By Mark Oliva
It takes a certain amount of brazenness to put the responsibility of defending the nation on a young American and then, in the next breath, demand they forfeit those freedoms they are literally willing to die to protect.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is never one to disappoint, though. His latest legislative move is to put a target on the back of every service member as someone who cannot be entrusted to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Military members already sacrifice many of their freedoms to protect the United States. Sen. Murphy, who has never served a day in uniform, doesn’t think that’s enough.
Sen. Murphy thinks Second Amendment freedoms for those in uniform is, well, too much freedom.
Gun control isn’t anything new to Sen. Murphy. He’s made a career of attacking the Second Amendment and the firearm industry. That’s made him the darling of gun control groups but now he’s putting the Second Amendment rights of military gun owners in his crosshairs.
Think about that for a minute. These are the men and women our nation trusts to put a firearm in their hand and stand between our nation and those who wish to do us harm. Sen. Murphy has no problem with that but is proposing these same individuals can’t be trusted with firearms in their personal possession.
Sen. Murphy introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which empowers our government to fund and support our nation’s military. As a “must-pass” bill, it naturally attracts thousands of amendments for pet projects every year. Most of those are ruled out of order, or not defense related, so they can’t be attached to the bill.
Sen. Murphy, though, is making gun control a military issue. It starts off innocuously, requiring the Secretary of Defense to set minimum training standards for anyone required to carry a firearm on duty. That would include marksmanship training standards, as well as suicide awareness and safe storage. These are already standardized requirements for each branch.
Making Lists
After that, it falls out of step with Constitutional rights. Sen. Murphy’s proposal would require training before anyone in the Department of Defense purchases a firearm for private ownership. He would also require anyone possessing a firearm on a military installation to register that firearm with the base commander, require that firearm be locked in the home and all ammunition stored separately.
Military commanders already require any firearm that’s privately owned and used on a base be registered with installation authorities, usually the base’s Provost Marshal. This was the case when I was still on active duty. Those lists are never scrubbed and maintained in perpetuity across the service branch. Firearms that I registered to shoot recreationally and hunt with on base while stationed in California appeared on registries years later in South Carolina.
The issue is dictating how those firearms are to be stored. This legislation would run counter to what the U.S. Supreme Court held in the Heller decision. Along with telling the District of Columbia it couldn’t ban handguns, the court also said the District couldn’t prescribe how a firearm is stored in the home.
This poses larger problems, though. The amendment’s text would require all privately-owned firearms to be registered with base authorities. That would include firearms legally purchased off-base and never brought on the base. This is problematic. A base commander has the authority to prescribe regulations within the fence but that authority ends at the front gate.
Sen. Murphy would seek to empower a national firearm registry to begin with all gun owners in the military, whether they purchase a gun on base and regardless of whether that firearm is ever brought on the base for recreational shooting or hunting.
It Gets Worse
Sen. Murphy isn’t done trying to foist his gun control agenda on those who are required to salute smartly and obey. He submitted another amendment that would unnecessarily delay rights to service members too. He wants to force a federal seven-day waiting period for the purchase of any firearm and a four-day waiting period for ammunition purchases on military installations.
No such legislation would stand a chance of surviving Congressional scrutiny if proposed as a stand-alone bill. That’s why Sen. Murphy is trying to slip this one into a defense spending bill.
Firearm and ammunition sales on military installations follow the same federal and state laws where the military base is located. Every firearm sale is completed with a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) Form 4473 and verification from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) that the service member isn’t a prohibited individual. Any state requirements would also be incorporated.
Big Brother
After that, it goes from worse to downright Orwellian. Sen. Murphy’s NDAA amendment would allow the Defense Secretary to collect all gun owner information for both military and civilian employees “about the lawful possession, ownership, carrying, or other use of a privately owned firearm or ammunition… if such information is necessary for the purposes of injury and mortality prevention.”
That’s the start of a national firearm registry, which is expressly forbidden by federal law. Sen. Murphy wraps it in a thin veneer of a life-saving measure but that’s dubious at best. The supposition is that military authorities must know what firearms are in the home to prevent suicide and domestic violence. I had a Marine general officer tell me this to my face nearly a decade ago when I questioned why he needed to know what guns were in my home located off base. However, there is no criteria as to what the threshold should be when it comes to seizing firearms from those in uniform.
