Smoky Mountains Sunrise
Showing posts with label Second Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second Amendment. Show all posts

Friday, May 15, 2009

From Our Mail: Lindsey Graham Representing Massachusetts Again


From: Gun Owners of America

Re: Graham Sponsoring Bill That Will Result in National Anti-Gun Database


Friday, May 15, 2009



Do you know what your supposedly "Republican" senator is doing right now?

Well, it turns out that Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is also leading the "hit parade" on behalf of legislation which would expand the scope of government in a way unprecedented in human history -- and which would place your most private medical data into an anti-gun database.

Hard to believe?

But there he is: Sen. Graham is right up there with certifiable liberals like left wing Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and left wing Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow.

The bill is S. 391, and it is being pushed by some Republicans as an alternative to the Health Care Gun Ban that we've been warning you about.

S. 391 does a hodgepodge of things, but by far the most important one is to "solve" the problem of 48 million uninsured by taking away the right of Americans not to purchase government-approved insurance.

If you are uninsured, you would have to buy health insurance, whether you can afford it or not. If your employer is not unionized, he would have to retool your employer-provided health insurance policy to comply with government requirements.

If your employer cannot afford government-approved insurance with all of the politically correct bells and whistles, too bad. His only legal alternative is to fire you.

If you cannot afford government-approved insurance, too bad.

If you have to lose your home -- or your small business -- or your kids' college fund -- in order to pay for government-approved insurance, too bad.

And like the Massachusetts system on which it is modeled, the federally mandated insurance would inexorably revolve around a federal database of medical information that you could not opt out of.

So, remember when your kid's pediatrician asked him about your gun collection? Or when you grandfather was diagnosed with a mental disability which could disqualify him from owning a gun?

All of that will be in the federal database, which could be searched by virtually anyone in the Department of Health and Human Services -- and by BATF, by simple request.

And, although section 103 of S. 391 purports to allow you to keep the coverage you have, all employer-provided insurance which you wish to keep has to be rewritten to contain all the government-required mandates -- or you're not allowed to keep it.

ACTION: Contact Senator Graham and urge him to remove his cosponsorship from S. 391. Please use his webform at http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EmailSenatorGraham to do so.


Friday, May 8, 2009

From Our Mail: Replacing Specter with Another Liberal


From: Gun Owners of America

Re: Republican "Leaders" Looking to Replace Specter with Noted Gun Banner

May 7, 2009


Some Republicans still don't understand why mainstream America is so
upset with their Party.

Now that Sen. Arlen Specter has defected to the Democrat Party, many
prominent Republicans are openly recruiting liberal Republicans to run
against Specter.

And at the top of their list is Tom Ridge.

Ridge is the turncoat Republican whose vote was crucial in passing the
semi-auto ban in 1994.

After having opposed a similar ban in 1991, then-Rep. Tom Ridge
flip-flopped and teamed up with Charles Schumer (D-NY) to pass the
semi-auto gun and magazine ban. The gun ban passed narrowly, 216 to
214, thanks to Tom Ridge.

Later, as Governor of Pennsylvania, Ridge signed one of the most
restrictive gun control laws in the State's history -- the infamous Act
17 which registered and taxed long gun buyers and placed other
restrictions on Keystone State gun owners.

As the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge opposed
arming pilots. He asked, sarcastically, if pilots carry guns, then
should we also arm railroad engineers and bus drivers? As DHS Director,
Ridge should have led the charge to arm pilots and people in other
positions that fell under the agency's purview.

Instead, he just repeated the same tired old anti-gun line that we hear
every time a state passes a concealed carry handgun law.

Guess who else opposed the armed pilots program? Pennsylvania's
"Benedict" Arlen Specter, who was one of only two Republican Senators to
vote against the bill.

The last thing we need is another elitist in Congress who does not trust
law-abiding citizens with firearms. And yet, wishy-washy Republican
Senators like Utah's Orrin Hatch and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham are
touting Ridge over Specter. In other words, let's replace one turncoat
with another.

There is a better option. His name is Pat Toomey, a Gun Owners of
America "A" rated pro-gunner who served in the U.S. House of
Representatives for three terms, before honoring a self-imposed term
limit and retiring in 2004.

Those who are pushing anti-gunner Tom Ridge claim that Pat Toomey is
unelectable because he's "too conservative" for Pennsylvania.

But that's what self-appointed experts said before Toomey got elected
term after term in a largely Democrat district in the eastern part of
Pennsylvania. And that's what they said before he accrued a gigantic
lead in the polls over a sitting Senator this year, forcing Specter to
jump parties.

It was Pat Toomey who forced Specter to jump to the Democrat Party.
Toomey -- who was backed by Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund
-- was leading Specter in polls by an overwhelming margin.

