Eight Republicans Help Confirm a Hard-Core Gun Banner

Eight Republicans Help Confirm a Hard-Core Gun Banner
And how to keep Senators from “spinning” their support for gun control.

“Too much work [was] left undone. After a few sleepless nights, I wrote for myself a list of issues on which I needed to do more in the years ahead. One of those issues was global regulation of small arms.” — Harold Hongju Koh (2001)

Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- Imagine that. The Senate confirmed this week, by a vote of 62-35, a gun banner who stays up at night thinking of ways to impose more gun control upon American citizens.

Harold Koh is that gun grabber, and he was confirmed yesterday to be the Legal Adviser at the State Department.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans attempted to kill the Koh nomination with a filibuster — until eight of them crossed the aisle to help Democrats confirm Koh.

The back-stabbing Senators are:

• Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
• Susan Collins (R-ME)
• Judd Gregg (R-NH)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• Richard Lugar (R-IN)
• Mel Martinez (R-FL)
• Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
• George Voinovich (R-OH)

Once the filibuster was thwarted, Koh’s nomination passed easily. The vote on final passage can be viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/m4m2f5

Koh is eager to assume his post at the State Department, having lamented that there is only so much that can be done from the outside to push gun control treaties, and that ultimately we need people like him in positions of power. The chief lawyer for the State Department is just the position someone like him needs to push more gun control through international treaties.

GOA will continue watching for any attempt by the Obama administration to foist an international gun control treaty upon the citizens of the U.S.

Please stay tuned.

Don’t Let Your Senators Escape the Heat of the Spotlight!

If you have been watching the news, you have no doubt seen stories on the health care debate. This is the topic de jour on Capitol Hill, and Congress is ramping up to vote on a bill in a few weeks.

Last week, GOA alerted you to the fact that the whole health care issue has become a Trojan Horse for gun control, among other things.

However, there are detractors who claim that the current health care debate will have nothing to do with guns. For example, GOA has been “informed” that a search of the TeddyCare bill does not turn up the word “guns,” and that the word “database” is seen only a few times.

Hmm, if your Senator’s office gives you that as a response, then tell them not to be so lazy and naive.

One needs to do more than type in a word search in order to analyze legislation. The database was set up under section 3001(c)(3)(i) of the stimulus bill. But the Kennedy bill allows for sweeping new regulations, which make it potentially impossible for any doctor to refuse to enter your records under the current section 13112 exemption.

Many things you tell your doctor in the privacy of his office could affect your right to own a firearm. And just because anti-gun zealot Ted Kennedy doesn’t notify us up front of his anti-gun intentions doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Frankly, we got this same garbage in connection with the Veterans Disarmament Act (officially known as the NICS Improvement Act), where the anti-gunners took away the guns of 150,000 veterans through language which was not explicit. Before the bill was signed into law last year, some detractors even claimed that because the NICS bill did not mention the word “veterans,” we must have been wrong to suggest that the bill would disarm vets!

Well, guess what? The disarmament which was already occurring before President Bush signed the legislation into law last year is now occurring with a vengeance under the Obama administration. (In fact, GOA members should be looking for an upcoming mailing which will give you postcards to send in support of an important bill — introduced by Sen. Burr of North Carolina — which will protect veterans from the fangs of the Veterans Disarmament Act.)

The point is, no Senate staffer should ever give you an opinion on a bill unless he has read the entire code that the bill will be amending. Nor should they ignore the potential for an Obama administration to abuse any particular piece of legislation.

Remember how the RICO Act, originally enacted to help combat the Mafia, was later used to crack down on legitimate banks and peaceful pro-life protesters? The original RICO Act never used the word “abortion,” but that didn’t stop overzealous prosecutors from going after the non-violent protestors.

And who would have thought, when the original Brady law was passed in 1993, that it would be used to keep people with outstanding traffic tickets… or couples with marriage problems… or military vets with nightmares from buying guns? After all, the Brady law never mentioned those people groups, and yet the law has been used over the past 15-plus years to deny gun rights to those very people.

Reading legislation is not a job for the timid or the lazy. If staffers in your Senate offices aren’t willing to read current bills IN THE LIGHT OF EXISTING LAWS — and to do the research necessary to compile this information — then politely encourage them to get another line of work.