VT shootings, GOA alert- US House bill 297

[T Durdin]

GOA at http://www.Gunowners.org sent out the following alert.

Please take a minute to use their activism network to email or send a letter to your US Representative to oppose this legislation. Thanks.

Your Gun Rights Could Soon Hang In The Balance
-- VA Tech shootings now spurring the most far-reaching gun control
in a decade

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm

ACTION: Now that Congress is moving to restrict YOUR rights in
response to the VA Tech shootings, please make sure to take the
following three actions after you read this alert:

1. Urge your Representative to OPPOSE HR 297, the Dingell-McCarthy
legislation that is designed to take the Brady Law to new heights,
turning it into a law on steroids which could one day keep even YOU
from buying a gun. (Contact information and a draft letter to your
Representative are provided below.)

2. Gin up the e-mail alert systems in your state and forward this
e-mail to as many gun owners as you can.

3. Please stand with Gun Owners of America -- at
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm -- and help us to continue
this fight, as right now, we are combating this latest onslaught
ALONE in our nation's capital. GOA spokesmen spent all of last week
doing radio and TV debates, interviews for newswires, and opinion
editorials for newspapers. This week, we begin the battle in
Congress to defeat legislation that could block millions of
additional, honest gun owners from buying firearms.


Monday, April 23, 2007

The biggest gun battle of the year is about to erupt on Capitol Hill.
Fueled by the recent Virginia Tech shootings, an odd coalition is
forming to help expand the number of honest people who now won't be
able to buy a gun.

The legislation has been introduced by none other than the Queen of
Gun Control herself, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). But she has
picked up a key ally, as the bill (HR 297) is being pushed by a
powerful gun group in Washington, DC.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported on the strange coalition.
"With the Virginia Tech shootings resurrecting calls for tighter gun
controls," the Post said, "the National Rifle Association has begun
negotiations with senior Democrats over legislation to bolster the
national background-check system."

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), who was once on the NRA Board of Directors
but resigned when he supported and voted for the Clinton semi-auto
ban in 1994, is reported to be "leading talks with the powerful gun
lobby in hopes of producing a deal [soon]," Democratic aides and
lawmakers told the newspaper.

Rep. McCarthy admitted to the Post that her "crusades" for more gun
control have made her voice "toxic" in gun circles. "So
Dingell is
handling negotiations with the NRA," the newspaper reported.
"Dingell is also in talks with Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Ted
Stevens (R-Alaska), House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio)
and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (Wis.), the senior Republican on the
House Judiciary Committee."

Despite all this bad news, the Post article does go on to explain
that there are some potential pitfalls.

First, you will remember that this is the bill you helped kill last
year, when an avalanche of postcards was dumped on Congressional
desks by thousands upon thousands of GOA activists. That's why the
Post says there is one huge obstacle -- the members of Gun Owners of
America.

"The NRA must balance its desire to respond to the worst mass
shooting by a lone gunman in the nation's history with its
competition with the more strident Gun Owners of America, which
opposes any restriction on gun purchases," the Post reported.

SO WHAT DOES HR 297 DO?

Well, the rest of this alert will answer this question. This alert
is long, but it is important to read it in its entirety. We need to
"arm" ourselves with the facts so that we can keep pro-gun
Congressmen from being duped into supporting a bill that, as of now,
is being unanimously cosponsored by representatives sporting an
"F-"
rating by GOA.

HR 297 provides, in the form of grants, about $1 billion to the
states to send more names to the FBI for inclusion in the National
Instant Criminal Background Check System [NICS]. If you are
thinking, "Oh, I've never committed a felony, so this bill won't
affect me," then you had better think again. If this bill becomes
law, you and your adult children will come closer to losing your gun
rights than ever before.

Are you, or is anyone in your family, a veteran who has suffered from
Post Traumatic Stress? If so, then you (and they) can probably kiss
your gun rights goodbye. In 1999, the Department of Veterans
Administration turned over 90,000 names of veterans to the FBI for
inclusion into the NICS background check system. These military
veterans -- who are some of the most honorable citizens in our
society -- can no longer buy a gun. Why? What was their heinous
"crime"?