If you think it couldn’t get ugly, it does. Sen. Murphy offered another amendment to the NDAA that “prohibits the possession of privately owned firearms that are not related to the performance of official duties on property of the Department by anyone who does not live on property of the Department.”
That would disenfranchise military members who don’t live on base and retirees who patronize on-base recreational shooting ranges to maintain firearm proficiency. It would also deny those same individuals the opportunity to hunt on military installations.
Large military installations have U.S. Fish & Wildlife wardens assigned to those bases and they work with federal biologists for wildlife conservation. Cutting out this population of hunters not only denies them the ability to keep up their safe firearm handling skills but also puts a dent in the ability to use hunting as a wildlife management tool, a bedrock principle of the North American model of wildlife conservation.
This isn’t accidental. Sen. Murphy knows that if he’s successful in getting this legislation passed, it gives him the next stepping stone to force the same requirements on the rest of American society. The argument would be that if it is good enough for the military, it’s good enough for everyone else.
No one in America should fall for this ruse. It is detestable that a sitting U.S. senator who has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States would abuse his legislative authority to snatch away the Second Amendment rights from those responsible for defending this nation.
The only thing this attempt at a federal gun rights grab isn’t – is surprising.
Mark Oliva is Managing Director of Public Affairs for NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association. He is a retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant with 25 years of service, including tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Albania, and Zaire.
Does anyone else have a problem with this site, recently, where it randomly jumps up and down in the scroll while reading? You’ll be in the middle of a paragraph and suddenly the text jumps up or down a couple paragraphs, and you have to go find your place again?
sometimes it does that to me if I’m using my phone.
A minor problem with this site in comparison to how poorly it has done since RF sold it off.
Here Here !
I agree, TTAG really sucks since RF sold it off.
Now it’s overran with adds for products disguising as articles and of course the now ever-present trolls.
Damn Kanadians and the moron PM Justin Castro – can’t put out a few fires, can’t run a website.
As a capitalist I support advertising to support a private business.
Any of you insiders have Robert’s contact info? As frequently the case with these mergers, the market value of TTAG today would likely be 25% of the purchase price. Buy it back and resurrect it. Best bet if we would all just cold turkey for 60days.
RF was smart to sell out when he did. What happens to a pro gun site after scotus rules in our favor? Without the threat of loss of rights there really isn’t a need for a site like this.
Without people like dacian and miner showing up here to razz us we would relax. Let our guard down. They only show up here out of hatred. They know they’ve lost. It’s just a matter of time until constitutional carry becomes federal law now.
Bad investment to buy into a pro gun site now.
“It’s just a matter of time until constitutional carry becomes federal law now.”
That is not a bet I would take under any circumstances at the time.
A repeat of 2020 or 2022 and you will rapidly find the SCOTUS is no longer friendly and is, in fact, openly hostile to the entire BoR after the Dems add four seats to it and put in far Left ideologues.
Which is exactly what they will do. They’re quite open about that.
Can they do this? If you think they can’t then you need to share whatever you’re using because it must be that good good.
Will they? Maybe. Depends on how the public reacts.
The Right simply has far, far, far too long a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and the uniparty members of the GOP hate and want you dead anyway.
At this point there is enormous truth in saying that “Conservatives [in Congress and the Senate] are just Progressives driving the speed limit”.
So the real question isn’t “time”. It’s “What the fuck are you doing to work towards victory at the local, state and federal level?”.
I mean, how much do Right wingers talk about that compact between blue states to swing all their EC votes in the direction of the popular vote if that’s what gets them the POTUS they want?
Yup. Using the same laptop for ten years this is a recent pain in the behind. I think its because the designers of the page and function are too lazy to imlement the correct set-up so that new posts force the page to jump downm rather than putting them in a queue and letting them become visible when the reader scrolls bck to the top. Poor use of the software due to laziness. Same “fault” that brings us AI produced content.
yeah, it’s wonky.
the one that gets me is back arrow. you’re better off dropping your bookmarks and choosing ttag, especially if you’ve just posted. otherwise it may take three backarrows to go back. is this deliberate to generate clicks?
I am not seeing that issue.
But I am also using a pop-up blocker.
A lot of the ads and images do not load.
sheez CplCamelToe
1st world problem
The same Kameltoe that promoted reducing population to improve health?
She might have meant to say pollution but that is one heck of a Freudian slip.
You deserve the Tyranny. You Allow.
