So, yea, the Democrats released a preview of their 2008 platform a few days ago. Here’s the bit about the Second Amendment contained therein, in case you missed it:
We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact and enforce commonsense laws and improvements – like closing the gun show loophole, improving our background check system, and reinstating the assault weapons ban, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. Acting responsibly and with respect for differing views on this issue, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe.
I could go on at length about the mythical “gun show loophole” or “assault weapon ban,” but after seeing this link on Fark a while ago, I will instead focus on keeping guns out the “hands of terrorists.”
“Who could be against that?!1!one!eleventy” I hear you ask. Well, it all depends on how you define terrorist. From the linked article:
James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country.
He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government’s defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane.
But there’s one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government’s terrorist “watch list.”
There you have a retired general who is not only trusted to operate a piece of equipment similar to the kind used to murder three thousand people, but is also trusted to carry a firearm by the Federal government to keep it safe. Yet it seems the very same Federal government cannot discern him from the terrorists they have armed and trained him to protect against.
In case you’re not familiar with the “terror loophole” propaganda, Senator Lautenburg, the Brady Bunch, and, now, apparently the entire Democratic party essentially want to add all the names on the no-fly list to the category of persons prohibited from buying/possessing firearms. Which means the pilot in the article above would instantly become a felon for touching the gun the Feds authorized him to carry.
Oh, sure, Lautenburg claims that his bill “includes due process safeguards that afford an affected person an opportunity to challenge a denial by the Attorney General,” but if it’s anything like the relief from disability program in the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, his pal Chuck Schumer will perpetually block funding for it so that nobody can ever be removed from the list.
Which, in turn, brings us to the most stunning thing in the CNN piece:
Besides the airline pilot, there’s the James Robinson who served as U.S. attorney in Detroit, Michigan, and as an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration; and James Robinson of California, who loves tennis, swimming and flying to the East Coast to see his grandmother.
He’s 8.
The third-grader has been on the watch list since he was 5 years old. Asked whether he is a terrorist, he said, “I don’t know.”
So, in other words, if the Brady Bunch get their way, and Lautenburg and Schumer play their legislative shell game, this third-grader(!) would be barred for life from ever touching a firearm. Because he’s a “terrorist.” All by administrative fiat at the hands of non-elected bureaucrats in some “homeland security” agency somewhere.
And I thought Democrats were supposed to “think of the children” and stuff..
But, yea, even if you don’t particularly like guns, this should seriously terrify you. Whether you agree or not, the Supreme Court did kind of rule that it is an individual right (and even four the dissenting Justices agreed that there is an individual right of some sort in there somewhere). As such, if the government is given the power to remove your Second Amendment rights with no trial or evidence (or without even telling you for that matter..), what’s to stop them from applying the same technique to the rest of the Bill of Rights?