Their "crime" was suffering from stress-related symptoms that often
follow our decent men and women who have served their country
overseas and fought the enemy in close combat. For all their
patriotism, the Clinton administration deemed them as mentally
"incompetent," sent their names for inclusion in the NICS
system, and
they are now prohibited from owning guns under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4).

HR 297 would make sure that more of these names are included in the
NICS system.

But, of course, Representatives Dingell and McCarthy tell us that we
need HR 297 to stop future Seung-Hui Chos from getting a gun and to
prevent our nation from seeing another shooting like we had on
Virginia Tech. Oh really?

Then why, after passing all of their gun control, do countries like
Canada and Germany still have school shootings? Even the infamous
schoolyard massacre which occurred in Ireland in 1997 took place in a
country that, at that time, had far more stringent gun controls than
we do.

Where has gun control made people safer? Certainly not in
Washington, DC, nor in Great Britain, nor in any other place that has
enacted a draconian gun ban.

IMPORTANT TALKING POINTS FOR CAPITOL HILL

Regarding Cho's evil actions last Monday at Virginia Tech, your
Representative needs to understand three things:

1. If a criminal is a danger to himself and society, then he should
not be on the street. If he is, then there's no law (or background
check for that matter) that will stop him from getting a gun and
acting out the evil that is in his heart. (Remember that Washington,
DC and England have not stopped bad guys from getting guns!) So why
wasn't Cho in the criminal justice system? Why was he allowed to
intermix with other college students? The justice system frequently
passes off thugs to psychologists who then let them slip through
their fingers and back into society -- where they are free to rape,
rob and murder.

2. Background checks DO NOT ULTIMATELY STOP criminals and mental
wackos from getting guns. This means that people who are initially
denied firearms at a gun store can still buy one illegally and commit
murder if they are so inclined -- such as Benjamin Smith did in 1999
(when he left the gun store where he was denied a firearm, bought
guns on the street, and then committed his racist rampage less than a
week later).

NOTE: In the first five years that the Brady Law was in existence,
there were reportedly only three illegal gun buyers who were sent to
jail. That is why in 1997, a training manual produced by Handgun
Control, Inc., guided its activists in how to answer a question
regarding the low number of convictions under the Brady Law. The
manual basically says, when you are asked why so few people are being
sent to jail under Brady, just ignore the question and go on the
attack. [See http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm -- GOF's Gun Control
Fact Sheet.]

3. Background checks threaten to prevent INNOCENT Americans like you
from exercising your right to own a gun for self-defense. No doubt
you are familiar with the countless number of times that the NICS
system has erroneously blocked honest Americans from buying a gun, or
have heard about the times that the NICS computer system has crashed
for days at a time, thus preventing all sales nationwide -- and
effectively shutting down every weekend gun show.

Perhaps the most pernicious way of denying the rights of law-abiding
gun owners is to continuously add more and more gun owners' names
onto the roles of prohibited persons. Clinton did this with many
military veterans in 1999. And Congress did this in 1996, when Sen.
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) successfully pushed a gun ban for people who
have committed very minor offenses that include pushing, shoving or
merely yelling at a family member. Because of the Lautenberg gun
ban, millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans can never again own
guns for self-defense. HR 297 will make it easier for the FBI to
find out who these people are and to deny firearms to them.

GOA has documented other problems with this bill in the past. In our
January alert on HR 297 we pointed out how this bill will easily lend
itself to bureaucratic "fishing expeditions" into your private
records, including your financial, employment, and hospital records.

HR 297 takes us the wrong direction. The anti-gun Rep. Dingell is
trying to sell the bill to the gun owning public as an improvement in
the Brady Law. But don't be fooled! The best improvement would be
to repeal the law and end the "gun free zones" that keep everyone
defenseless and disarmed -- except for the bad guys.


CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action
Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your
Representative the pre-written e-mail message below. And, you can
call your Representative toll-free at 1-877-762-8762.


----- PRE-WRITTEN LETTER -----

Dear Representative:

I am a Second Amendment supporter who strongly opposes HR 297 -- the
NICS Improvement Act of 2007 -- and I strongly agree with Gun Owners
of America that this bill should be defeated.

The minor improvements this bill makes to the Brady instant check are
insignificant when compared to the outrageous invasions of our
privacy it would permit.

