The comment period ends on June 7, 2013. Government by fiat…

 

 

– Tell HHS their new regs are crazy

“Gun Owners of America [has] spent the months since Newtown doing tremendous damage, insisting that expanded background checks will lead to a gun registry.” – New York Times, April 4, 2013

It’s quite a compliment when the New York Times thinks that you are doing “tremendous damage.”  But you can be sure that the other side is not going to go away quietly.

And sure enough, the Obama Administration is trying to unilaterally undo our recent victory in the Senate – and to undo the “damage” that all of us inflicted together.

But first, a little history.

Remember when Senators Pat Toomey, Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer formed an unholy alliance during the recent gun battle on Capitol Hill?  Remember how their amendment would have encouraged your psychiatrist to turn you in to the FBI’s gun ban list?

And you remember how we stopped that provision, because over 40 senators found it to be odious and a violation of the Second Amendment?

Well, guess what?  Barack Obama has just concluded that “he don’t need no stinkin’ Senate.”

Instead, Secretary Kathleen “ObamaCare” Sebelius – and her Department of Health and Human Services – has promulgated regulations which would, by executive fiat, waive all federal privacy laws and encourage you doctor to report you to the FBI.

Understand a couple of things:  First, the standard which your doctor would use to turn you in is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007. Specifically, you doctor would “drop a dime” on you if he suspected you were even a slight “danger to yourself of others” or were “unable to manage your financial affairs.”

So if they say you can’t balance your checkbook, then you lose your constitutional rights.

But there’s another problem:  The day these regulations become law, lawyers will be lining up to sue “deep-pocket” psychiatrists for every case where they failed to turn in a patient to NICS – if the patient subsequently engages in a horrific act.

The bottom line?  Any psychiatrist who failed to report all of his patients to the NICS system risks losing everything if any of them engages in harmful conduct.  Soon the rule of thumb will be: See a shrink; lose your guns.

And the regulations will apply to private, as well as government-employed psychiatrists.

The bad news is that 165,000 military veterans have already lost their gun rights because of the “see a VA shrink, lose your gun rights” precedent from the Clinton-Bush era.

Sadly, what happened to military veterans has now begun in the private sector – especially in places like New York, after they recently passed their misnamed SAFE Act.

According to gun rights reporter, Dan Roberts, firearms are now being confiscated from gun owners because of their mental health information. For example:

“[John Doe] received a letter from the Pistol Permit Department informing him that his license was immediately revoked upon information that he was seeing a therapist for anxiety and had been prescribed an anxiety drug. He was never suicidal, never violent, and has no criminal history.”

So now taking anxiety pills can result in one’s forfeiting their Second Amendment rights in New York!

This is where the gun haters want to push their agenda.  And this is one reason why background checks are so dangerous – because they give government bureaucrats the opportunity to deny law-abiding people their constitutionally-protected rights.

But the good news is this:  The HHS rulemaking is still at an early stage, and HHS is (no doubt reluctantly) taking the views of the general public.

ACTION: Go to the Federal Register – at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-23/pdf/2013-09602.pdf – and respond to the regs entitled “HIPAA Privacy Rule and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).”

Let the HHS know how you feel about waiving all federal privacy laws for people who seek counseling.

Also, be sure to tell your congressmen that you oppose the “see a shrink, lose your guns” regs issued by the HHS.  Ask him to issue his own comments as well.

The regs themselves lay out several ways that you may submit your opposition.  The comment period ends on June 7, 2013.

 

Watching a dung beetle drag its “prey” back to its lair: Chuck Schumer

“Immigration reform could be a bonanza for Democrats [and] cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.” — Politico, April 22, 2013

In 1984, California was sufficiently conservative so that it cast its electoral votes for President Ronald Reagan. It was not fiercely pro-gun, but, then again, it wasn’t New York.

But, in 1986, Reagan signed an immigration amnesty bill, called Simpson-Mazzoli. The bill was small compared to the current amnesty bill. Three million illegals benefited.

