Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
I don’t know too many people that would be surprised to learn that our Congress, our honest honest Congresscritters, would try to slip one past the goalie on an omnibus spending bill. Recently the Gun Owners of America (GOA) sent out an alert chronicling the serious issues they found in the bill already passed by the House and Senate.
Democrats and Republicans have been pushing to stuff gun control in big and popular bills, such as the Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA), for years. Part of their strategy was putting something unpopular, like gun control, into something which is difficult to vote against. Like a law called the Violence Against Women Act.
So far, Gun Owners of America has been successful at defeating the gun grabbers at every turn. But just recently, the anti-gun politicians have pulled perhaps their dirtiest trick yet.
Because your elected officials are afraid of being on the record, leadership protects them by stuffing things they don’t think will pass on its own merits into what is known as the annual omnibus bill, or omni for short.
One would think because negotiations have been ongoing for years, politicians would wise-up to the fact no one wants gun control. Rather than listening to you, they would rather stuff VAWA into this upcoming omni and claim they had to vote for it to fund everything our government does.
Thanks to pro-gun fighters like you, we were able to pressure lawmakers to remove anti-gun provisions such as the boyfriend loophole and red flag laws for military service members. However, this bill still contains some nasty anti-gun provisions that we will never compromise over.
In a separate e-blast sent out via email on March 10th, the GOA noted the following:
Yesterday under the cover of darkness, Congressional Democrats released a 2,741 page government funding bill at 1:30 AM.
GOA rushed to analyze the bill, found the gun control buried on pages 2207-2213, and alerted our grassroots activists to take action.
Despite our best efforts, the gun control passed 260-171 with the support of 39 Republicans later that same day at 10PM.
Government funding will likely be extended until March 15th, so we have five days maximum to defeat this gun control in the Senate.
What are the things that members of the anti-freedom caucus snuck into the bill?
Some of the provisions include the prosecution and criminal investigation of any NICS check denials. The problem with opening a criminal investigation of every denial is that according to the GOA, 9 out of 10 denials are errors on the part of the FBI. Given the continued issues with our NICS system, one would think it would make sense to finish fixing NICS rather than add such insult to injury.
The GOA also noted that “another provision authorizes the Justice Department to make special appointments and deputizations to prosecute new gun control laws.” In short the anti-civil rights leaders are looking at work-arounds to the Second Amendment sanctuary movement. It’s an unfortunate time when states have to assert to the Federal Government that the Second Amendment is supposed to stand on its own as the Second Amendment…that is, infringements shall not be tolerated. As it is, many of the sanctuary laws and resolutions are written to exclude FURTHER infringements on this civil right, never mind the ones we’re already dealing with.
From GOA’s email:
Additionally, the government spending bill’s Section 1103 also contains funding for ATF to begin deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce federal gun control laws. ATF can also appoint local government attorneys to help prosecute the enforcement of this gun control as well.
This runs in direct contradiction to the Second Amendment Sanctuary laws that GOA has been pushing around the country at the state and local level.
States like Missouri and Idaho have passed the STRONGEST Second Amendment Protection laws which prohibit funding for gun control and/or include criminal or civil penalties for government agents and/or agencies that enforce unconstitutional gun control. More than a dozen other states have similar statutes.
And yet, Congress is facilitating the enforcement of federal gun laws with local ATF deputies!
Unfortunately the omnibus spending bill has already been ushered over to the Senate and passed there too. In a subsequent alert, the GOA explains this in full.
On Wednesday at 1:30 AM, the House of Representatives dropped a 2,700+ page, $1.5+ trillion spending bill containing the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act (VAWA) and the NICS Denial Notification Act—both of which included gun control.
GOA analyzed the bill and got two action alerts out to the grassroots, but congressional leaders had already struck the anti-gun deal.
By Wednesday night, gun control had passed the House of Representatives with the support of Democrats and 39 GOP representatives.
By Thursday night, gun control passed the Senate with the support of all Democrat Senators present and 18 Republicans. Sadly, the bill could have been stopped entirely had Republicans opposed the bill in unison, because anti-gunners were short a Senator.
The GOA is quick to remind us that 39 GOP representatives and 18 GOP senators helped facilitate the passage of this new gun control measure. Their sentiments on those that went along to get along:
These Senators believe they were given political “cover” as other ostensibly “pro-gun” groups backed the compromise by refusing to publicly oppose the language.
Anyone engaged in Second Amendment politics that is not talking about the gun control in the government funding bill knows exactly what just happened and is fully complicit in its passage.
This is not the first nor will it be the last time we see our Congresscritters try to pull a fast one on the public and fellow lawmakers that are unaware of these special prizes included in bills. It’s important that we stay on top of all of our lawmakers and make known that we want zero, as in no more, laws that will infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. While we’re at it, letting them know that we don’t appreciate such cloak and dagger dirty tactics is important too. Shame on all of them. It would not hurt to reach out to your members of Congress to voice your displeasure on how they may have voted for this measure, or to thank them if they bucked this sand thrown in the face maneuver.