Interesting NYT editorial today "Congress vs the States on guns" which says, in part:
"Yet Congress has refused time and again to help protect Americans from rampant gun violence, and so it has fallen on state lawmakers to address this national crisis. Some state and local governments have banned or restricted certain types of ammunition, or prohibited classes of people, like those convicted of multiple instances of drunken driving, from possessing guns. Others have imposed universal background checks and safe-storage requirements on gun owners."
No wonder there are 20,000 gun laws, as Jim says, or so many and successful challenges to the "inalienable right" of the Second.
Our constitution is not designed to create a singular national law enforcement and criminal code. While the NYT (Clinton/Obama Press Office) rants ridiculously they fail to recognize what they should have learned in school about the source of laws in our nation and the roles of state and federal government.
States enforce state law, not federal law. Regardless of what the fed's put on the books states must have their own criminal codes if they want their law enforcement to enforce. States will always have different and additional rules.
The stupidity of the NYT is only rivaled by their willful disregard for the truth (lying). Anyone who has taken the minimal effort of looking at the facts will discover many obvious facts which render the illiberal positions on restriction of civil rights
Key facts the illiberal fellow travellers ignore include:
--Guns don't commit crimes people do. If guns committed crimes then the huge increase in hand guns and in so called "assault" weapons should result in a corresponding increase in crime. It has not
--The proposed star chamber approach of using secret lists to deny rights would not have prevented the three most recent ISLAMIC EXTREMIST influenced terror attacks. If liberals believed in actual liberty then maybe they should be focused on preserving he rights in the Bill of Rights and not so interested in limiting them. Then again illiberals do not believe in freedom of speech (they are more comfortable with speech codes so their feelings are not damaged) or freedom of religion ( more comfortable with denying people religious freedom and enforcing their participation with liberal ideas) Due Process (comfortable with preemptive denial of civil rights in secret without notice and maybe never explanation), and denial of the right to bear arms
--The media created bogeyman of the "assault rifle" is less involved in gun violence than it has ever been. Consider the fact killings by rifle (note the FBI does not track "assault rifle" deaths as a separate category) are going down. Interestingly all at the same time that the numbers of rifles continues to grow.
--that the federal government does not even prosecute the background check offenses the current system reveals for 2010 alone of approximately 80,000 in 2012 that were denied (a gun) because of a background check only 44 people were prosecuted for that crime of submitting false data and trying to buy a gun. While in the 80,000 denials there are undoubtedly errors but only 44 actual criminal attempts. A 0.055 prosecution rate doesnt make for a very good shooting percentage.
--If the danger and the unacceptability of a single death is so actually important to illiberals (which they often claim) then why are the so uninterested in the lives taken by illegal aliens (future democrat voters). The FBI "conveniently" does not track deaths by illegals, nor can a complete answer be gotten from the "Homeland Security" INS. However some stats can be found. Annually as many as 7,500 Americans -- 20 per day -- are killed annually by unlicensed drivers, and it is calculated that more than half are the victims of illegal immigrants (unlicensedtodrive.org). But let us move away from vehicular deaths and look at straight everyday murder; 121 murders have been attributed to illegals released by Obama administration (
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/15/121-murders-attributed-illegal-immigrants-released/ ). Between 2008 and 2014, 40% of all murder convictions in Florida were criminal aliens. In New York it was 34% and Arizona 17.8%. During those years, criminal aliens accounted for 38% of all murder convictions in the five states of California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York, while illegal aliens constitute only 5.6% of the total population in those states. That 38% represents 7,085 murders out of the total of 18,643. According to the FBI nationawide in 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle; so where is the real threat?
I realize in Canada you have a different system and that governmental power structures are endowed with more centralized powers. Our constitution does not do that and for good reason.
So let me pull two statements of supposed facts that are actually untrue from illiberal mouthpiece the paper of record:
Lie 1. "anyone who cannot buy a gun in one state can simply drive to the next to find looser laws." Most states do not allow non-residents to cross state boundaries and purchase guns without FFL transfers between the states. This is particularly true of the greater NY area and its neighbors.
Lie 2. "Yet Congress has refused time and again to help protect Americans from rampant gun violence, and so it has fallen on state lawmakers to address this national crisis. Some state and local governments have banned or restricted certain types of ammunition, or prohibited classes of people, like those convicted of multiple instances of drunken driving, from possessing guns." Federal laws already bans classes of people from gun purchasing i.e. mentally ill, convicted of misdemeanor domestic offenses, felons etc. The statement is misleading and is designed to be so.
It seems reasonanble to the NYT to deny the civil rights of people who may not even know they are on a list. Are not privy to know the complete facts or reasons for being on the list is a denial of due process. To pretend that the ability to get due process to regain rights denied you after the fact is not due process.
I have personally known two people who turned up on the No Fly list (both commissioned field grade officers with zero ties to any political groups etc) They both had to go through procedures to get off the list and neither were ever informed as to why they were on the list.
I find it amusing that the NYT supports a five year extension of the denial of civil rights to those who were ever on the star chamber list. I imagine this gets them around the problem of the Mateen being cleared by the Obama Administration law enforcement. However the extension the denial of due process for five years after clearing the list (which a person may not even know they were on, or when they were removed) further fascinating for a paper which purports to believe in civil rights.
In fact the actual exact criteria for inclusion or removal onto the those list is not public record.
The only change in the law that maybe needed is to create an automatic notice to the FBI when those on the no-fly or terrorist watch list now or in the last five years have applied to purchase a weapon.
I can safely predict that even if the FBI gets this new ability to see (which I am not sure they cannot already do under current law) they will likely fail to follow-up. After all BATF follows up on 0.055 percent of 2011 denials.
I have great trouble being told how to run my state from aboard much less from the socialists on the NYT staff. I am happy with varied regulation from state to state as it allows for the residents of those states to decide what is best for them. I know who and where (the actual addresses) my state and city government representatives live. I know they are far more responsive to me than Senators and Congressmen (and I have actually met and spoken to my current congresswomen and one of my current senators in the course of my full time work)
The reality is illiberals lie all the time and if you listen to them long enough you will discover that their real agenda is the removal of arms from the society in general. I am not the biggest fan of the NRA, but I think they have it right when they say that illiberals are out for a ban on all the guns they can get and they are taking a incremental approach. I refuse to be a willing dupe.
Note how illiberals who want to ban will never discuss in detail the mechanics of how they would disarm the population. Funny these are the same clowns who cry about the police picking on people for drugs and other crimes. Think about the police state we would have to create to take the guns in?
If this was really about security then they would be incensed over the greater threats they they ignore. They would be worried about fixing why the different agencies of power failed to take the right actions about known threats.
Washington needs to stick to things that make sense for Washington to actually do and the NYT needs to go out of business.
