Reign in the BATFE!

The Obama administration just can't stop blaming the Second Amendment and law-abiding American gun owners and gun dealers for violence perpetrated by criminals -- particularly Mexican drug cartels.

In their latest attempt to circumvent and trivialize the US Constitution (and most State Constitutions), Obama and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) are seeking to implement new rules that will subject American gun dealers to additional paperwork requirements to solve an unrelated problem in a foreign nation. To suggest that adding yet another layer of paperwork requirements to American gun dealers will help to stem the violence is just plain stupid! In fact, the new requirement is designed simply and only to intimidate gun buyers.

The new proposed rule will, for the first time, establish the precedent that licensed firearms dealers will be required (by administrative fiat) to report to the government the sale of two or more semi-automatic rifles that are greater that .22 caliber, can accept a detachable magazine, and are purchased by the same person within five business days.

Several points in the new registration scheme simply don't make sense here's one: The Feds want reports on rifles greater than .22 caliber. That would seem to exclude most AR-15s which are .22 caliber (.223 Remington). After the sale, they can be easily converted to shoot a larger-caliber cartridge -- and the Feds won't know about it! Some AR-15s are chambered for calibers larger than .22 caliber and would be reported. The inconsistency and lack of rational thought are overwhelming!

The measure would apply to approximately 8,500 gun dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. There is no assurance that this foot-in-the-door requirement won't be expanded to other States in the future. The reporting of multiple sales of handguns is already required in all 50 States -- a requirement that must be stopped immediately. There is no evidence that the reporting of multiple sales of handguns has prevented any violent crimes with the reported handguns.

Why would I want to buy multiple guns at once? Well, most importantly, according to the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments to the US Constitution, it's none of the government's business! (The government only has an interest if I commit a mala in se crime with any of the guns -- and that's almost always a state or local crime -- not the federal government's concern!) That said, perhaps I want all my children and their spouses and my grandchildren to have the very special gift of sequentially numbered rifles (That'd be a single purchase of two dozen rifles -- all for a legitimate, responsible, Constitutionally-protected purpose.).

The Obama administration and the BATFE intended to bypass the elected representatives of the people (Congress) to impose their new gun control by regulatory fiat as soon as January 5, 2011. It has been delayed, but the final decision on implementing this plan will probably be by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), headed by Cass Sunstein -- a man who would ban hunting and would allow animals to have legal representation in court.

This mandate will not only violate federal statutory law prohibiting a federal gun registry, it will also give the BATFE another excuse to harass American gun dealers -- while the Obama administration does absolutely nothing to address the problem of border violence -- including the cross-border murder of our citizens and law-enforcement officers.

There is another essential issue here. Normally, federal rule changes are given a 90-day public comment period. This regulation, however, was published in the December 17th Federal Register and comments close in early January, 2011! Not only is the proposed regulation a bad idea, but there are only 3 weeks to receive comments, and that period includes a major holiday season! Why cut the comment period from 90 days to three weeks? Most likely, to sneak it through before anyone catches on. The cover, however, is that chronic organized crime in Mexico can somehow be resolved if treated as an acute US "emergency" for which American rights must be infringed -- an "emergency" which has escalated for decades because of Mexico's internal corruption and our own failed "war on drugs"!

American freedoms, including those protected by the Second Amendment, are not the cause of border or drug-related violence. Rather, as violence increasingly occurs on our side of the border, those God-given rights that are protected by the people's Second Amendment to the people's Constitution become even more important for self-protection.

I urge and expect each member of Congress and of the Obama administration to live up to his or her oath to the Constitution by immediately stopping this egregious abuse of federal power.

Congress and the BATFE leadership must ensure that the BATFE either allows a full 90-day period for public comment or withdraws the regulation. If the BATFE does not comply with this reasonable standard, the BATFE leadership must appear before Congress to explain its legal justification.

Then, Congress must acknowledge that the BATFE is one of the most dangerous and out-of-control agencies ever created by Congress. Congress must abolish the BATFE and consolidate most of the other federal law-enforcement agencies. (There at least 57 of them!) The BATFE is but one of countless examples of the gross negligence by which Congress (staffers, actually) creates legislation that enables and even encourages bureaucrats, judges, and presidents (all of whom, ironically, swear to be faithful to the Constitution) to trample the Constitution.

In the future, the Senate must be extremely careful to ensure that anti-Constitution presidential appointees such as Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Eric "My People" Holder, Elena Kagan, Janet "The System Worked" Napolitano, Sonia Sotomayor, Cass Sunstein, and Andrew Traver are never confirmed. No president is ever entitled to appoint anyone who would ignore or undermine the Constitution and the prinicples it outlines. So far, the Senate has been criminally negligent in thus protecting the Constitution.