But that was enough to change California from a sometimes “swing state” to a state almost wholly controlled by Leftists. Within 20 years — and continuing to this day — California couldn’t pass enough gun bans, gun registration, ammunition limits, and ammunition registration.

So it is with some concern that Chuck Schumer’s amnesty bill (S. 744) which is currently on the table would cover 11,000,000 to 20,000,000 illegal aliens — four to seven times the size of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill.

We predict that, if the bill is passed, by 2035, the American electorate will have changed so fundamentally that California-style gun control could become a very real possibility in this country!

We know you’re tired. We have just fought a hard-fought battle over explicit gun control in the Senate — a battle which we won.

But it does strike us as interesting that the same gun control crazies who pushed gun control want to slam immigration amnesty through the Senate quickly so they can redirect their fire against us again.

Who are the chief architects of forging a more anti-gun electorate? Well, the chief sponsor of S. 744 is Chuck Schumer, and he is joined by other Second Amendment haters such as Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and compromiser John McCain (R-AZ).

Over the next week or so, we’ll let you in on some of the anti-gun specifics of Schumer’s “amnesty bill,” as it’s correctly dubbed. But for starters, the bill would push us towards a biometric ID card, which is something that GOA has opposed for years — given that a de facto National ID poses a huge threat to gun owners’ privacy.

But then there’s the fact that Schumer’s “amnesty bill” requires the government to give its okay — in a Brady Gun Check-type procedure — before you could get a private job in America (section 3(c)(2)(A)(iii)). Does anyone not see why this might be a problem?

We’ve just gone through excruciating pain to stop the expansion of Brady Checks for guns. Now we turn around and the same parties who were pushing that are now pushing Brady Checks for private jobs.

It’s ironic that those pushing for background checks are adamantly against ID’s for voting because that would disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, and minorities. Hmm, so they do understand that background checks — as a prior restraint — are a fundamentally flawed concept?

But this is where the real fun starts. You feed the potential employee’s info into a government database and, according to Senator Durbin, “up pops a picture.” And, says Durbin, “if that picture doesn’t match [the one on your ID], you may not be employed.”

The Brady Check deals with a list of names which is in the millions. It deals only with things like names and social security numbers, not pictures. Yet it gives “false negatives” 8% of the time. And if you’re one of those 8% who are illegally denied a gun, the FBI’s response, more often than not, is “So sue us.” If this weren’t bad enough, the system breaks down for days at a time — normally the times when the most people need it.

Do we really want to expand this flawed concept to other areas of our lives?

If this weren’t bad enough, we know that, once the government has to give its approval before you can do something, it’s an almost iron-clad guarantee that it will exercise that power in a political manner. Under the Brady Check system, 165,000 law-abiding honorable veterans have lost their gun rights, not because they have done anything wrong, but because they sought counseling from the VA on the basis of a traumatic experience in the military.

Watching Schumer explain on the Senate floor why those veterans should lose their constitutional rights without any court order — while he vigilantly defends due process for foreign terrorists — is like watching a dung beetle drag its “prey” back to its lair.

So we know 165,000 non-politically correct veterans lost their gun rights under Brady Checks. Who will become politically incorrect unemployable non-persons under Brady Checks for Jobs?

Now, one would think that the fact that one million people in Boston were put under house arrest last week because our current immigration system allowed two asylum-seekers from terrorist-filled Chechnya to become legal residents and, in one case, a citizen of our country, will put the skids on the “inevitability” of Schumer’s amnesty bill. After all, gun control was “inevitable” too.

But the bottom line is this: Just as we saw the gun ramifications of ObamaCare, we will also see the problems with a bill that alters the electorate in such a way that the Second Amendment will cease to exist. In doing so, we will need to make sure that we don’t have most of our guns registered or confiscated in 2035 because short-sighted politicians listened to MSNBC and turned our country blue.

But we will also make sure that we do not take bad gun law and turn it into bad employment law.

ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose the anti-gun Schumer amnesty bill (S. 744).

Schumer, like Bloomberg et al seem to be one hundred percent on the wrong side of things one hundred percent of the time!

