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Now that Barack Obama has pissed-off energized the Republicans’ socially conservative base, the President is looking to rally gun owners against his campaign for reelection. At this point, the average American doesn’t know about the emergency > temporary > experimental > automatically renewing long gun registry inflicted on some 8500 border-dwelling gun stores by the jack-booted thugs at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (and Really Big Fires). The Commander-in-Chiefs threat to veto the Department of Justice’s budget—unless legislators remove the bit that defunds the illegal registry (created by Executive Order)—should shove that bad boy straight into the limelight. And bring renewed focus on the DOJ’s Fast and Furious gun running op, which some gun rights advocates see as an ATF-designed stepping stone to the long gun registry and, thus, “under the radar” gun control. Watch this space.
Why hasn’t the Obama administration been held in contempt yet? The 1986 FOPA was specifically passed to make sure this exact thing doesn’t happen. The OA is blatantly violation the law instead of upholding it.
What happens if the gun shops refuse to comply with an unConstitutional “rule”? Does a BATF policy automatically have the force of law, especially if it is contrary to the existing code? Why are gun shops “near the border” being singled out”? Isn’t there something in the 14th Amendment about equal protection under the law?
Oh, and vetoing the DoJ’s budget – is that supposed to be a promise or a threat?
Even if the ATF policy doesn’t have force of law, they can still find a way to cause problems when a store’s FFL license comes up for renewal.
I think the main problem is that the ATF has lots of resources available to make life miserable for the shop/FFL. Our government pays the ATF agents to harass the shop. The shop loses money while they are fighting back. And then you have the added dimension of unrelated threats. For example the ATF could claim to sick the IRS on the shop and audit both the business and personal tax returns of the shop owners for as many years as law allows. That would be very time consuming and potentially expensive as well. And as a shop owner, who wants media attention to ATF actions on your shop? This is ugly and the cards are really stacked against the shop owner. What this means is this aspect of our government is onerous and tyrannical.
I imagine they show up at the gun store owners home if they do not comply with the registry; and if the gun store owner reists in any way they pull off another ruby ridge. The ATF and FBI do not exactly have the best “track record” when it comes to going after people supposidly breaking gun laws…
“by the jack-booted thugs at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives” Robert, I think you can forget about the BATFE ever placing a recruiting ad on this site 🙂
I would hope no one who reads this blog would be able to live with themselves stomping on peoples’ constitutional rights for a living.
Speaks volumes that he is bringing attention to the issues he is….. as much downside as there is on both of them, he’d still rather talk about them than the economy. Smacks of real desperation.
Mike, it’s funny that you say that he’d “rather talk about them than the economy.” I’ve also seen comments here and there that F&F is this administration’s Watergate. I couldn’t agree more with either of those statements. I am a little too young to have lived through Watergate, and honestly only have the barest knowledge of it. By total coincidence, I happen to have watched Nixon’s resignation speech in its entirety last night, and there’s one paragraph that spoke strongly to me, and you can draw your own comparisons to our present time:
The part about personal vindication aside, it occurs to me that the absorption of time and attention that Nixon was trying to avoid is precisely how our government operates in recent years. They are far too busy sniping at each other and doing magic tricks with smoke and mirrors to actually accomplish anything worthwhile. I feel as if the country soldiers on in spite of rather than because of the “work” they do. I have this cognitive dissonance thing going on where I believe in our country and the people who live in it, and at the same time I’m feeling more and more hopeless about our future. I’m not really sure what to do. Sorry for going off-topic, but it was on my mind.
Matt, for your peace of mind I have three things:
1) All else equal, it’s better to have a government do nothing rather than doing something (even if they are spending much energy doing nothing). King log rather than king stork. And if you are looking to a government body to be the prime mover in helping with a situation, you probably need to ponder another source of assistance and organization.
2) I don’t know whether every election ward has a local Tea Party with a member holding a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Take Back Your Government, but they’re certainly acting like it. The Tea Party is not gone – it has changed from a protest movement to an election movement with local candidates building to regional ones building to national ones.
