(Monday,
March 8, 2004) - The battle against renewing the ban on numerous
semi-automatic firearms began in earnest during the last week of February.
On Wednesday, February 25th, U.S. Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) initiated debate on S. 1805, the gun
manufacturer protection bill. But
before the opening words were spoken, anti-gun zealots like Diane Feinstein,
Barbara Boxer, John McCain and Ted Kennedy were already lining up with
amendments to renew the Semi-auto Ban, require trigger locks on handguns, put
gun shows out of business, ban common hunting rounds as “cop killer bullets”
and much more.
Unfortunately, NRA board member and S. 1805 sponsor
Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) struck a deal with rabid anti-gunner Sen. Jack Reed
(D-RI) to reach a “Unanimous Consent Agreement,” which allowed these gun
control amendments to be offered to S. 1805.
This agreement opened
Pandora’s Box of Gun Control.
First came the Boxer/Kohl
Lock Up Your Safety amendment. Sponsored
by anti-gun Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), this nefarious new law would have required
all handgun purchasers to pay an implicit "gun tax" by requiring them
to buy a trigger lock when they purchase their handgun, irrespective of need.
In addition, the amendment would have created a broad and implicit cause of
action against gun owners who fail to actually use the storage device to lock up
their firearms. Of course, a locked gun is unavailable for self-defense.
The
Senate passed the Kohl amendment 70-27.
Next, the Senate voted 52-47 in favor of the
Feinstein amendment to renew the Clinton Semi-auto Ban.
Originally passed in 1994 and set to expire on September 13th
of this year, the Clinton Ban outlawed more than 180 firearms, as well as
magazines holding more than ten rounds. The
Ban strikes at the heart of the Second Amendment by banning military-type
rifles, the very arms America’s Founders most intended to protect (see Second
Amendment Designed to protect “Assault Weapons”).
Anti-gun Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jack Reed
also offered an amendment to outlaw the private sale of firearms at gun shows, unless the buyer
agrees to submit to a background registration check. The McCain amendment would
have effectively eliminated gun shows by threatening to imprison every member of
an organization sponsoring a gun show if the organization failed to notify each
and every "person who attends the special firearms event of the
requirements [under the Brady Law]." Thus,
if the person responsible for handing out "Brady pamphlets" took a
break to go to the bathroom, everyone responsible for the event could be sent to
prison. The
McCain amendment passed 53-47.
The Senate also passed
the Ammunition
Restriction Study amendment brought by Senators
Bill Frist and Larry Craig. Among
other things, the language of this provision would have commissioned the
Attorney General to determine whether the ban on so-called "cop
killer" ammunition should include superior performance bullets in popular
hunting calibers such as the .30-06.
As S. 1805 was being weighed down with each of these
anti-gun measures, the management of several gun rights groups, including the
NRA, seemed inclined to continue supporting the bill. The
NRA told members who called about S. 1805 that they would not oppose it.
Their plan was apparently to get this gun control abomination into
conference committee, where they hoped to strip it back down to the underlying
liability bill.
But
this would have been a risky game. As SDGO pointed out, President Bush has already voiced support
for a renewal of the Clinton Semi-auto Ban, and the House Leadership has indicated that they may follow
the President’s lead. If
gun owners had silently allowed the Ban to be agreed to in the Senate, it may
very well have made it through the House and been passed into law.
However, thousands of determined gun owners who are
members of SDGO and other no-compromise groups all across the U.S., many of whom
are also members of the NRA, voiced opposition to S. 1805 once it was laden with
gun control. Thanks to their
no-compromise stand, the NRA management decided to oppose the bill, and one of the worst anti-gun
bills to be seen in the last decade was defeated by a vote of 90 to 8.
As
a result, the Clinton/Feinstein Ban is dead…for now. But there are currently at least four bills in Congress which
would renew and expand the Ban, and Feinstein is expected to offer her amendment
to some other “must pass” bill.
Unfortunately,
this also means that the efforts to pass any kind of protection for gun
manufacturers have been brought to a standstill.
Rather than bringing the bill to a vote in a manner that left it open to anti-gun amendments, the Senate Leadership should have used what has been dubbed the “tree and cloture” procedure (see http://www.gunowners.org/a030204a.htm). This method forces an “up or down” vote on the legislation and would not have allowed the anti-gunners to offer any “poison pill” amendments (also see Fumbling the Gun Makers' Protection Act, Gun Owners of America: http://www.gunowners.org/a030504.htm).