 

Related articles

• ‘Amnesty Is Amnesty’ (freebeacon.com)
• Chuck Schumer triumphs on politics of immigration reform: Rich Lowry (oregonlive.com)
• Morning Bell: American Families Cannot Afford the Cost of Amnesty (heritage.org)

The epic failure Obama blows his stack on gun control vote

In reaction to the U.S. Senate‘s rejection of a gun control bill he had been pushing Congress to pass, Barack Obama blew his stack in his comments about the defeat, pitching a tantrum in front of the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.

 

Attorney and radio commentator Hugh Hewitt, reacting to Obama’s explosive tone, stated that the president had acted in a manner that is unbecoming to the office of president and added to the pain and heartache of those who are suffering in the wake of the Newtown shooting.

 

Vowing that he would continue to do all that is necessary to pass more gun control legislation, Obama castigated Senate Republicans and a few Democrats who voted with them in defeating the Toomey-Manchin compromise measure that would have vastly expanded background checks on gun purchases.

 

But Obama reserved his harshest words for the National Rifle Association (NRA) that had vigorously opposed the new gun control measure, accusing the organization of lying to the public:

 

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. It came down to politics. They (the NRA) claimed that it would create some sort of big-brother gun registry, even though it did the opposite. This pattern of spreading untruths … served a purpose. A minority in the U.S. Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery.

 

Hewitt went further to say that despite Obama’s threats, Americans by and large oppose any more gun control and place the issue near the bottom of the list of issues voters view as important.

 

If anything, said Hewitt, voters in Colorado, for example, will probably turn out dozens of Democrats from the state legislature which engaged in serious overreach in approving draconian gun control laws over the objections of the voters in the state. Hewitt stated that Colorado may even go as far as to have recall elections for many of the Democrats who voted in favor of the gun control measures.

 

SOURCE

 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Related articles

• In blow to Obama, U.S. Senate blocks gun-control plan (firstpost.com)
• After gun bill falters in Congress, Fla. Legislature sends ‘Hands off our guns’ memorial to Obama (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Gun control rejected in big blow to Obama (thehill.com)
• BREAKING: Manchin-Toomey Background Checks Bill Officially Defeated In 54-46 Vote – Roll Call Included, See How Your Senators Voted (patdollard.com)
• Lawmakers react to gun bill opposition (wpri.com)
• US Senate rejects expanded gun background checks (metronews.ca)
• President Obama slams senators who opposed gun measure (whas11.com)

Really, such an epic failure… He sounded like a cry baby throwing a temper tantrum.

 

No More “Mr. Nice Guy” It’s time for Congressmen to get off the pot

GOA has been issuing multiple alerts recently because of the imminent danger that is facing us – as the Senate will soon be taking up gun control legislation.

Much of the focus has been on the Senate. But if anyone thinks that the House – and specifically Speaker John Boehner – is our fail-safe to killing gun control in the Congress, they had better think again.

Speaking on Meet the Press on March 10, Speaker Boehner said that he has “made clear if the Senate acts on gun control legislation, the House will consider it.”

Quite simply, that means that House Speaker John Boehner will allow the House to consider votes on gun control legislation.

Not only that, in an article entitled “House GOP Leaders: We can pass gun control, immigration, without Republican support,” Breitbart.com reported that on issues like guns, Speaker Boehner was open to “taking rogue Republicans across the aisle to work with Democrats.” The House leadership quickly backtracked from this position once the Breitbart article was published.

Regardless, this just underscores how we can’t forget about the House, and how we need to keep the pressure on congressmen – especially the Republicans.

Sadly, at a time when the House leadership announces that they support universal gun registry legislation – only to quickly backtrack – we get nothing but excuses, excuses, excuses about why many GOP congressmen have not signed onto the Stockman-Broun letter.

Representatives Steve Stockman (R-TX) and Paul Broun (R-GA) are doing a bang-up job in the House. They are two of the most active leaders working to defeat gun control in Congress.

