By Rick Manning — Elected officials in California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York have told the rest of America the truth about their vision for private ownership of firearms in America.
They want to eliminate it.
Only the most willfully blind believe that the politicians in these states would not have passed laws calling for the confiscation of firearms if not stopped by the recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Heller v. D.C., which affirmed individual Second Amendment constitutional rights by the narrowest 5-4 margin.
President Obama in his zeal to purge the nation of gun ownership is expected to travel to Connecticut to make another tearful plea for Congress to both pass a semi-automatic fire arm ban and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s wolf in sheep’s clothes national background check legislation.
Obama could not choose worse optics if he is attempting to convince a majority of Senators who are skeptical of additional encroachments on the right to keep and bear arms to vote for his proposals, as the Connecticut backdrop should remind everyone of the draconian response just enacted by that state legislature.
Reid has already declared that the semi-auto ban has been defeated, even though he will allow it to come to a vote, so Obama’s only hope of an immediate legislative victory is the national background check proposal.
Yet by going to Connecticut, where background checks and gun bans predated Newtown, Obama reveals his true intentions.
It is not to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those who have been adjudicated to be mentally ill, but rather to create a national database to lay the foundation for future confiscation of firearms.
Even the rhetoric surrounding the national background check itself is a canard.
How do we know this?
Since 1994, every individual purchasing a firearm through a retailer has already been subjected to a national background check with the records only legally retained for a set period of time after the purchase. Over the years, this time frame for the destruction of the records has been a source of debate, but the records have always been required to be destroyed.
The new national background check proposal that career anti-gun ownership Senator Charles Schumer is attempting to shepherd through Congress would eliminate the destruction of these records.
This basic point was so central to what Obama, Reid and Schumer are trying to accomplish that they allowed a potential deal with Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn to fall apart over the issue of whether the records should be destroyed.
Let’s be clear.
This new national background check legislation is not designed to stop criminals from getting guns, it is designed to use the tragedy of Newtown, Connecticut to establish a national database of gun owners.
It would serve no other purpose except to allow the federal government to have a pathway to confiscate guns.
America’s eyes have been opened to what anti-firearm politicians want through their actions in California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York. The cloak of reasonability has been lifted and the predator is bearing its teeth.
In those states, one U.S. Supreme Court Justice’s vote stood between the people and confiscation.
And one national election could easily change both a future Court vote reconsidering Heller and those in Congress on gun bans and confiscation.
This is why this Congress must defeat Obama, Reid and Schumer’s attempt to put a pathway to gun confiscation on the federal books under the guise of expanding a national background check.
It is also why any Member of Congress who supports the Obama, Reid and Schumer national background check bill is actually voting to allow the future confiscation of firearms. There simply is no other justification for the inclusion of a permanent gun owner database within the bill.
Next week, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN will try to tell the American people that the vote in the Senate is about stopping future tragedies and having a national background check system.
Obama will stand in Connecticut and Colorado crying crocodile tears as he exhorts Congress to pass a national background check.
All of them know they are lying, and the true objective of the legislation. Now, so do you.
Rick Manning (@RManning957) is the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for Americans for Limited Government.