That's also what they said about Ronald Reagan -- who was supposedly too
conservative to win a national election. (By the way, Reagan also won
Pennsylvania.)

Bottom line: We need to put these squishy politicians on alert. Their
internal party politics is their business. But when party leaders start
pushing noted gun banners -- using the money contributed by millions of
gun owners around the country -- we're not going to remain silent.

Texas Senator John Cornyn is the head of the National Republican
Senatorial Committee. Michael Steele heads the Republican National
Committee. The decision to support an anti-gunner over a defender of
the Second Amendment rests largely in their hands.

ACTION: Please urge Senator John Cornyn and Chairman Michael Steele not
to interfere in Pennsylvania's primary. There is already a pro-gun,
electable conservative running in the primary who deserves their
support.

You can contact NRSC's Sen. Cornyn at info@nrsc.org or by phone at (202)
675-6000.

You can contact RNC Chairman Michael Steele at chairman@gop.com or by
phone at (202) 863-8700.


Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Guns, Foreign Courts, and the Moral Consensus of the International Community


From The Acton Institute

By
Jordan Ballor

In a landmark decision that will impact the future of gun regulation in the United States, late last month the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C. In District of Columbia etal. v. Heller (No. 07–290) a slim 5-4 majority found the D.C. ban to violate the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Over the last few years observers of the Supreme Court have noticed a trend among some of the justices to cite the decisions of foreign courts as part of the relevant precedent in deciding the cases before them. In 2005, justices Scalia and Breyer engaged in a rare public conversation on this very topic, “Constitutional Relevance of Foreign Court Decisions.” In the recently-decided D.C. v. Heller neither of the two dissenting opinions, written by justices Stevens and Breyer respectively, make substantial reference to foreign court decisions. But the growing phenomena of reference to foreign judgments as precedents raises the question of what the justices might have found if they had consulted such materials.

This tendency to invoke foreign jurisprudence is becoming more troubling as it becomes clearer that the moral consensus that once united Western nations has almost entirely broken down. A few years ago a pastor I know, as part of his duties as a representative of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC), took part in an inter-church dialogue with a member of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), a grouping of Reformed congregations in the Netherlands. The GKN sent what they considered to be a moderate pastor to participate in this conversation about moral issues. In the course of the discussion, the GKN moderate asserted that it was more evil to own a gun than to have an abortion.

At this, the CRC representative was only able to respond that their discussion was effectively over. The CRC’s official position on abortion is that the church “condemns the wanton or arbitrary destruction of any human being at any stage of its development from the point of conception to the point of death.” As any rhetorician knows, argument can only proceed where there is some basic level of agreement, and the ethical opinion expressed by the GKN pastor was so far removed from the sensibilities of the CRC that there was effectively no point of contact for continuing dialogue. The GKN has since joined a number of other Protestant denominations in the Netherlands, including other Lutheran and Reformed denominations, to form the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (PKN).

While this is a relatively minor anecdote, it serves well to illustrate the conflicting moral values placed on issues of life by the mainstream culture in Europe and the United States. No doubt there are those on either side of the Atlantic who would take issue with the dominant cultural judgment, but the national and international legal documents underscore the real differences. Where the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights singles out the right of the people to keep and bear arms, proposed European Union constitutional documents make no such mention. And as a recent Washington Times article relates, “many in Western Europe and Japan see U.S. gun ownership rates and gun violence as a clear mark of difference with other industrial countries.”

But the difference has not always been so stark. Indeed, the preamble to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1948, recognized the possibility of “rebellion against tyranny and oppression” as “a last resort,” an option that ideally could be avoided by protections according to the rule of law.

On the question of abortion, part of what derailed adoption of the EU Constitution in 2004 was concern by nations like Poland and Ireland that the vague constitutional provisions about “dignity” and “integrity” of the human person would require the repeal of national anti-abortion laws. The Treaty of Lisbon, successor to the failed EU Constitution, was rejected by Ireland last month, in part over similar concerns by pro-life advocates that adoption of the treaty “would threaten the Irish constitutional protection for the unborn, given the almost universal acceptance and promotion of abortion at the EU level.”

Upon reflection, then, the ethical judgment expressed by the GKN pastor seems to represent fairly well the mainstream EU attitude toward moral issues like guns and abortion. If part of what characterizes a civilization is a consensus on moral issues, then the idea of a unified Western civilization encompassing Europe and the United States is an illusion. A consensus that diverges on such fundamental questions of the right to life and responsibilities of self-defense is simply no consensus at all.


Jordan J. Ballor is associate editor at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich., and a contributor to the Acton Institute PowerBlog.