The End of the American Experiment. "Unintended" consequences, and the NRA It seems that everyone in the world, except the NRA is familiar with the term “unintended consequences”.

Being less concerned with people and the Right to keep and bear arms than an admittedly dicey PR problem, the NRA thinks that by repeating a lie loud enough and often enough, it will become the truth.

Hardly.

In fine totalitarian tradition, the (truly) McCarthyesque HR2640 is a bill designed to create an official list of “social undesirables”. No matter that these people have done no wrong, their names will be forever tattooed into a Government list to await further disposition.

We’ve come to expect this sort of behavior from the Collectivists running Washington. They have long wanted to make lists of “enemies”.

But apparently that’s OK with the NRA. It’s so OK that they have to try to justify their position. So, using their own Spin as a reference, let’s look at why they think that making an Official “Undesirable” List of innocent people is acceptable to them, and the unintended consequences they blindly, conspicuously, ignored.

Friday, June 15, 2007
On June 13, the U.S. House of
Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 2640, the “NICS Improvement Act,” by a
voice vote. H.R. 2640 is consistent with NRA’s decades-long support for measures
to prohibit firearm purchases by those who have been adjudicated by a court as
mentally defective or as a danger to themselves or others. Additionally, H.R.
2640 makes needed, and long overdue, improvements to the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

While the
media continues to characterize this bill as a “gun-control” measure, nothing
could be further from the truth. The national media either have not bothered to
read and accurately assess the text of the bill, or are deliberately
manipulating and “spinning” the facts in order to stir up controversy and
forward their agendas.

Here are the facts:
H.R. 2640 would provide financial incentives to states to make records of
prohibited individuals available for use in the NICS, and would also require federal agencies to
provide such records.

This is very true. The Government wants to make an Official List of “Prohibited Persons” based upon no objective criteria. Many people become “prohibited persons” at the whim of an anti-gun judge.

Those blocked from buying a gun due to these newly provided and
updated records in the NICS are already prohibited under current law from
owning firearms.

This is a blatant misrepresentation. 18USC says nothing about ownership. It declares the simple POSSESSION of firearms by a “prohibited person” to be a Felony. Nowhere in 18USC or its references is “possession” defined. But, using Drug Law as a precedent, it is not outrageous to suggest that the mere presence of firearms in a household comprises the same level of “possession” that a baggie of Cocaine on the coffee table does. Everyone in the household is in “possession”, making the “prohibited person” a Felon and all other adults accessories to the fact.

The basic goal of the bill is to make NICS as instant, fair, and accurate as possible. While no piece of legislation will stop a madman bent on committing horrific crimes, those who have been found mentally incompetent by a court should be included in the NICS as they are already prohibited under federal law from owning firearms.

Then why make an Enemies List? If this law won’t keep anyone from committing violence against innocents, why support it? Look too at what this Official Enemies List does: It gives City, State and Federal Law enforcement a way to correlate “prohibited persons” with households that also have Law Abiding Concealed Firearm Permits or other forms of Gun Owner Registration like Firearms Identification Cards – lists of both of which are available with a simple FOIA request.

One of the main reasons Law Enforcement has not gone door to door looking for households with both “Prohibited Persons” and firearms is that Medical Privacy Laws prevented them from making such correlations. When that list is available, it will be solely on the good graces of local Government and Law Enforcement to decide if they want to persecute/prosecute those households.

How long do you think that good will will last in Boston, NYC or Chicago?

H.R. 2640 is sound legislation that makes numerous improvements over existing federal law, including:

Certain types of mental health orders will no longer prohibit a person from possessing or receiving firearms.

This is good, but why did you need to support the Stigmatization of all the “other” types of Neurochemical disorders?

Adjudications that have expired or been removed, or commitments from which a person has been completely released with no further supervision required, will no longer prohibit the legal purchase of a firearm.

Well, duh. If they have expired &/or been removed they don’t exist to go into the List, do they? Also, define “supervision”. Is Medication Management considered “supervision”? How many diabetics have to check regularly with their physicians to ensure their Insulin regimen is optimal?

Excluding federal decisions about a person’s mental health that consist only of a medical diagnosis, without a specific finding that the person is dangerous or mentally incompetent. This provision addresses concerns about disability decisions by the Veterans Administration concerning our brave men and women in uniform. (In 2000, as a parting shot at our service members, the Clinton Administration forced the names of almost 90,000 veterans and veterans’ family members to be added to a “prohibited” list; H.R. 2640 would help many of
these people get their rights restored.)

Many. Not all. Apparently the NRA is willing to accept placing Honest, Valiant Veterans of our Armed Forces forever on an Official Enemies List for having an often short term Neurochemical Disorder. They also neglect to consider how many people in the legal and mental health professions consider the desire to own firearms is in and of itself an indication of social/mental instability before arbitrarily changing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms into a privilege based solely on the whims of a doctor or judge.

Requiring all participating federal or state agencies to establish “relief from disability” programs that would allow a person to get the mental health prohibition removed, either administratively or in court. This type of relief has not been available at the federal level for the past 15 years.