Chris Murphy wants to clip your 2A rights and the genitalia of little boys.
Amen Brother
Agreed!
Screw CT Chris Murphy.
Someone should take action against this fraud of a congresscrittter for swearing his oath of office then refusing to uphold it. Along with maybe half of each house of Congress.
Probably closer to 3/4 of each but on the more realistic starting point challenge it’s relevance to national defense first then address it’s constitutional issues if somehow it is adopted. Bad enough rights are on hold in many ways while serving but off base and post dd214 should never be a consideration. With that said would love to see your suggestion in action.
The left wing is nothing but mental illness and hypocrisy.
Pretty soon the only people dumb enough to serve in the standing army will be the trannies and Twinkies. That’s OK because a well-regulated militia is the real solution to the security of a Free State. .
well regulated militia: A Trans military with synced imaginary periods.
As a vet myself I would never recommend any red-blooded american join the armed forces today.
If I had a military aged son, I too would not recommend him to enlist. I am a vet and come from a long line of families who have served.
Some idiot claimed people like you and I are to blame for the DoD missing recruitment quotas.
idiots gonna idiot
Would have blamed it’s transition from being a military to a social program that provides military services.
While young men are idiots most are not stupid. They have figured out under Joey Obiden would be stupid to join. At a wedding recently where the groom serving Army 1Lt Inf. A bunch of the guests/party were the same. Most WooPoo grads the rest OCS. ALL less than 2yr active, recent grads of Ft Benning school for boys and Ranger school. ALL hand see enough an counting the days until could ETS (like 2000days). This is NOT good. 23yr old new LTs just out of OBC/Ranger are the hard charges that should be driven to make the Army win battles.
Further note: The freaking 82nd is shuttering the 3rd rifle platoons so they can man 1st and 2nd of RIFLE COMPANIES? What the hell is that! Image how bad off the lesser CONUS Bde/Div manning must be!
“Some idiot claimed people like you and I are to blame for the DoD missing recruitment quotas.”
They’re not wrong. Family recommendations do make a difference and they do slant against joining at this point. So, they’re not idiots.
When you’re a liar one of the things you don’t like people doing is giving honest advice because it hurts your ability to take advantage of people via lies. But you’re not lying when you say that your lies are harder to peddle when people tell the truth…
“MOTHER MAY I?”: Court UPHOLDS Illinois Firearm Owners ID Card law under 2nd Amendment. (Guns Saves Lives case…John Boch here at TTAG – state trial judge decision, clearly got it wrong even though she did an attempt at Bruen analysis)
The higher these suits rise in the courts the harder the anti gun laws fall.
Well now this one will be interesting for a few states in my region.
You can expect a prog chick to have the ability to have/use logic.
/s
Unfortunately, being an oath breaker, or just being stupid isn’t as painful as it needs to be.
I’ll bet if you start lynching them the rest will start to get the hint. Its what the French did although they used a guillotine, but the rest got the message and fell in line.
😁
This is part of the reason why the military is unable to recruit the men they need. After a few years of missed targets last year they missed by 25% because of politicians like Chris Murphy. With the current economy and the way they are treated, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone with any kind of choice going into the military.
I served as a US Marine, I was the fourth generation of Marines, my son served 4 years as a US Marine. He discharged on June 3rd 2023. He was the 5th and last generation to serve. He tells everyone that asks ” No don’t, just don’t, it’s not the Marine Corps you believe it is”. He will be most likely the last generation of a family of US Marines spanning back 86 years. I weep for what my Corps and Country has become.
Yep. My #2 is 1yr out from his ETS and is pushing thru his exit processing. So he can get into the 6m “internship/Transition to civ life program = 6m until can escape.
He has figured out that dear ole dad was correct about being a smart young man as an enlisted jarhead/recruiters lie more than Joey Obiden.
I have not seen reup data, but I bet is as bad/worse than recruiting #.
In my opinion – recruitment targets will be met by taller-than-average Central American emigrants of military age.
Neo-Maoists want to create famine once they achieve power. To do that, they will probably need a military that will fire upon Maw and Paw Applepie…
Hence the open borders, and the current effort to make the military something that most people want nothing to do with. Sorta like they did with Bud Light.
Hammer strikes the nail on the head.
It’s a plan.
Castrolos
They can just accelerate several macro economic trends and price Maw and Paw out of their land.