3) Never bet against the United States. Historically, it’s a terrible idea to do so and there’s a long list of other countries/places that have been put forward as “going to eclipse/replace the US in the world”. Right now it’s China, before then it was the EU, before then it was Japan, after it was the petro-shiekdoms, following when it was the Soviet Union, after it was Argentina, etc, etc. All of them have fallen by the wayside because of something in their internal character and the US has always continued on – because of its own culture.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” – Milton Friedman
I always loved Milton Friedman, and he is so right in this regard.
I think I was younger than twelve when I understood that under our Constitution Congress passed bills and the President signed them for those to become laws. The American people have become enured to just about any governmental agency from a Federal Department to a sanitation district making “laws.” We also have a complicit court system that is too scared or stupid to tell the Executive branch to stick this type of “law’ where the sun don’t shine. In this particular case, Holder and the DOJ created a crisis by illegally running guns, explosives and Lord knows what else into Mexico. They did that by strong-arming gun shop owners into selling multiple guns to shady characters. If the gun shop owners called the ATF to report, as they are supposed to do, the ATF told them to sell the guns and shut up. At least two Federal agents were killed by those guns. When it was discovered what DOJ had done they proceeded to ‘stonewall’, that is lie and ignore subpenas from Congress. What is truly arrogant is DOJ then proceeded to point to the guns that they themselves had illegally run into Mexico as reason to formulate a new ‘rule’ that would prohibit “border area” gun shops from selling more than one long gun per day to any given individual. The topper to all this; the MSM completely ignores it all. Get honest. Can you imagine the hue and cry if this had occurred under Nixon, Reagan, the Bushs’, or even Carter or Clinton. No, when America’s first affirmative action president might be hurt, ignore it, talk about someone’s dog or some celebrity’s baby bump. If you vote for this corrupt and incompetent administration you are an idiot, a self-serving leech or an anti-American traitor.
+1… Thank you John…
The Democrates are simply trying to rally their base. What better way than to say you “support gay marrage” and then force the gun registry. Its two home runs for the base. These are all political tactics in an election year. This is a call to action to the base of the party. We can be as poetic as we want to be here….but will gun owners actually go out to vote? Past evidence says “no”. He has nothing to loose….he rallies his base…..and gun owners do nothing. How many of the people posting here will really get involved in the fall election? Talking big on the blog post is great, actually getting involved and getting others to vote is another thing. This is where the democrates win, their emotion and ideology are more important to them than facts and reality but it is enough for them to vote. They win on this respect.
I agree. I would encourage all who can volunteer at: http://truethevote.org/volunteer/ Let’s not let all our hard work be wiped out by election fraud. Your time spent helping to guarantee a fair and honest election will help our country more than any comment you might write.
I agree. I would encourage all who can volunteer at: http://truethevote.org/volunteer/ I am in favor of all live, American citizens, legally registered to vote; voting … once. Your time spent helping to guarantee a fair and honest election will help our country more than any comment I might write. How’s that?
How many of the people posting here will really get involved in the fall election? The problem being that the moronic Republicans are going to nominate anti-gun Mitt Romney, who also favors registration and gun bans. Can you really blame a gun owner who doesn’t waste the time to vote for one anti-gun big government jackass over another anti-gun big government jackass?
Yes, I can….because there is more at stake than guns and because even if Obama wins the big seat again, you fight to vote to make sure he does not also win the House and Senate. If he has no majority in the House and Senate, he has no teeth.
Vote Chicago style. Vote early, vote often.
Yeah, well, anyone who thinks Romney has a problem with this kind of EO is probably in for a big surprise.
I do not believe a single solitary word that comes out of President Obama’s Mouth (Period).
Sounds like something Romney would do…
I wonder if 11/12ths of the documents have been destroyed.
That’s usually Romney’s move.
Obama doing or supporting something blatantly unconstitutional? The American people as a whole not caring because they’re indoctrinated sheep and/or self-serving parasites? More news time given to what’s coming up on American Idol than the step-by-step destruction of the nation? Just another day. Get used to it.
Carpe Diem…. Well here is where I think some have lost focus. Look at it this way… Is there a way where we can keep the ATF’s budget in grid lock? I mean send a budget so bad like 40% decrease and keep that line in there, have him veto. Then keep sending smaller and smaller… The ATF can only run on credit for so long. Eventually they will have to start cutting things out to stay afloat. Their agents will look elsewhere for employment, and if you keep it in grid lock eventually they will fold altogether.. It isn’t the agents faults they are simply upholding the crappy things told for them to do. They all talked about having the government shut down without a budget, well if we keep ourselves focused we could in theory shut the ATF down!