Oh goody. A requirement without a definition or guideline. So as long as a State has some kind of “relief from disability” program they are OK. Never mind that they never have to actually provide that relief, just have the program. Never mind that with no guidelines that relief could be as easy to get as a Gun Permit in New York City. Never mind that, in today’s litigious society no doctor or judge in their right mind will take a “potential relapse/crazy” off the list. This clause “protects” only one class of people – the Rich and Politically Connected. Average Americans get to go hang.

Ensuring—as a permanent part of federal law—that no fee or tax is associated with a NICS check, an NRA priority for nearly a decade. While NRA has supported annual appropriations amendments with the same effect, those amendments must be renewed every year. This provision would not expire.

That’s nice. Hell of a trade. An Enemies List for funding a program that has had almost negligible impact on crime or violence.

Requiring an audit of past spending on NICS projects to find out if funds appropriated for NICS were misused for unrelated purposes.

Absolutely. Make sure the tax dollars extorted from Honest American Gun Owners and used to create an Official Enemies List only gets used to continue to track honest people. Brilliant.

Neither current federal law, nor H.R. 2640, would prohibit gun possession by people who have voluntarily sought psychological counseling or checked themselves into a hospital:
Current law only prohibits gun possession by people who have been “adjudicated as a mental defective” or “committed to any mental institution.” Current BATFE regulations specifically exclude commitments for observation and voluntary commitments. Records of voluntary treatment also would not be available under federal and state health privacy laws.

Ah ha. So, is it Possession or Ownership? Guess what? Since, as I have shown, you can’t adequately define or prove/disprove “possession”, the only thing left to the government will be to track Ownership. I.E., a Registry of Gun Owners and a complete inventory of the firearms they “own”. I thought the NRA opposed that on the grounds it would lead to Sullivian Confiscations. Funny how this bill will cement the need for just such a Registry in order to “protect” honest gun owners with “prohibited persons” in their household.

Similarly, voluntary drug or alcohol treatment would not be reported to NICS. First, voluntary treatment is not a “commitment.” Second, current federal law on gun possession by drug users, as applied in BATFE regulations, only prohibits gun ownership by those whose “unlawful [drug] use has occurred recently enough to indicate that the individual is actively engaged in such conduct.”

In short, neither current law nor this legislation would affect those who voluntarily get psychological help. No person who needs help for a mental health or substance abuse problem should be deterred from seeking that help due to fear of losing Second Amendment rights.

Unless the jurisdiction in question has an established policy of “adjudicating” anyone in in-patient treatment in an effort to ensure they don’t leave without a doctor’s release...

This bill now moves to the Senate for consideration. NRA will continue to work throughout this Congressional process and vigilantly monitor this legislation to ensure that any changes to the NICS benefit lawful gun purchasers, while ensuring that those presently adjudicated by the courts as mentally defective are included in the system.

Someone from the NRA ought to look up what the Stalinists & Nazis did with their lists of “mental defectives”.

If anti-gun Members of Congress succeed in attaching any anti-gun amendments to this bill, we will withdraw support and strongly oppose it!

Then oppose it. Now. This bill stands in diametric opposition to everything the US fought in the WWII European Theater and Cold War to stop.

Does the NRA actually believe that Honest American gun owners deserve to come under Government Scrutiny because someone in their household has been officially and arbitrarily declared an enemy of the state because they have a treatable medical condition?

Does the NRA believe that Honest American gun owners will be safe from persecution when the correlation of the “prohibited person” enemies list and any other extant firearms owner registry constitutes Probable Cause for a pre-dawn raid?

Does the NRA expect us to suddenly trust an agency that THEY condemned for violating privacy laws in the Virginia Gun Show fiasco?

Meh.

The NRA, in its mad dash to save itself from a PR problem has backed itself and all honest gun owners into a corner.

Let’s look at the “unintended” consequences one more time:

#1: This bill creates an enemies list of “prohibited persons” whose only “crime” is that of having a treatable, often short term neurochemical disorder, and labels them as “mentally defective” – destroying decades of advocacy that has attempted to lessen the stigma of neurochemical disorders.

#2: This list, when correlated with existing lists of firearms owners (CCW permits, Firearms ID Cards, etc.) constitutes probable cause for the search and seizure of all firearms in a household on the pretext of “firearms in the possession of a prohibited person”.

#3: The only way to prevent the above pre-dawn raids from happening will be to either Register Legal Gun Owners along with an Inventory of all firearms “owned”, or to redefine the legal term “Possession” in such a way as to make all Drug Raids meaningless. (You guess which they will prefer...)

#4: From a Political and Litigation standpoint, regardless of what “program” may be established by Government agencies, in practical terms no one but the Rich and Politically Connected will ever gain “relief from disability”.

There is no way that the virulently anti-gunowner Rep. McCarthy and the Brady Bunch didn’t see or plan this. Why else would they be so happy?

And what did the NRA say again?

If anti-gun Members of Congress succeed in attaching any anti-gun amendments to this bill, we will withdraw support and strongly oppose it!

Mealy mouthed Spin and "plausable Deniability". Who needs to attach any anti-gun amendments? They are already built in. Convenient that the NRA doesn’t have to oppose it any more unless the Antis they are collaborating with get greedy.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 2nd Amendment is all but destroyed - courtsy of the NRA. Just finishing the job they started in 1968.

Labels: CultureOfCorruption, Politics

  ¶ posted by Old Ironsights 2:22 PM