Gun Owners of America has posted an analysis of HR 297 at
http://www.gunowners.org/110anatb.htm on its website, showing how the
bill will target millions of law-abiding gun owners, including
thousands of combat veterans who served our country bravely.

Supporters of this bill say we need it to stop future Seung-Hui Chos
from getting a gun and to prevent our nation from seeing another
shooting like the one at Virginia Tech. But honestly, what gun law
has stopped bad guys from getting a gun? Not in Canada, where they
recently had a school shooting. Certainly not in Washington, DC or
in England!

I think we've got to stop treating criminals like medical patients,
thus allowing them to slip through the cracks. If we are not going
to incarcerate dangerous people, then all the gun laws in the world
will never stop them from getting firearms.

Don't be misled into thinking that this is a bill that gun owners
endorse. Most gun owners want Brady repealed, not "fixed." The law
has done nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining guns, but it has
violated the Second Amendment rights of millions of law-abiding
Americans.

Sincerely,


****************************

GOA In The Media

As you know, GOA spokesmen have been all over the airwaves in recent
days. We hope to have a number of television appearances posted to
our streaming video section at http://www.gunowners.org/svtb.htm
shortly -- most likely by Wednesday.


****************************

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[Agent Ronin]

Reps' Contacted...

[billamj]

Have either of you actually read the bill? It mandates that the mental health records that are supposed to be available on NICS actually be supplied for use on NICS. I don't see why GOA is so upset about this. Requiring states to supply the data that they are already obligated to supply or allowing for repurcussions isn't a bad thing in my mind.

[T Durdin]

-Billamj,

With regard to your question, yes, I have skimmed the bill, and read the summary. While I agree with you that it seems like a reasonable measure, that we have to remember that anti's are constantly trying to ram through legislation to further restrict our supposedly inalienable, god given right -that shall not be infringed {but frequently is}. We have to remember the analogy of "The slippery slope." If they pass that one, How long until you're on the list of ineligible persons on the next one?

I trust in the GOA. If they say a piece of legislation is bad, or is ripe for abuse by anti's against legitimate gun owner's, I am willing to support their position.

Rep. McCarthy admitted to the Post that her "crusades" for more gun
control have made her voice "toxic" in gun circles. "So
Dingell is handling negotiations with the NRA," the newspaper reported.

Rep. McCarthy has such a bad rep as an ANTI she has to get Dingell to hawk her goods.

PS, If it has McCarthy's name on it, it's a definite NO from me.

[NineseveN]

To subscribe to free, low-volume GOA alerts, go to http://www.gunowners.org/ean.htm on the web.

[billamj]

-Billamj,

With regard to your question, yes, I have skimmed the bill, and read the summary. While I agree with you that it seems like a reasonable measure, that we have to remember that anti's are constantly trying to ram through legislation to further restrict our supposedly inalienable, god given right -that shall not be infringed {but frequently is}. We have to remember the analogy of "The slippery slope." If they pass that one, How long until you're on the list of ineligible persons on the next one?

I trust in the GOA. If they say a piece of legislation is bad, or is ripe for abuse by anti's against legitimate gun owner's, I am willing to support their position.



Rep. McCarthy has such a bad rep as an ANTI she has to get Dingell to hawk her goods.

PS, If it has McCarthy's name on it, it's a definite NO from me.

I get the GOA alerts as well so as soon as I got this one I read all 24 pages of it, soup to nuts, and being completely honest with your I think that the other two bills that she has sponsored this year are far worse than this one. The way I read it, and maybe our legal eagles will tell me that I am wrong, this will just ensure that someone like Cho doesn't slip through the system again. That could only be a good thing IMHO.

ETA: My one and only problem with the GOA is that any legislation that is proposed by any of a certain group of legislators is automatically red flagged by them. In most instances it is warranted but as the old saying goes, "even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while." Sometimes even McCarthy can be right.

[Agent Ronin]

Sometimes even McCarthy can be right.

I won't believe her until i see her field strip a M16 and reassemble it in 30 seconds. AND be able to name each part. Heh barrel shroud

[billamj]

I won't believe her until i see her field strip a M16 and reassemble it in 30 seconds. AND be able to name each part. Heh barrel shroud

ROFLMAO! You definitely have me on that one.