And to that end, the Stockman-Broun letter uses precedent to call upon Speaker Boehner to reject all gun control legislation unless it has the support of 117 Republicans. This is called the “Hastert Rule.” And, if Boehner follows it, virtually no gun control can come to the floor of the House. Virtually none.

So far, more than 25 pro-gun Representatives have signed onto the Stockman-Broun letter – and they should be thanked. But there should be lots more.

It’s very frustrating, however, when we have asked pro-gun Congressmen to sign onto the Stockman-Broun letter to tell Speaker Boehner NOT to bring up gun control, but we hear all kinds of excuses as to why they can’t.

Here are the types of excuses that GOA is getting as to why congressmen won’t sign onto the letter, and our answers to their lame excuses:

• EXCUSE #1: One office said it had signed other gun control letters.
  ANSWER: There’s no quota on your support for the Second Amendment.
• EXCUSE #2: Another office said they were afraid of Boehner’s wrath.
  ANSWER: You may want to consider your constituents’ wrath instead.
• EXCUSE #3: A third office said that gun control was never coming to the House.
  ANSWER: Are you going to do nothing until the anvil actually falls on your head? Boehner has publicly stated that Senate-passed gun control would be “considered” by the House.
• EXCUSE #4: A fourth office said the congressman had promised to be bipartisan.
  ANSWER: Obama’s ruthless pursuit of his political goals, at the same time he mouthed words of “bipartisanship” is the reason why he controls the White House and you don’t.
• EXCUSE #5: A few offices have said they fear this letter is challenging Boehner’s authority.
  ANSWER: The Stockman-Broun letter does nothing of the sort. It simply asks the Speaker to follow a rule that was established by a former Republican Speaker of the House. No sanctions are stated or implied – it is only a request asking the Speaker to use the Hastert Rule to kill gun control.

Click here to see the list of Republican congressmen who SHOULD BE on the Stockman-Broun letter, but are not.

ACTION: If your congressman has NOT cosigned the Stockman-Broun letter, then please contact him or her immediately. You may click here to send them a prewritten email. Demand that your Representative sign the letter invoking the Hastert Rule to kill gun control in the House.

 

Related articles

• GOP’s far-right flank demands ‘Hastert Rule’ fealty (maddowblog.msnbc.com)
• Boehner Pledges to Stick to Hastert Rule (politicalwire.com)
• McCarthy won’t rule out passage of bills lacking majority GOP support (thehill.com)

The Left is not happy at all with Gun Owners of America: Nothing new about that!

“It’s people like [Erich] Pratt who could derail even modest efforts to bring a modicum of sanity to the nation’s gun laws,” said The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart on January 16, 2013.

And then there were the insults that CNN’s Piers Morgan threw at GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt when Morgan ran out of arguments — even calling him an “idiot” and “incredibly stupid.”

The Left is scared that their hopes for greater gun control may fall short.  They are scared that history is going to repeat itself.

Remember the battle in 2004 when we fought the renewal of Feinstein’s semi-auto ban?  The media mourned that:

“GOA’s lobbying probably torpedoed the best chance for [renewing the semi-auto ban] this year.” (National Journal, July 17, 2004).

It’s been almost ten years since we won that battle.  And it’s been even longer since GOA stood alone after the Columbine tragedy — drawing a line in the sand — and told Congress that gun owners would accept NOT ONE WORD of gun control.

Now, here we are in 2013 — and the anti-gunners are hysterical.  They are worried that their attempts to get stricter gun laws this year are about to slip through their fingers.

For us, this is all good news.  But let us make this perfectly clear:  THE BATTLE IS NOT WON YET.

And we have to continue to pound, pound, pound — just as we have done over the past two months.

That said, there are good signs around Capitol Hill that your activism is producing tremendous results:

* Anti-gun radicals have all but given up on their ability to pass Feinstein’s semi-automatic ban and magazine ban.  Instead, they are focusing on their universal gun registry and a trafficking/licensure bill.

* If we can just get 117 Republicans in the House to sign the Stockman-Broun letter insisting that no gun control be brought up in the House without the support of 117 Republicans, it will be difficult for House Speaker John Boehner to bring up any gun control in the House.

