Lautenberg Gun Control Bill Compared to Nazi Policies

[2dogs]

How on earth did the people of NJ reelect this guy (I know- by illegally changing the election laws in the state and by sheer stupidity- no offense). One Lautenberg anti-gun law isn't enough, eh?



http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200304\NAT20030430e.html

Lautenberg Gun Control Bill Compared to Nazi Policies
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
April 30, 2003

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - New Jersey's Democratic senators moved Wednesday to tie their long-standing gun control agenda to homeland security and terrorism fears. Second Amendment advocates compared the proposal to the actions of Adolf Hitler's regime in Nazi Germany.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) announced his plans Wednesday to introduce legislation he calls the "Homeland Security Gun Safety Act," along with fellow New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Lautenberg claimed the proposal would close "loopholes" in current gun laws "that allow terrorists to access weapons and explosives inside our borders.

"As our government confiscates toenail scissors at airports, secures power plants, and increases domestic surveillance," Lautenberg said, "we're ignoring the most obvious threat that's out there, and that is the ease in [sic] which terrorists can access weapons in virtually any town across the country."

Under Lautenberg's proposal, any time the Homeland Security Threat Level rises to "elevated" or higher, law enforcement authorities would not be required to complete mandatory background checks on firearms purchasers within the current three-business-day limit. Unlike current law, which mandates near-immediate destruction of records of background checks if the sale is approved, Lautenberg's proposal would allow authorities to maintain the registry of new gun owners "indefinitely."

The Homeland Security Threat Level has been at the "elevated" level - or higher - since it was created following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Supporters of Second Amendment protections for armed citizens warn that the proposal would allow law enforcement agencies to block all gun sales in their jurisdictions by simply refusing to complete background checks. They note that Lautenberg's plan to maintain a registry of gun owners sounds very familiar.

"These are the very laws that were used by the Nazis to register everybody's guns, to confiscate the Jews' guns and then to commit genocide," said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. "Why the senator would want to do something as horrible as that, I can't understand."

Germany's "Law on Firearms and Ammunition" required all firearms to be registered with the federal government. Although the law was passed in 1928, prior to the Nazis coming to power, Hitler's regime used the registration lists to confiscate firearms belonging to Jews and suspected "sympathizers."

The bill would also impose nearly a dozen new restrictions on federally licensed firearms dealers, already the most heavily regulated industry in the U.S. The legislation would:




Allow unlimited, unannounced inspections of gun dealers by federal agents. Because of past abuses, federal authorities are currently limited to one unannounced inspection per year. Inspections by local authorities are not currently limited;

Create a federal felony charge against a gun dealer if a lost or stolen gun is recovered by authorities before the loss or theft is discovered and reported;

Revoke a gun dealer's license immediately upon conviction for any felony - even if the conviction is under review by a higher court or being appealed.

Suspend a gun dealer's license if, before the dealer files a report, authorities discover a gun that has allegedly been "missing" from inventory; and

Suspend a gun dealer's license immediately upon being charged with any crime. Under current law, gun dealers are allowed to keep their licenses until and unless the government can prove its charges against them in court.


Lautenberg claims the changes will also reduce criminal violence.

"This bill will not affect the vast majority of honest, law-abiding Americans who want to purchase guns," he said. "The bill focuses on preventing weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists and criminals."

But Pratt noted that regulating legal purchases of firearms by law-abiding citizens has no positive impact on crime.

"And we know that there's no way it ever will because the English have a gun ban on an island, and all they got for their trouble is more crime with guns," Pratt noted. "The senator is absolutely wrong. He's lost the argument."

Closer to home, Pratt's organization notes that the District of Columbia enacted one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation in 1976. Since that time, the murder rate has dropped by two percent nationwide, while D.C.'s murder rate has increased by 134 percent.

Gun control supporters blame easy access to firearms in Virginia for the crime in the nation's capital. But Pratt pointed out that Arlington County, Virginia - which is just across the Potomac River from Washington - had a murder rate of 2.1 per 100,000 in 1999, compared to a murder rate of 46.1 per 100,000 in the District of Columbia. Even including all of the Virginia suburbs outside Washington brings the Virginia murder rate up to only 6.1 per 100,000.

'Gun Availability Changed This Person into a Criminal'

Nonetheless, Lautenberg still believes that the source of the problem is the availability of guns, not the violent intentions of those who use them criminally.

"We've had so many experiences where a criminal act suddenly erupted in a moment of outrage with a perfectly well-behaving citizen," Lautenberg charged. "The fact is that the gun availability changed this person into a criminal."

Pratt wondered aloud if Lautenberg wasn't voicing subconscious concerns about himself.

"He may be the kind of person that would go nuts with a gun," Pratt charged, "but most sane people have control of themselves, unlike the senator who apparently has no self-control.

"Normal people have no problem carrying a gun, bearing insults, suffering someone cutting them off in traffic and going on," Pratt added, "never pulling their gun."