[NineseveN]

Aside from it expanding government, which is a bad thing IMHO, I think the GOA at least got the ball rolling in telling us what is wrong with it. Someone that disagrees with them would be wise to counter the arguments made by the GOA point by point and tell why it’s a GOOD thing. Not some hypothetical punch line of "Why would you want lunatics with guns" or "all this does is do what it should have been doing in the first place", I'd like to see the evil features of this bill countered with some relevant data.


As for PA residents, one has to consider what this bill would do for the victims of PA's Section 302 (involuntary commitment with NO DUE PROCESS) -the West Deer Twp Police Dept apparently likes these, Russell Llaing isn't the only one they nailed with this garbage, that the NRA helped pass.

When you open this door, no good things can come of it. NO GUN LAW created can stop violent assaults. It's not like Cho accidentally killed 32 people. He planned this, he was angry and out for blood. He wrote a manifesto, and stopped between shootings to take the time to mail this to NBC. Had he not been able to buy a gun, some ordinary chemicals and he could have blown one of the class buildings to bit, killing as many if not more people. He could have poisoned people, or his rage could have manifested into a serial killing spree by taken smaller and weaker victims at night with a knife or via strangulation. Hell, for $75 and a trip to home depot, he could have made a nasty flamethrower, capable of killing or injuring as many people as he felt like. Imagine a 50’ stream of flame about 4-5’ wide at the end being propelled into a classroom full of students…imagine the wielder having all the time in the world to do it.

This expansion won't stop acts such as these; it may only interfere with the killer's ability to LEGALLY obtain a gun to do it. There are a hundred thousand neighborhoods in this country that one can buy a gun off the books if they want it, which this bill and NICS does ABOLUTELY NOTHING to address.

If the expansion won't really work, then it's nothing but another anti-gun feel-good piece of legislation and should be killed immediately. That one major pro-gun organization is supporting it aggravates me to no end.

I'm with the GOA, no real tangible good can come from this, it's only good in a theory that occurs in a vacuum void of the rest of the world and the other means for determined people to kill or injure others.

As for the GOA’s protest, those that support this bill, have at it.

SO WHAT DOES HR 297 DO?

Well, the rest of this alert will answer this question. This alert
is long, but it is important to read it in its entirety. We need to
"arm" ourselves with the facts so that we can keep pro-gun
Congressmen from being duped into supporting a bill that, as of now,
is being unanimously cosponsored by representatives sporting an
"F-"
rating by GOA.

HR 297 provides, in the form of grants, about $1 billion to the
states to send more names to the FBI for inclusion in the National
Instant Criminal Background Check System [NICS]. If you are
thinking, "Oh, I've never committed a felony, so this bill won't
affect me," then you had better think again. If this bill becomes
law, you and your adult children will come closer to losing your gun
rights than ever before.

Are you, or is anyone in your family, a veteran who has suffered from
Post Traumatic Stress? If so, then you (and they) can probably kiss
your gun rights goodbye. In 1999, the Department of Veterans
Administration turned over 90,000 names of veterans to the FBI for
inclusion into the NICS background check system. These military
veterans -- who are some of the most honorable citizens in our
society -- can no longer buy a gun. Why? What was their heinous
"crime"?

Their "crime" was suffering from stress-related symptoms that often
follow our decent men and women who have served their country
overseas and fought the enemy in close combat. For all their
patriotism, the Clinton administration deemed them as mentally
"incompetent," sent their names for inclusion in the NICS
system, and
they are now prohibited from owning guns under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4).

HR 297 would make sure that more of these names are included in the
NICS system.

But, of course, Representatives Dingell and McCarthy tell us that we
need HR 297 to stop future Seung-Hui Chos from getting a gun and to
prevent our nation from seeing another shooting like we had on
Virginia Tech. Oh really?

Then why, after passing all of their gun control, do countries like
Canada and Germany still have school shootings? Even the infamous
schoolyard massacre which occurred in Ireland in 1997 took place in a
country that, at that time, had far more stringent gun controls than
we do.

Where has gun control made people safer? Certainly not in
Washington, DC, nor in Great Britain, nor in any other place that has
enacted a draconian gun ban.