* The handful of House liberal anti-gun Republicans seem to be holding firm in opposition to the universal gun registry.  Philadelphia suburban Congressman Meehan -– one of the Left’s two key targets -– yesterday flatly resisted MSNBC’s call for him to endorse the registry.

* Unlike the gun control fight after Columbine -– which we won, with great difficulty -– the pro-gun movement is united.  MSNBC’s Joy Reid lamented on January 25 that NRA had become hard-core in order to “compete with extremist [sic] groups like Gun Owners of America.”

* As predicted, the mainline media has shifted, just a little bit, from gun grabbing to job-destruction and amnesty.

So keep up the good work.  Your efforts have taken us a long way toward victory.  But we are not there yet.  We want to thank you for standing with us and for keeping the pressure on!

In Liberty,

Larry Pratt

Reid & McConnell are reportedly about to change the Senate rules

It’s probably a harbinger of sell-outs to come.  But Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is apparently about to conclude an agreement with Majority Leader Harry Reid which would sell out pro-gunners and decimate minority rights under the Senate rules.

This change could occur as early as Wednesday.  If enacted, it could handcuff pro-gun forces and keep them from defeating the most radical initiatives aimed at restricting our Second Amendment rights.

The first of two changes would allow Harry Reid -– and only Harry Reid –- to circumvent the hurdles that the minority could use to slow down a controversial gun control bill.

As you may remember from the fight over the anti-gun ObamaCare bill, the filibuster of the “motion to proceed” is the last point where pro-gunners can delay a bill before Harry Reid can bribe Senators and buy votes with deals like the infamous Cornhusker Kickback.

If Reid follows this procedure, McConnell could offer two “germane” amendments on behalf of Republicans.  But given the willingness of Democrats to destroy the Senate rules by brute force, you can expect them to drastically limit what amendments would be considered “germane,” thus restricting the ability of the minority to effectively filibuster an anti-gun bill.

The second Reid-McConnell amendment would make it virtually impossible to stop a bill from going to House-Senate conference committee.

Currently, if pro-gunners suspect that Democrats intend to take a tiny bill and write comprehensive gun control in a House-Senate conference, they can stop the bill from going to conference and require that it be bounced back-and-forth in an amendable form — what is known as ping-ponging — between the two houses.

But this Reid-McConnell change would allow Reid to force a conference to prevent the minority from, once again, stopping gun control legislation from being written in a conference committee and crammed down Senators’ throats on a take-it-or-leave it basis.

The bottom line?  Given that Harry Reid has consistently abused the Senate rules and locked Republicans out of the amendment process, why should McConnell reward him with this massive expansion of his powers?

And what does this say about the likelihood that McConnell will show any courage on the gun issue when it comes before the U.S. Senate?

The President and his allies in the Congress want to impose Universal Background Checks, among other things, upon every gun purchaser in America.  This would finally give gun grabbers the information they need to identify and register every gun buyer (whether the purchase was completed as a private sale or through a gun dealer).

Given that the Democrats in New York are trying to CONFISCATE guns from law-abiding gun owners, gun owners should rise with ONE VOICE in opposing any legislation or rules changes that would allow federal bureaucrats to register gun owners.

And more to the point, gun owners need to contact their Senators immediately and demand that they leave the Senate rules alone!

At the rate that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is going — if he concludes a deal limiting the use of the filibuster — it would not be surprising if a number of primary opponents emerge to challenge him.

ACTION:  Click here to contact your U.S. Senators immediately.  While you can contact them here through CapWiz, we would strongly encourage you to call your Senators and DEMAND that they leave the filibuster alone!

You can reach them by calling the U.S. Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121.  And, please call Sen. Mitch McConnell (202-224-2541) and tell him to make NO DEALS to limit the use of the filibuster.

McCain may be working to stab us in the back, and what else is new..?

Whether the Semi-Auto Ban Passes May
Depend on What Happens to the Senate Rules

McCain may be working to stab us in the back

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is still trying to rig the Senate rules so that President Barack Obama can get his anti-gun and anti-Constitution agenda passed.