Research Disputes Lautenberg's Claim

According to research published in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports between 1972 and 1995, firearms ownership increased by more than 100 percent, while the overall rate of both murders and murders committed with guns remained fairly constant.

In a 1996 study, researchers at the University of Chicago discovered that, contrary to Lautenberg's claim, the possession of guns by law-abiding citizens actually reduced violent crime.

John Lott and David Mustard found that states with laws allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms reduced murders by nearly nine percent, rapes by five percent, aggravated assaults by seven percent and robbery by three percent.

If states without concealed carry laws had adopted them in 1992, the pair estimated that approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and more than 11,000 robberies would have been avoided annually.

Pratt pointed to those statistics and again questioned the motives behind Lautenberg's latest gun control bill.

"He and everybody else who supports that kind of legislation are just absolutely wrong," Pratt concluded. "There is no empirical basis for gun control, and the only reason you could be advocating it is because you must have the same objectives that the Nazis had."

 

[2dogs]

Gun-control plan gets 'slim' chance in Senate
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


A Democrat's bill that would link stricter gun laws to national security concerns appears dead on arrival in the Senate, a fact that some see as evidence of the decline of the gun-control movement.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, said yesterday that "chances are slim" for success of his bill, which would extend the time allowed for background checks on gun buyers during periods of heightened security alerts.
"Desperation breeds brazenness," said Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association, calling the Lautenberg bill an effort to "exploit the fear of terrorism."
The bill would suspend current laws that give police three days to complete background checks of those attempting to purchase firearms — and suspend mandated destruction of records of those checks — unless the terror alert issued by the Department of Homeland Security is at Code Green, the lowest level.
The United States has been under at least Code Yellow, or "elevated," status since the five-level terror-alert system was instituted in March 2002 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Arulanandam said Mr. Lautenberg's proposal would have the effect of suspending the law permanently and was an effort to make the registration of all firearms the law of the land.
While acknowledging his bill has little chance of passage, Mr. Lautenberg said it is important to take on the powerful NRA.
"We know that the NRA packs a wallop here," said Mr. Lautenberg, among the Senate's most determined champions of gun-control laws. "They come marching into many of these offices without knocking first — things that we would prohibit by law, normally. They tread where innocents fear to go. So the chances are slim, but the value [of the bill] is real."
Gun control's value as a political issue, however, has been in decline for almost a decade, said Matthew Bennett, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), a group that supports gun licensing and registration. Democrats are the worse for it, he said, after misreading the electorate on the issue in the 2000 presidential election.
After shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999, "Democrats ran to support [firearm] licensing and registration, which was seen as extreme," Mr. Bennett said. "After the [2000 presidential election], many blamed [Vice President Al] Gore's position on guns for his loss of Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia."
Another sign of the waning influence of gun control, Mr. Arulanandam said, is the fact that two of the most prominent groups — Handgun Control Inc. and the Million Mom March — have consolidated into one entity. Handgun Control Inc. changed its name in October 2001 to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"They have to use poll-tested monikers to hide what their real agenda is, a ban on handguns for law-abiding citizens," Mr. Arulanandam said.
That contention is disputed by Eric Howard, spokesman for the Brady Campaign, named for Sarah Brady, whose husband was wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. Mr. Howard said that when current events call attention to gun violence, the public rallies to his group's cause.
"People in Congress who haven't been affected by gun violence, it's easy for them to ignore it," Mr. Howard said. "But when the public is attuned to it, their awareness rises."
Some critics have called Republicans "the handmaidens of the NRA," but even gun-control activists see little evidence that defending firearms ownership has hurt the Republican Party at the ballot box.
"There is some truth to that," AGS' Mr. Bennett said. "But this comes in cycles, and Republicans would be foolish to think they have found the answer in the NRA's extreme position on this issue."
The Senate is expected to approve a bill that would limit class-action lawsuits against gun manufacturers if a third party uses a firearm in the commission of a crime.
Mr. Howard predicted that debate on this issue would turn public opinion — and then a majority of the Senate — against the legislation.
"The more dialogue on this, the better," said Mr. Howard. "This is an issue that the public is impacted by and frustrated with. I think you'll see a lot more dialogue, and that is exactly what the NRA doesn't want."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030501-257519.htm

 

[AnklePocket]

There's a good, solid chance that the rank and file of New Jersey is no different from the rank and file of Texas. The difference might just be in the leadership and that New Jersians just need better choices at the voting booth.

 

[PATH]

In New Jersey you can change horses in the middle of the race.

 

[4v50 Gary]

I'm sure terrorists acquire their weapons because of loopholes in our laws.

 

[Azrael256]

Particularly foreign terrorists. It is obviously MUCH easier to purchase a semi-auto AK in the states at a gun show, ship it out of the US, convert it to full-auto, and then use it in an attack. How do you think all those groups get their weapons? Russia? China? Homemade? No! They're all from gun shows!