...As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) must know, Americans who own firearms have a special sensitivity to a “Big Brother” federal government that wants to keep centralized records on who owns what guns and where in America. Loose language in his gun control bill (S. 649) could start America down that slippery slope.
Since the Second Amendment guarantees to the people the right to keep and bear arms, many Americans look askance at efforts to create centralized records that might some day, in some distant future neither wanted nor expected, facilitate a despotic government’s efforts to disarm the populace or ensure that its supporters but not its opponents possess arms. Some Americans look at history and view that concern as far-fetched; others look at history and see careful attention to that concern as essential to maintaining freedom.
Congress has attended carefully to the concern about a federal gun registry in the past. Thus, for example, section 103(i) of Public Law 103-159 (18 U.S.C. 922 note) regarding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) provides:
No department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States may–Unfortunately, the Reid legislation deviates from this strong guarantee that protects against misuse of the NICS process to start a national firearms registry.
(1) require that any record or portion thereof generated by the system established under this section be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or political subdivision thereof; or
(2) use the system established under this section to establish any system for the registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions or dispositions, except with respect to persons, prohibited by section 922(g) or (n) of title 18, United States Code, or State law, from receiving a firearm.
Title I of the Reid gun control bill purports to “fix gun checks.” The proposed “fix” in section 122 of S. 649 is to take away an individual’s right to sell or give away a firearm to another individual unless, in most cases, the individual uses a licensed importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer of the firearm.
No comments:
Post a Comment