Western Rifle Shooters Association

Do not give in to Evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Your New Attorney General


In 58 days, that is...

David Kopel writes the following at the lawblog Volokh Conspiracy:

Eric Holder on firearms policy: Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials (including several Attorneys General, and Stuart Gerson, who was Acting Attorney General until Janet Reno was confirmed)took issue with the Reno-Holder brief's characterization of DOJ's viewpoint.

But at the least, the Reno-Holder brief accurately expressed the position of the Department of Justice when Janet Reno was Attorney General and Eric Holder was Deputy Attorney General. At the oral argument before the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson, the Assistant U.S. Attorney told the panel that the Second Amendment was no barrier to gun confiscation, not even of the confiscation of guns from on-duty National Guardsmen.

As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that "Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence"--a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as "children."(Sources: Holder testimony before House Judiciary Committee, Subcommitee on Crime, May 27,1999; Holder Weekly Briefing, May 20, 2000. One of the bills that Holder endorsed is detailed in my 1999 Issue Paper "Unfair and Unconstitutional".)

After 9/11, he penned a Washington Post op-ed, "Keeping Guns Away From Terrorists" arguing that a new law should give "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale." He also stated that prospective gun buyers should be checked against the secret "watch lists" compiled by various government entities. (In an Issue Paper on the watch list proposal, I quote a FBI spokesman stating that there is no cause to deny gun ownership to someone simply because she is on the FBI list.)

After the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the D.C. handgun ban and self-defense ban were unconstitutional in 2007, Holder complained that the decision "opens the door to more people having more access to guns and putting guns on the streets."

Holder [also] played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old's home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez "was not taken at the point of a gun" and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted "very sensitively." If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling "Get down, get down, we'll shoot" is example of acting "very sensitively," his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.


Now, just so you have just a little more insight on how things will be going during the Obama/Holder regime, take the time to scroll down and read all of the comments to Kopel's piece.

Alea iacta est.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

My comment left at the "Conspiracy":

"How many Clintonista gungrabbers can dance on the head of an Obama pin?"

Many, it would seem. It would also seem to me that much of the back-and-forth above misses the point. To quote the sage philosopher queen of the hip left, Oprah Winfrey, "If someone shows you who they really are, you should believe them." To the gunnies above who argue with liberals about what actually happened at Waco, just refer them to Mike McNulty's documentaries and move on. To those who argue about what's in an Elian photo, I would refer them to Wright's Razor, a derivation of Occam's Razor: "There are some things in life so obvious, so factually unchallengeable, that if you have to explain them to somebody, the stupid sonofabitch will never get it anyway."

Ergo, you are wasting your time arguing with antigunners when you should be preparing to meet the thugs that are once more suiting up to come to a neighborhood near you. Forget Elian and forget the Davidians. What are YOU going to do in the immediate future to protect YOUR family and YOUR liberty?

Mike Vanderboegh
III
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com

November 23, 2008 at 1:00 PM  
Blogger Reynald said...

If you need an example of gun control closer to home just look to Canada. We have personal licensing and a universal gun registry. The result is a 2 billion dollar cost with no demonstrable improvement in public safety. Our leftist parties led by the Liberal Party offer nothing more than more of a failed policy. The Liberals promised that universal registration would NOT lead to confiscation. The new Firearms Act immediately outlawed over 50% of handguns (barrels 4" or less) and military looking rifles. Now after registering most of the rifles they are pledged to BAN all handguns and ALL semi-automatic firearms. Our lesson learned is to Never trust a leftist government to deal in good faith on firearms issues. The truth was the first casualty in the Liberal anti-gun campaign,

The only caveat is that the present Conservative Party led government refuses to go ahead with gun bans as our Conservative Prime Minister has stated publicly that bans have not worked anywhere in the world. The Conservatives are also pledged to ending the universal registry. Handguns would continue to be registered as has been the case since 1934.

We have personal licensing based on clean records and passed national firearms training as well as national standards for firearms storage. Our historic firearms culture is under attack led by ignorant urban leftist elites who have deemed firearms culture to be politically incorrect.

The leftists have betrayed their own vision of a multi-cultural, just society.

November 23, 2008 at 5:43 PM  

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