When is a gun ban not a gun ban?
By Ray Lautenschlager
A few years ago, anti-gun politicians tried to pass a state-level Lautenberg gun ban similar to the one Senator Lee Schoenbeck sponsored and promoted this year.
But last time, gun owners like you stopped them cold. Now the politicians have adopted a new tactic: with a straight face, they insist that Sen. Schoenbeck’s gun ban isn’t really a gun ban.
In reality, the Schoenbeck ban is another state-level version of the federal Lautenberg gun ban. Passed by Congress in 1996, the federal ban has been retroactively applied to permanently prohibit firearms possession by anyone who has ever been convicted of a “domestic violence” misdemeanor.
The federal ban has often been enforced against folks who have not committed any act of violence. Spouses who were involved in nothing more than a loud disagreement and mothers who committed the crime of spanking their children have been permanently stripped of their right to bear arms in self-defense.
Schoenbeck’s Urban Legend
Now, anti-gun politicians have written this horrendous ban into South Dakota law. They claim that the Schoenbeck ban will help gun owners by preempting the federal life-time ban.
Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun owners of America, refers to this as Schoenbeck’s Urban Legend.
“The idea that a state version of Lautenberg will get the state out from under the Federal law is an Urban Legend,” Mr. Pratt stated in a memo to South Dakota Gun Owners.
“In years past, several states passed their own version of the Instant Background Check, and a leading argument was that the Feds would leave the matter to the state. But the citizens in states that chose to duplicate Federal law now suffer under double the restrictions. Obviously, this is part of the same Urban Legend,” says Pratt.
Proponents of the Schoenbeck gun ban cannot produce one single specific case, either in this state or in any other, where anyone has had their gun rights restored because of a state gun ban.
What’s the real reason for the Schoenbeck ban?
BATF position papers and documents, such as the yellow form 4473, state that a person “who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence is not prohibited from purchasing, receiving or possessing a firearm if the person has had civil rights – the right to vote, sit on a jury and hold public office – restored.”
If the real objective of Schoenbeck’s legislation is to exempt South Dakota citizens from the federal lifetime ban, why not follow BATF guidelines? These guidelines clearly recognize the loss and restoration of the rights to vote, sit on a jury and hold public office as the qualification for exemption from the Lautenberg ban.
So why are Schoenbeck and other proponents so insistent about creating a new state-level gun ban? Not only is the Schoenbeck ban a complete infringement of the right to bear arms, it is absolutely unnecessary to the stated goal of helping victims of the federal Lautenberg ban. Although Sen. Schoenbeck was made aware of this fact, he continued to push his gun ban.
State-level ratification of the Lautenberg gun ban
The answer to bad federal law is not duplicating it in state law. The Schoenbeck ban increases the penalty for anyone who has been trapped by the federal ban and who subsequently uses a firearm for self-defense. There is nothing to keep these folks from being convicted under both state and federal law and suffering double the penalty. This callous disregard for the victims of the federal ban casts doubt on Schoenbeck’s claim that he is only tying to help them.
The Schoenbeck gun ban also undermines efforts to repeal the current federal ban. Gun owners across the nation are uniting in this growing national movement, but gun control proponents are countering this effort by working to ratify the Lautenberg gun ban state by state. It appears that Sen. Schoenbeck is more committed to the gun ban agenda than he is to the citizens he was elected to represent.
When SDGO members flooded the Capitol with more than two thousand petitions, postcards, emails, phone calls and letters, Sen. Schoenbeck responded to this outpouring of public opinion by mounting a campaign to discredit and ignore his constituents.
Sen. Schoenbeck is hoping the voters won’t remember. SDGO is betting they will.
There has been a lot of misinformation spread about the Schoenbeck ban. If anyone has been trying to blow smoke in your face, please click here to read the facts.