But first, here’s some good news.

GOA activists like yourself are having an impact!

Prior to the New Year, the reports coming out of Washington, DC indicated that Senator Harry Reid was going to nuke the filibuster on the first day of the new Congress (which would have been yesterday).

But Politico, which is one of the official papers of Capitol Hill, reported yesterday that Reid still doesn’t have the votes — despite having a Democrat majority.

The Politico headline blared:  “Reid expected to Postpone Filibuster Rule Change:  May buy time for a bipartisan bill.”

This is somewhat good news, as it means that Reid still can’t cram a rules change down our throats, limiting the ability that pro-gun Senators have to filibuster (or kill) anti-gun legislation.

But here’s the bad news:  Reid is working on a “compromise” where certain RINO’s like John McCain will help Reid do his bidding.

What’s at stake?

Well, The Blaze reported yesterday that Vice President Joe Biden “guaranteed” to ailing Boston Mayor Tom Menino that sweeping gun control legislation would be passed by the end of January.

How sweeping?

A quick look at Feinstein’s semi-auto ban legislation suggests that up to 75% of all handguns currently in circulation would be banned, along with as much as 50% of all long guns.

Depending on its configuration, the AR-15 you already have would probably be treated like a machine gun.  You would have to be fingerprinted, background checked by the FBI, and undergo a six-month license application process to keep it.  And when you die, the government will seize it.

If you don’t get an NFA license, you can expect the SWAT teams to descend on your house.

But, you ask, how could such rabidly anti-gun legislation ever get past Congress?  Well, legislators could simply follow the path they took on the fiscal cliff, where they bludgeoned a minority of Senators into accepting several, coerced short-cuts in regard to the Senate rules.

However, these forced short-cuts would now become mandated and set in stone if Harry Reid & Co. get their way.

Under one new “compromise” being floated on Capitol Hill, the Senate would change its rules so that it could pass a gun ban with only 50 votes (plus the vote of Vice President Joe Biden).  Or legislators could write the gun ban in a House-Senate conference committee on a “must-pass” bill, employing a tactic that is frequently used to pass controversial legislation.  Democrats like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Nevada’s Harry Reid, and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey — who will not have to run for reelection for a while — will cast “courageous” votes for this gun ban.

And it will hit the House with enormous momentum — momentum which House Speaker John Boehner (who has already called for a dialogue on gun control) may not have the courage to resist.

But the first step will be to demolish the Senate rules so that gun control only requires 50 votes — or so that gun control can be inserted in a House-Senate conference report on a must-pass bill.  And this is where John McCain comes in.

GOA working with Senator Rand Paul to preserve the filibuster

McCain was irritated at Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who worked with Gun Owners of America on a variety of pro-gun issues that slowed down his defense funding bill.   So McCain would not lose any sleep if his rules “compromise” diminished our ability to kill anti-gun legislation in the future.

McCain is now working with Leftist anti-gun Senator Carl Levin on a series of rules changes to make gun control a lot easier to pass.

The first McCain-Levin rules change would make it impossible to fight — what’s known in Washington as — the “motion to proceed.”  Remember ObamaCare?  Our last real shot to kill ObamaCare was by filibustering the “motion to proceed” to that anti-gun legislation.  Once the motion was adopted, the bill became amendable and Harry Reid could play “let’s-make-a-deal.”  So this change would eliminate our last real opportunity to set up a roadblock and keep anti-gun legislation from even being considered.

The second McCain-Levin rules change would make it easier to add gun control to a bill in conference.  Currently, senators can block a House-Senate conference from considering an anti-gun bill.  But if the McCain proposals are adopted, a “must-pass” bill could be sent to conference … amended in conference with a draconian gun ban … and then sent back to the House and the Senate on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

McCain will try to tell you that that inserting a gun ban into a bill that is sitting in a House-Senate conference would be outside the “scope of conference.”  But that would be a lie, because as any Senator knows, “scope of conference” rules are never followed.  For example, the Gramm-Rudman spending guidelines were written in conference from the ground up.