IMPORTANT TALKING POINTS FOR CAPITOL HILL

Regarding Cho's evil actions last Monday at Virginia Tech, your
Representative needs to understand three things:

1. If a criminal is a danger to himself and society, then he should
not be on the street. If he is, then there's no law (or background
check for that matter) that will stop him from getting a gun and
acting out the evil that is in his heart. (Remember that Washington,
DC and England have not stopped bad guys from getting guns!) So why
wasn't Cho in the criminal justice system? Why was he allowed to
intermix with other college students? The justice system frequently
passes off thugs to psychologists who then let them slip through
their fingers and back into society -- where they are free to rape,
rob and murder.

2. Background checks DO NOT ULTIMATELY STOP criminals and mental
wackos from getting guns. This means that people who are initially
denied firearms at a gun store can still buy one illegally and commit
murder if they are so inclined -- such as Benjamin Smith did in 1999
(when he left the gun store where he was denied a firearm, bought
guns on the street, and then committed his racist rampage less than a
week later).

NOTE: In the first five years that the Brady Law was in existence,
there were reportedly only three illegal gun buyers who were sent to
jail. That is why in 1997, a training manual produced by Handgun
Control, Inc., guided its activists in how to answer a question
regarding the low number of convictions under the Brady Law. The
manual basically says, when you are asked why so few people are being
sent to jail under Brady, just ignore the question and go on the
attack. [See http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm -- GOF's Gun Control
Fact Sheet.]

3. Background checks threaten to prevent INNOCENT Americans like you
from exercising your right to own a gun for self-defense. No doubt
you are familiar with the countless number of times that the NICS
system has erroneously blocked honest Americans from buying a gun, or
have heard about the times that the NICS computer system has crashed
for days at a time, thus preventing all sales nationwide -- and
effectively shutting down every weekend gun show.

Perhaps the most pernicious way of denying the rights of law-abiding
gun owners is to continuously add more and more gun owners' names
onto the roles of prohibited persons. Clinton did this with many
military veterans in 1999. And Congress did this in 1996, when Sen.
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) successfully pushed a gun ban for people who
have committed very minor offenses that include pushing, shoving or
merely yelling at a family member. Because of the Lautenberg gun
ban, millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans can never again own
guns for self-defense. HR 297 will make it easier for the FBI to
find out who these people are and to deny firearms to them.

GOA has documented other problems with this bill in the past. In our
January alert on HR 297 we pointed out how this bill will easily lend
itself to bureaucratic "fishing expeditions" into your private
records, including your financial, employment, and hospital records.

HR 297 takes us the wrong direction. The anti-gun Rep. Dingell is
trying to sell the bill to the gun owning public as an improvement in
the Brady Law. But don't be fooled! The best improvement would be
to repeal the law and end the "gun free zones" that keep everyone
defenseless and disarmed -- except for the bad guys.

[billamj]

When you open this door, no good things can come of it. NO GUN LAW created can stop violent assaults. It's not like Cho accidentally killed 32 people. He planned this, he was angry and out for blood. He wrote a manifesto, and stopped between shootings to take the time to mail this to NBC. Had he not been able to buy a gun, some ordinary chemicals and he could have blown one of the class buildings to bit, killing as many if not more people. He could have poisoned people, or his rage could have manifested into a serial killing spree by taken smaller and weaker victims at night with a knife or via strangulation. Hell, for $75 and a trip to home depot, he could have made a nasty flamethrower, capable of killing or injuring as many people as he felt like. Imagine a 50’ stream of flame about 4-5’ wide at the end being propelled into a classroom full of students…imagine the wielder having all the time in the world to do it.

My only issue is that if Cho's records accurately reflected that he had been adjudicated mentally unstable he would have been turned down and he is far from the first. The problems have arisen because of confidentiallity laws that make it illegal to release mental health records. If you read the bill you will note that exceptions are identified for those who have had their records rectified and/or expunged. Would it mean some hassle for some people, probably, but it is only a matter of ensuring that data that is currently required being properly supplied to the authorities. Hey, if Cho hadn't killed himself he could always have been prosecuted for lying on the appropriate paperwork in addition to the 32 murders.