McCarthy Bill, Trying To Ban Guns AGAIN!!!

[LifeNRA]

House Moves McCarthy Bill To Give The FBI Access To Billions Of Your

Personal Records -- In Order To Seize Your Guns

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

ACTION: Gun Owners of America alerted you to the dangers of HR 1415

in early June. While the bill has lain dormant since then, it is

scheduled for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee this Wednesday.

So please contact your representative and ask him to oppose this

bill. This is legislation that we've been able to kill in the past,

but it's important for us to rise in opposition once again.

We have reprinted the gist of our previous alert to help explain the

problems with HR 1415. Contact information and pre-written text are

included at the very bottom.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Anti-gun zealot Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) is going after your guns...

again. HR 1415 was reported out of a House subcommittee in May and

is now scheduled for a full committee vote on Wednesday.

When you look at the list of cosponsors on HR 1415, you find a "Who's

Who" of the anti-gun Democratic elite: Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA),

John Conyers (D-MI), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Barney Frank (D-MA), Zoe

Lofgren (D-CA), and Pete Stark (D-CA) among others. They are all

F-rated Representatives.

HR 1415 -- the McCarthy bill -- would require states to "make

electronically available to the Attorney General records relevant to

a determination of whether a person is disqualified from possessing

or receiving a firearm under [federal law]" [section 102©(1)(A)].

Among other things, the bill will help FBI officials to effectively

stop thousands upon thousands of Americans from purchasing a firearm.

Already, millions of Americans have been disarmed by the Lautenberg

Gun Ban which President Bill Clinton signed in 1996.

Because of the Lautenberg ban, people who have committed very minor

offenses that include pushing, shoving or, in some cases, even

yelling at a family member have discovered that they can no longer

own a firearm for self-defense. Consider just some of the many

examples:

* A Delaware member of GOA testified in Congress as to how the

Lautenberg gun ban had disarmed him for life -- simply because he

swatted his child with an open hand on the buttocks. At the time,

this father was going through an ugly divorce, and so his estranged

wife, with the encouragement of her mother, reported the man to the

police for child abuse. After a nasty court battle, this father was

forced to accept a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction. He has

sold his firearms collection and is now disarmed for life by the

Lautenberg gun ban, simply because he spanked his child.

* In Fairfax County, Virginia, a wife (Judy) was carted off to the

police station for slightly tearing her husband's pocket -- even

though her husband refused to press charges. The husband, Tom,

states he had only called the police to get "documentation in a

custody dispute." Nevertheless, Virginia's zero-tolerance law

requires the police to press charges in such cases. For Judy to

plea-bargain to a misdemeanor and pay a minimal fine means that she

forfeits her Second Amendment rights forever because of the

Lautenberg ban.

* The Lautenberg gun ban has even slapped sons and daughters with a

lifetime gun ban, for nothing more than the slightest of infractions.

The Washington Post Magazine reports that twenty-one year old Lora

lost her temper and flung an empty water bottle and her car keys.

Unfortunately for her, the car keys landed near her mother. For

that, Lora was arrested, booked, and told she must not have any

contact with her mom for three days, even though she was still living

at home. Officer Mike Twomey, who assisted in the arrest, remarks

that "in the old days, the proper response would have been to say,

'hey, ladies, cool it.' Now, arrest is the only option."

Let's not forget, that because of the Lautenberg domestic violence

MISDEMEANOR gun ban, the "new days" means that if Lora pays a $25

fine -- just to get the issue "behind her" -- she loses her gun

rights forever.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

But the anti-gun nuts in Congress are upset because many of the

states' criminal records are incomplete. As a result, the FBI does

not access all of these records when screening the background of

someone who purchases a firearm from a gun dealer.

So HR 1415 will grant millions of dollars to the states to improve

their criminal records. Specifically, the bill would send taxpayer

monies to the states so they can provide the FBI with the names of

those people who are disqualified by the Lautenberg gun ban.

Obviously, this starts with a huge computer network of felonies and

misdemeanors -- with the FBI trolling through records of bar fights

or domestic disputes to determine if you spanked your kids or yelled

at your husband and are therefore disqualified from owning a gun

under the Lautenberg amendment. Congress should be repealing the

Lautenberg gun ban, not extending it to disable even more people from

owning guns.

But the problem is much broader than that:

* Federal law prohibits illegal aliens from owning guns [18 U.S.C.

922(g)(5)]. But, in order to identify illegal aliens, "relevant"

records could mean that the FBI would demand state tax returns of ALL

American citizens, employment records, or even library records -- all

in the name of making sure that you're not an illegal.

* And did you know that veterans who have suffered from

post-traumatic stress disorder have been deemed as mentally

"incompetent" and are prohibited from owning guns under 18 U.S.C.

922(g)(4)? Records of those instances certainly exist; and, 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.

The bottom line is this: The "Instant check" program has hardly

worked well enough to justify giving the Attorney General the right

to go on a fishing expedition through EVERY personal record on every

citizen in your state. This bill would expand the power of the

federal government in the most ridiculous of ways.

But McCarthy, who could care less about raising the debt limits in

this country, would take an already financially-overburdened

government and slap it with additional burdens, requiring millions of

dollars to be spent on tracking the personal information on millions

of law-abiding Americans. That's the "carrot" for the states:

update your records, provide them to the federal government, and get

millions of dollars in return.

Well, if the Second and Tenth Amendments were to be obeyed, the

Federal government would be prohibited from passing laws that allow

the FBI to search through the records of HONEST, LAW-ABIDING

citizens.

Never mind the fact that all this data is handled with less care than

the records of a farmer's livestock. Consider that CNSNews.com

reported in June that 25 million Social Security number records of

veterans were recently hacked. The more that our private data gets

added into government computers, the more likely we are to have our

identity compromised.

ACTION:

1. Please forward this alert to as many as you can, so that your

friends, acquaintances and family members can also contact their

Senators and Representatives. Congressmen must hear that this

legislation is unacceptable.

2. To identify your Representative, as well as to send a message via

e-mail, see the Legislative Action Center at

http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm on the GOA website.

----- Pre-written letter -----

Dear Representative:

I am outraged that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy is trying to prohibit more

Americans from owning guns with her HR 1415. This bill spends

millions of dollars to further prop up the unconstitutional Brady

Law, but there is no authority for the Federal government to do this

under the Second and Tenth Amendments.

Section 102©(1)(A) of H.R. 1415 would allow the federal government

to troll through state misdemeanor, diversion, psychiatric, tax, and

even library records -- all for the purpose of finding new reasons to

seize guns from law-abiding Americans.

The Instant Background Check should be banned, not expanded. We

should be focusing attention on crooks, not on law-abiding citizens

like my friends, my family and me. And Congress should be repealing

the Lautenberg gun ban, not extending it to disable even more people

from owning guns. H.R. 1415 is a simply an extension of the hated

Lautenberg gun ban.

Please oppose H.R. 1415.

I would appreciate hearing whether you plan to oppose this bill. Gun

Owners of America will keep me informed about any votes on this

dangerous measure.

Sincerely,