The third McCain-Levin rules change would block any amendments except for those offered by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or Floor Manager John McCain.  All other senators would be left out in the cold.

This McCain-Levin package must be stopped.

We are currently working with Senator Rand Paul, who is planning to offer a GOA-originated amendment requiring a two-thirds vote in the Senate before any anti-gun measure can be passed.

We know.  We know.  If it were up to us, gun control would not be able to be passed with 100 votes.  But we need to propose something which will pass the Senate.

So we need your help in opposing the McCain package and supporting the Paul amendment.

ACTION:  Click here to contact your Senators.  Demand that they (1) oppose the McCain-Levin package to make gun control easier to pass, and (2) support the Rand Paul amendment to require a two-thirds vote to enact gun control.

 

Related articles

• McCain, Levin propose curbing filibusters (rep-am.com)
• 113th Congress: Harry Reid Ready to “Change the Rules” (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)
• Filibuster Reform Uncertainty Worries Proponents (tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com)
• A Big Moment for Filibuster Reform (takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com)
• The wait to see if Harry Reid will push filibuster reform (examiner.com)
• Harry Reid delays filibuster reform by a few weeks (dailykos.com)
• RINO attacks Rand Paul, sides with Harry Reid on Filibuster “Reform” (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)

Harry Reid Prepares to Annihilate Second Amendment, what next freedom of expression..?

“Our Founders intended the Senate to be a body where legislation was slowed down and subject to improvement through extended debate and amendment. [Harry] Reid’s proposed ‘reforms’ would remove two of the most fundamental rights traditionally reserved to all Senators — to freely debate and amend legislation. I shall not stand for that.” — Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

On Election Day last November, several Democrat Senators were campaigning for reelection in pro-gun states.  And in order to get their constituents’ votes, they promised fealty to the Second Amendment.

Patrick, on November 6, Democrat Senators Joe Manchin (WV), Bob Casey (PA) and Jon Tester (MT) all won their respective elections.  These seats, among others, were crucial to helping Harry Reid return to the top post in the Senate.

But only a month after the election returns were tallied, the Senate — under Majority Leader Harry Reid’s control — is now crusading to implement:

* Gun bans on semiautomatic firearms and magazines;

* An effective ban on gun shows;

* A ban on private gun sales, without going through a gun dealer; and,

* Changes in the Senate rules which would allow them to ban guns with a mere 50 Senate votes.

This last proposal is particularly insidious.  Gun grabbers are not going to be able to get 60 votes to break a Senate filibuster of gun control.  But, with the help of fake “pro-gun” Senate Democrats, they may be able to get 50.

So the question of whether Senate Democrats will need 50 votes or 60 votes will determine whether gun control -– and much of Obama’s agenda -– will be slammed through and passed into law.

This brings us to the “nuclear option.”

This is a trick which anti-gun Democrats intend to use the first day of the Senate session in order to obliterate the Senate rules and clear the way for 50-vote passage of gun control.

Your senator’s vote on the “nuclear option” may be the most important gun-related vote he casts during the 113^th Congress.  It may be the difference between whether Obama can secure Senate passage of gun bans, magazine bans, gun show bans, and bans on private gun sales.

Anti-gun Democrats will try to tell you that the Senate is just following its precedents.

But that’s a bald-faced lie.  As Democrats made clear during the Bush administration when the Republicans were contemplating the “nuclear option,” the nuclear option has been threatened, but the trigger has never been pulled.

Anti-gun Democrats will try to tell you that the “nuclear option” can only be invoked on the first day.

That’s a lie.  Senate Rule 5, Paragraph 2, provides that the Senate rules continue from one Congress to the next, unless changed by 67 votes (needed to break a filibuster of rules changes).  If the Senate can use brute force to obliterate Rule 5 by 50 votes, it can use brute force to obliterate any rule at any time by 50 votes.

This is a major vote that will have huge ramifications for our republic.  Our gun rights are just one of the many freedoms that are on the chopping block right now.  And if Harry Reid can squelch his opposition by nuking the filibuster, it will be the first step towards completely obliterating our Constitution.

ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators and tell them that the vote on the “nuclear option” will be the most important gun control vote of the 113th Congress.  Urge them to vote AGAINST changing the Senate rules.  Tell them to vote AGAINST the “nuclear option.”

 You may also phone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.

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Stuck on Stupid Defined: Piers Morgan CNN

There is a reason we rebelled against English rule. What is the reason that the English gave up The Rights of Englishmen?

So then, what’s all this “assault rifle” nonsense?

A Shopping list?

A replica of Chicago: Complete with Government Goons!

In case you missed it, Piers Morgan called GOA Executive Director Pratt and his Second Amendment friends “idiots” on Tuesday night.

Yes, Piers thinks you’re an idiot.

But Pratt ruffled Piers’ feathers by shooting back, telling him that “Brits like him” just don’t like listening to facts.

Well, Gun Owners of America has been out front defending your gun rights and has appeared on scores of media outlets all across the country — and even across the world.  Some of the notable highlights include:

* GOA’s Larry Pratt on Piers Morgan on Tuesday night

*Director of Communications Erich Pratt in US News & World Report

* And Larry Pratt again with the opposing view piece for USA Today on Monday.

Make no mistake about it! We are in the fight of our lives.

Barack Obama has made it his central priority to destroy us.  And he and his anti-gun allies have billions of dollars of support from the TV, print, and cable media.

Obama will start out trying to ban semi-automatics, magazines and gun shows.  But make no mistake about it.  Obama’s initial efforts to crush us will just be the first step to making the entire country a replica of Chicago -– complete with across-the-board gun bans and defenseless citizens.

Julian Epstein, an MSNBC commentator, candidly revealed that the point of Obama’s campaign was not any particular piece of legislation, but rather to “break the back” of the gun lobby.

You can be sure of this:  The battle against Obama and his anti-gun stooges will be the biggest fight of our lives.

Already, Gun Owners of America has been the most prominent spokesman for the Second Amendment in the wake of the horrific Newtown tragedy.

Roll Call, the newspaper of record on Capitol Hill, remarked that, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, “the reaction from one gun rights group [GOA] stood out.”

The liberal Huffington Post trumpeted:  “Gun Owners of America steals Newtown gun debate while NRA hides.”  It went on to say that “[w]hat is surprising is that [GOA Executive Director] Pratt is the only gun lobby representative willing to discuss his beliefs in public in the days after the Connecticut massacre.”

GOA has virtually been a solitary voice giving interviews all over the country –- and the world -– on behalf of gun rights and the Second Amendment.

Please stand with us so that we can continue fighting against the anti-gun onslaught.

As much as anyone, we deplore the efforts of anti-gun zealots to exploit this tragedy for political gain.  But if we hide in fear, we will have lost the debate and the legislative battle before even coming onto the battlefield.

We cannot let that happen.

This has not been without cost.  We have received death threats against us and our children, and hundreds of profanity-laced emails.  One writer said he wished our own children had died at Sandy Hook.  Another said he wished that all our GOA members would “just put a gun to their heads and pull the trigger.”

But, when you stand up to sick-minded opportunistic people –- as we have –- you can expect their true colors to show through.

We hope our members are proud of us.  As our legislative counsel told one liberal reporter:  “I think a lot of people who see and hear us fighting, at a time when [gun control advocates] are ready for battle, they’ll remember it.”

So we need your help to keep fighting.

And we need you to fight alongside us.

Click here to watch Larry’s interview with Piers Morgan on Tuesday Evening.

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Related articles

• Obama vs. House on guns. Who will prevail? (wnd.com)
• Is Obama Unfettered On Gun Control? (personalliberty.com)
• CNN host tries to insult gun advocate (respectinpolitics.org)
• Confirmed: Piers Morgan doesn’t get how these constitutional amendment thingies work (twitchy.com)
• Illinois Senate Defeats Governor’s Sneaky Attempt to Ban Assault Weapons (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)