And Maw and Paw, mostly, will comply because they follow the rules. It’s a facet of more Conservative people that the Left’s been playing on for decades. That and tolerance.
It looks like Joen Obiden has a plan out today to fix DOD/recruiting.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/07/19/dod-memo-says-transgender-soldiers-on-hormone-therapy-can-skip-deployments/
How is anyone who requires constant medication and treatment beyond OTC stuff going to be considered deployable at all?
Isn’t this need for constant Rx medication exactly the reason for not allowing asthmatics or people with certain mood disorders or allergies in?
I mean, fuck me, but I seem to remember a fairly long list of mental issues that were a DQ or a very likely DQ requiring a waiver that would be hard to get most of the time.
Yet they’re now going to let people deploy when they’re dependent on hormone therapy that requires regular blood tests? WTAF?
Makes you wonder who is more mentally unstable, the group with the 40% attempted suicide rate or the ones who think it is a good idea to put guns into their hands in a stressful situation.
Fascists gonna fascist. Chris Murphy is a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist/fascist, and hasn’t got the brains God promised a doorknob. In the face of Bruen (in downright CONTRAVENTION to Bruen), he proposes this s**t on the very ones among us who are (at least arguably) MOST qualified to ‘keep and bear arms’. Because he’s a fascist. But there are a long line of Dimocrat fascists who will be happy to join in this Leftist jihad. Fortunately, not enough to get this piece of dog excrement passed, but we’ll have to go through the motions of voting on this vile POS amendment, and give idiots like Murphy, Schumer, Fetterman, et al. the opportunity to virtue-signal for their Leftist/fascist base. Another day ending in “y”, I see.
I’m not for sending americans to Ukraine, but I’ll make an exception for Sen. Murphy
Does he get a chute or just going to throw him out the door? (While hugging an 155mm DPICM round /YES)
👍👍
hugging it???? I say shove it up his a$$
This sounds to me like a waste of a perfectly usable artillery round.
Tough times are a coming. We can’t be continuing to be wastrels. Also, I’ve gone “green” recently.
Therefore I suggest feeding sharks. Or Piranhas. Or perhaps a very large anaconda.
When I volunteered and joined the military during the cold war years. They went out of their way to say that I still had my civil rights. Which is no longer the case.
This is just another reason to not join US military. Which currently is having a recruiting problem.
When i was in the military we couldn’t even vote.
Murphy a Traitor. When the coming War starts, he’ll be tried, found guilty by Citizen’s Tribunal, and Hung, Drawn and Quartered. The original punishment for Treason.
I’m behind Senator ESAD all the way.
Them war vets are wacko freaked out PTSD killers and if they cant find an enemy to kill statistics say 99.99% of the time they just start killing anything. They can take the gunms away, then the killer vets just use knives or blombs, if you take away the knives and blombs they use their hands or feet. Yessiree Bub, to keep America safe our President Biden, the greatest president America has or ever will have should have all the war vets locked up in a rubber room with their hands and feet cut off because you never know about them deranged killers improvising a way to kill more babies and uninnocent citizens(no citizens are innocent, ask the Big Guy)..
Just make separation permanent, you know, from this mortal coil.
Nice, peaceful, quite retirement, Comrade!
We got around the whole registering weapons with PMO thing by getting a secure storage unit out in town and keeping our gats there. Lots of grunts who lived in the barracks did the same. Saturday afternoons often turned into community gun cleaning parties, many of us went to the range together, good times. Others in the barracks blatantly did not care and kept a piece or five locked in their coffin racks, especially the grunts. Nobody went through the hassle of keeping their stuff at the armory.
This POS from CT can try to pass all he wants. Grunts do not care, and will do whatever they want, because they are fiercely patriotic and see the Bill of Rights as sacred, to the point that you will find many “We The People” and 2A tattoos on their wrists.
I’m proud to be the first Marine in my family, prouder to have been at a victor unit for 4 years, but when I saw the drastic culture shift at my second unit, I knew reenlistment wasn’t in my future. Which is sad, because the Marines have always been the last holdout from PC stupid in the DoD.
*tin foil hat time*
I wholeheartedly believe an intended side effect of the vaccine debacle was to push a chunk of conservative, constitutionally educated combat veterans out and replace them with impressionable, socially maladjusted Gen Z drones and fresh from college bootenants whose heads are still spinning from 4 years of marxism.
SOF are immune to the cultural bs, for now :/
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