with some Barrett .50 caliber BMG rifles and a few hand grenades thrown in for good measure.

The result was the deaths of federal agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, along with another thirteen American citizens, and several hundred Mexicans. Another disgusting milepost for 2012 is the 500th homicide in Chicago, Obama's and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's hometown. This sad statistic was achieved when Nathaniel Jackson was shot and died at the scene on December 27th at 9:00 P.M. as he stood on a street corner.

The MSM has largely been silent about these tragedies, choosing instead to concentrate on the victims at Newtown. In the process they overlook at least 466 child gunshot victims with 68 fatalities in Chicago this past year alone.

This brings us to Senator Feinstein's attempt to revive the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 with her recently drafted gun control legislation. She will introduce this revamped legislation to the Senate in January in an effort to resolve our supposed epidemic of violence as revealed by Obama in his Sandy Hook speech to the nation. In effect, what this darling of the left has done is reintroduce all of the weapons that were not subject to registration initially.

This is simply a national gun-registration scheme; a synopsis of the NFA follows:

The National Firearms Act ("NFA"), 72nd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as 26 U.S.C. ch. 53, is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. (Note: bold emphasis is mine)

Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated the same as machine-guns, though they were exempted as the legislation moved its way through Congress. Feinstein's expansion of the NFA will include all of the weapons they had the intelligence to exclude previously.

It is interesting to note that the NFA became law right after the repeal of Prohibition. Congressmen of the day were intimately familiar with how unintended consequences play out from their legislative intent. Prohibition released a murderous rampage of gang-related violence on this nation dwarfing anything we have seen since, leading to the expansion of the Mafia and other organized crime syndicates that are still with us today, another testament to a benevolent Congress.

Owning an NFA weapon subjects the owner to loss of certain constitutional rights, chief amongst them the surrender of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to due process. The possession of an NFA weapon allows the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to demand inspection of these weapons any time they appear at your door, usually unannounced, all without a search warrant of course.

These weapons are individually registered to the owner. You are not allowed to transfer them without the express permission of the government. Transporting the weapon across state lines for any purpose without government approval beforehand is illegal. This is also applicable to each weapon you currently own. Senator Feinstein's draft does not discuss the waiver of the $200.00 dollar fee to register "grandfathered" weapons in the NFA database.

To legally posses an NFA weapon requires that the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) in your area of residence sign a BATF form that expressly allows the citizen to possess such weapons. You will also need to submit photographs of yourself, a fingerprint card, and of course, pay the $200.00 fee and possibly a registered Class III Transfer Agent, with his fee as well.

Imagine a harried rural or county sheriff overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests made to his office. This will probably place many weapons in limbo while the documents are in process. No doubt they will enact some method of holding these weapons while this plays out; probably leading to many lost, stolen, or outright confiscated weapons by attrition.

Not to mention how many LEOs will be required to perform the background checks on individuals for weapons that are already legally owned, taking them away from legitimate law enforcement duties. This will probably lead many local law enforcement agencies to throw up their hands and refuse to comply with these new requirements; again leaving law-abiding citizens in limbo with lawful weapons in their possession subjecting them to arrest and prosecution, leaving many weapons surrendered by default.

I have to wonder how many leftist CLEOs will choose this route? Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Chicago to name just a few cities play host to such officials. Of course, they will excuse themselves with "legitimate budget" busting cover story(s)... if only we had the funds....

You get the idea.

These tactics are nothing short of a backdoor scheme to render legal weapons illegal by redesignating them through the NFA as equivalent to automatic weapons. The result will be a national gun registration database for conventional arms. At the same time, these very same legislators (along with Obama) have encouraged untold carnage and mayhem through policies of looking the other way as regards the inner cities of this nation, Mexico, South America, and the Middle East as our government willingly supplies criminals, jihadists, and cartels with weapons.

Now in their ultimate wisdom, they wish to make pariahs and criminals out of law-abiding citizens by means of an act of Congress that will force us to reapply for our lawful and legally owned weapons for a false premise of security from ourselves.

Discussing the real reason for the Sandy Hook tragedy is beyond the gun control mentality of the leftists currently ensconced into the media, educational institutions and seats of power in this nation. It is simply about power and control... not guns. The action of our president in Fast & Furious and the arming of Al Qaeda in Libya, Syria and the pipeline of illegal weapons funneled by the Mexican drug cartels back into our nation renders this clear enough.

We are in far more danger from these actions of our own government than from another Sandy Hook atrocity by a crazed killer.

The Second Amendment's purpose is to provide for the citizens' defense from all who would deny their natural God- given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" against a criminal, a foreign or domestic enemy, or our own government. We will witness the end of the Republic if this proposed legislation is passed, since all of our rights flow from the citizen's ability to defend them.

As for this citizen, I will never disarm or surrender my Second Amendment rights, much less willingly comply with such a traitorous act of Congress if enacted... it is actions like these that light revolutionary fervor in a nation and its citizens. It did so in 1776 and it will do so again.