From Page Nine:
Congressman Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, wrote a letter signed by 53 members of Congress urging president Obama to "return to enforcement of the law banning imports of assault weapons, which was previously enforced under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton." The firearms he denigrates with the Brady-inspired "assault" word are single-shot-at-a-time rifles like any normal household firearm.
The congressman's media release about his letter uses the tired tirade about this being a "no-brainer... requiring no legislative action," to "protect our brave police," and a "market flooded with imported, inexpensive, military-style 'assault' weapons." He fails to note that assault is a type of behavior, not an imported product.
The public is able to get the fine value-priced merchandise as kits, parts imports, reassembled models with some American-made parts, and as curios and relics. Criminals found with the firearms, which even the New York Times has said are bulky and unpopular with street gangs, are subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment -- completely apart from gun type or nation of manufacture.
Part of a larger racist scheme to ban guns for anyone but the rich, it is a new twist on the discredited and now abandoned "Saturday Night Special" schemes (remember those?), and "junk gun" schemes (remember those?) that would outlaw firearms in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, largely populated with people of color, where they really need the guns for self defense and protection against rampant government-sponsored crime from its war on some drugs.
I guess this makes lots of sense, especially now, when USA (and the whole world) is in deep financial crisis.
Why should we allow those "new poor people" we created with the way we allowed our financial system to evolve, to have means to protect their lives? They are not Congressmen after all, to have big, fat salary checks every month. Most of them are unemployed, they do not deserve to have the luxury of self-protection.
And of course, Congressman Engel forgets that at this moment Romania and Bulgaria are members of the EU, so their products can be imported in US, as "Made in EU". Great, just great!
If you die to read Congressman Engel's site, it is located here.
From ABC News site:
The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.
"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.
Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.
"I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum." Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.
Even NY Times have admitted that the Clinton Assault Weapons ban had no effect on crime, in a rare moment of candor.
Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.
So the new administation is planning to reinstate a law which had no effect in the past. Learning from past mistakes seems to be a quality that current politicians do not have.
This is just another case where someone doesn't understand that gun-limiting laws do NOT affect outlaws, who by definition outlaws live outside the laws. So the only ones really affected by such laws are law-abiding citizens. It's sad that a man who has climbed to the top ranks of US administration can not understand that simple fact, or one has to assume that he is using this poor excuse to cover up his real intentions.
The following two Resolutions are pending in Congress:
H.R. 17 "Citizens Self Defense Act of 2009" : http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h17/show
H. R. 45 "Blair Holt's Firearms Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009" : http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h45/show
Both of them are of interest to shooters and gun owners, obviously supporting the first and being against the second.
We received the following announcement from a good friend:
For those of you that haven’t heard about it yet, a march in Washington, D.C. in support of The 2nd Amendment, is being planned for the spring of 2010.
A website is up and running for the event at: www.SecondAmendmentMarch.com.
I urge you to attend the march in Washington, or if you can’t make it to our capitol, then plan to attend one of the many satellite marches that will be held throughout the US at the same time. It is time that our collective voices be heard.
I also urge you to lend whatever support you can to this march, whether it be your time, money, or anything else that will insure the success of this historical event.
Please forward this email to all interested parties. With all of us working together, we will show the world what a Million Man (and woman) March really looks like.
Sincerely,
Michael
While we believe this is a very interesting idea, we also believe that setting it up for 2010 is too far away. It appears that the new administration has plans to attack the 2nd Amendment sooner than Spring 2010. Still, it doesn't hurt to watch this topic closely.