Ultimately, it is the fault of agents. There is nothing that says that you, as an employee of the government, are allowed to violate the Constitution. Nor is the “I was under orders” defense viable. An agent of the federal government should respect and understand the US Constitution above and beyond even an ordinary citizen of the US.
Yes you do have a point. I am wondering how many in the ATF really hate what is going on but go ahead with it like a heard of sheep anyways. I think the congress and senate can really use this as an opportunity to shut them down or will they cave in?
Sorry if I came across as harsh. We can only hope that the waverers in the various law enforcement agencies start having a crisis of conscience. Unfortunately, though, history tends to show us that there are those who like the power that comes with being a government agent and there are those who put their paycheck ahead of their conscience.
Nor is the “I was under orders” defense viable. Why not? Military supporters use that line all the time – even on this site – to excuse crimes committed by soldiers.
Okay, how did it turn out for William Calley when he tried the “following orders” defense? How about various Nazis that were executed after WWII? Anyway, let’s see the cite. Show me where people, on this site, have tried to justify war crimes with the “following orders” defense.
Yeah, and it don’t fly. Lots of German officers and government officials went to jail and in the late ’40s while sporting the “I was just following orders” defense. “He was responsible for My actions” is a BS claim.
Germans did because it was their enemies trying them – seriously, are you surprised that the Allies found ever Nazi guilty? I’m not – it’s called a show trial. They were going to be executed no matter what, they just put on a show to claim that they were giving them a fair chance. I honestly don’t feel like digging back months through comments to find it, but if you know how to search comments by username, you’ll see I had a long stream of arguments with a few pro-military people on this site a few months back about them using the “just following orders” excuse and me telling them that it’s bullshit and doesn’t justify doing something illegal / immoral.
I see, I ask you to cite and, instead, you claim that I should be able to find the cite by searching your user name. It should be even easier for you to pull up the thread, since you claim you were the one arguing against the “following orders” defense. I would think it would be easy for you to find that thread, much easier for you than for me. However, since you’re unwilling or unable to back up your claim, I suspect you just made everything up.
Learn to read. I said “it would be nice if you had the ability to search by usernames”. Why? Because it’s ridiculously hard to find previous posts.
You’re a jerk, thus there’s absolutely NO motivation for me to waste the hours (if not days) to search through every post and read the comments from the last SIX MONTHS.
However, since you’re unwilling or unable to back up your claim, I suspect you just made everything up.
Right, because I’m unwilling to waste an entire weekend on posts that you’ll ignore, I’m lying. Grow the fuck up and learn to do some digging yourself instead of expecting the people you’re insulting to find your information for you.
Blake, you’re a FLAME DELETED.
I said that it would be nice if people could search by username and then see previous posts. Why? Because as your FLAME DELETED brain must have noticed by now, there’s about a dozen posts each day. Multiply that by roughly 30 days a month and the fact that these discussions took place sometime between 3-6 months ago, and that makes for a MINIMUM 0f 1,000 posts you expect me to search through for comments.
If you were so truly interested in the content, you’d do that searching yourself. But you’re not, you just want to do a good SEIG HEIL! and keep worshiping the military and pretending that “I was just following orders” is OK for US soldiers to use when committing crimes, yet it’s not a valid excuse for soldiers of “evil” countries to use.
**Had to repost this since for some reason the site didn’t load the comment before**
Now that Obama has pissed-off the republicans? Is this meant as
funny? The “fact” that he is a Muslim, communist, socialist,
fascist, anti-American, self-hating, anti-white, anti-capitalist,
pro-Taliban, anti-Constitution, gun-grabber, and madrassa-educated
bastard seemed like enough. Oh, and there is a whole lot more about
signing or not signing the budget bill than that one minor part of
it.
Let POTUS veto the appropriation and let the Injustice Department go along with no budget. Obama is a lying snake, but thank god he’s an incompetent lying snake.
So if the DOJ doesn’t get funded, then the ATF doesn’t get funded? yay!
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