The White House task force led by Vice President Joe Biden (shown) unveiled some of its proposals to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms Tuesday, a plot that critics say would lay the framework for gun registration and eventual confiscation. Among other schemes, the Obama administration is plotting to impose almost 20 "executive orders" on gun control while pushing for more draconian legislation, drawing a prompt and fierce rebuke from advocates of the Second Amendment. One Republican in Congress is even threatening to file articles of impeachment.
According to news reports citing Democrat lawmakers, Obama plans to impose a wide range of controversial measures by executive fiat. In other words, because Congress is unlikely to help assault gun rights at this point – even some Democrats have called his proposals "very extreme" – the president plans to pursue his anti-Second Amendment agenda by issuing unconstitutional decrees. Critics in Congress and in state governments nationwide, however, contend that such lawlessness would be unacceptable.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), for example, warned that if Obama tried to adopt gun control by executive order, Congress could be forced to consider impeachment. "The very purpose of the Second Amendment is to stop the government from disallowing people the means to defend themselves against tyranny," he explained. "Any proposal to abuse executive power and infringe upon gun rights must be repelled with the stiffest legislative force possible.”
Obama’s threats are literally an assault on the foundation of America, Stockman continued. "If the president is allowed to suspend constitutional rights on his own personal whims, our free republic has effectively ceased to exist," he said Monday. “I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."
Lawmakers in Wyoming, meanwhile, are considering a bill that would nullify any unconstitutional gun control efforts within the state – registration schemes as well as restrictions on types of guns or magazines would all be covered. Any federal official attempting to enforce such measures would be committing a felony and could be imprisoned for up to five years. The legislation is expected to pass.
Texas and other states are set to consider similar legislation, and support for nullification is spreading across the country like wildfire. At the same time, local law enforcement officials – sheriffs, police chiefs, state attorney generals – are also promising to protect gun rights in their jurisdictions. Citizens, meanwhile, are openly advocating mass civil disobedience to resist any further infringements.
Still, Obama is not backing down. Everything from ordering state governments and federal agencies to provide more information for federal databases to unlawfully trying to track firearm sales is on the president's "executive" agenda, according to new reports. "How we are gathering data, for example, on guns that fall into the hands of criminals, and how we track that more effectively – there may be some steps that we can take administratively as opposed to through legislation," Obama said on Monday.
Federal law and the Second Amendment, of course, prohibit any effort to register or track weapons. However, experts and gun rights activists say the administration has increasingly been trying to get around the legal prohibition by forcing gun dealers to hand over their records, for example, and that all such lawless efforts must be fiercely opposed.
"This is a game the anti-gun zealots have played before: They threaten to kill the Second Amendment, and then negotiate their way back to u2018merely' eviscerating it. Or put another way, they threaten to shoot us in the head to get us to agree to cutting off our fingers," Gun Owners of America said in an e-mail to supporters about the administration's controversial plan asking citizens to contact their elected officials. "The only way that America's gun owners are going to have peace over the next decade is to stop all gun control – as we did after Columbine – and then defeat compromising legislators running for reelection in 2014."
Also on the "executive action" agenda is appointing a director to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which has been without a permanent boss for some six years now. However, lawmakers are already under intense pressure to abolish the anti-gun ATF, or at least slash its budget – especially after the Justice Department agency was caught trafficking heavy weapons to certain Mexican drug cartels under operation Fast and Furious. Disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder has already been held in criminal contempt by Congress for his ham-handed coverup and outright lies about the scandal.
