‘Cross lobby’ shows 'progressive' hypocrisy on church-state separation

Joined by political, law enforcement official and activist supporters in the Dirksen Senate Office Building today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced anticipated legislation that would ban so-called “assault weapons” and the standard magazines they use, C-SPAN reported, providing live coverage of the event.

According to Feinstein’s website, the bill “bans the sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing of 120 specifically-named firearms; certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one or more military characteristics; and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.”

It would also “strengthens the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and various state bans by: moving from a 2-characteristic test to a 1-characteristic test; eliminating the easy-to-remove bayonet mounts and flash suppressors from the characteristics test; and banning firearms with ‘thumbhole stocks’ and ‘bullet buttons’ to address attempts to ‘work around’ prior bans [and] bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.”

The Daily Caller has posted a screenshot of the list of firearms to be banned by name.

As a sop to the sporting crowd, Feinstein’s legislation claims to “Protect legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by: grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment; exempting over 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting or sporting purposes; and exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons.”

This is a divide-and-conquer tactic, first to confuse the public into thinking the Second Amendment has something to do with hunting, and politically, to keep so-called “sportsmen” out of the fight, at least those who don’t realize that today’s scoped deer rifles will be tomorrow’s demonized “sniper rifles,” especially since they all pretty much use ammo capable of penetrating limousine windows and police car doors, let alone ballistic vests.

The text of the bill itself must be introduced before being posted on the Library of Congress THOMAS legislative archive, but the National Rifle Association has also reported the bill would require existing owners of affected firearms to register them with the federal government as National Firearms Act weapons (there is a $200 “transfer tax” for machine guns, which these are not), would render the firearms nontransferable, meaning they could not be sold or left to heirs, but would instead be forfeited to the government on the owner’s death, and “targets handguns in defiance of the Supreme Court.”

Perhaps as outrageous as the presumption that they can impose their will over the Bill of Rights and make criminals of gun owners who will not bend to it was the invocation given by “Reverend” Gary Hall, Dean of the National Cathedral.

“Everyone in this city seems to live in terror of the gun lobby,” Hall lied, knowing full well that many embrace and depend on it, and that no NRA members or members of other gun rights groups have committed any of the violent crimes that produce real terror in a populace that, until recently, couldn’t even “legally” have an operable firearm in their homes, and that still has no “lawful” way to protect itself in public settings.

“But I believe that the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby, especially when we stand together as people of all faiths across the religious landscape of America,” Hall continued insipidly, and utterly without authority, as if he alone speaks for any of these faiths, and in total disregard for the tens of millions of self-identified people of faith who proudly and uncompromisingly believe in their unalienable right to keep and bear arms.

An occasional recurring theme on “The War on Guns” blog is how the regressive left, as exemplified by groups like “Americans United for the Separation of Church and State,” goes into IRS-siccing hissy fits whenever conservative religious values surface in government affairs. That generally prompts them to point loudly and insistently to the “wall of separation,” cite the First Amendment proscription that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and generally act like they can’t wait to find a hamlet somewhere with a manger scene in a public park at Christmas so they can tear it down and make someone pay for having their atheist sensibilities offended. It’s typically the same crowd that wants to turn loose the Justice Department on sidewalk anti-abortion demonstrators while they turn a blind eye to public-financed facilities being used as “culturally diverse” prayer rooms.

High priestess Feinstein and her congregation of assorted domestic enemies, useful (for now) superstitious idiots like Hall, and dragooned “Only Ones” enjoying an easy day’s duty on the taxpayers’ dime are free to speak in tongues at the altar of the Leviathan State any time they want. What they’re not free to do is impose their fanatical cult obsession on those of us who want no part of their fraudulent evangelism, or to force a sword point conversion from we who will not drink from their poisoned chalice, and who will throw it back in their faces if they try.

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