Yesterday the Gun Owners of America (GOA) submitted testimony at the request of the Ranking Member of the Senate Constitution Subcommittee. The GOA took a strong stance against all the gun control legislation on the table and urged the Senate to put forth real solutions to school violence -- like letting teachers and principals protect their students.
The GOA took an online poll over the past week and with 20,897 votes cast, the poll results indicate that 96% of GOA’s membership opposes “universal background checks” and, hence, opposes the core of the gun legislation that is expected to move to the Senate.
Within the next three weeks Senator Patrick Leahy's Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to move a national gun registry bill to the Senate floor. The Judiciary Committee bill will probably not contain the Feinstein semi-auto gun ban, and it may or may not have a magazine ban which would render most of the nation's guns unusable, at least for the foreseeable future. However the Judiciary Committee bill will almost certainly ban all private sales of firearms -- or any private exchange where the gun buyer does not first get permission from the FBI. And it’s this background check requirement that will inevitably set up a framework for a universal gun registry.
The Leahy bill will most certainly have a "gun trafficking" section that is based on other legislation (S. 54) that he’s already introduced. This would turn everyone who lives under repressive state gun laws into a federal "prohibited person," as well. Hence, if your state requires a license to possess a gun, you would also become a federal prohibited person. The Leahy bill would also send you to prison for 20 years for unknowingly selling a firearm to a marijuana user.
Nevada Senator Harry Reid has at least eleven Democratic senators running for reelection in pro-gun states in 2014 and do not want to appear anti-gun to voters. The eleven Democratic senators in pro-gun states are: Mark Begich (Alaska), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Mark Udall (Colorado), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Al Franken (Minnesota), Max Baucus (Montana), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Tom Udall (New Mexico), Kay Hagan (North Carolina), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), and Mark Warner (Virginia). All of these Democrats are expected to vote for the national gun registry and gun licensure. And, in exchange, Reid will allow them to vote against the Feinstein gun ban, which will be the sacrificial lamb to the more important gun control which Democrats really want.
Aside from the fact that the Democratic "non-controversial" gun control bill is, in many ways, worse than the "controversial" bills, there are two additional problems. First, there are dozens of gun control proposals that could easily be added on the floor which would prohibit various guns from being in the hands of law abiding Americans. For example, a Lautenberg amendment -- supposedly intended to "combat terrorism" would allow Obama to ban guns for every gun activist in America just by putting their names on a secret "watch list."
Second, if gun control makes it to a House-Senate conference committee, the conference could report a bill which contains a Feinstein amendment, even though neither the House nor the Senate voted for that language. The conference report is unamendable, and, under the recent anti-gun changes in the Senate rules, there is no way to keep a Senate-passed bill out of the hands of an anti-gun conference.
To prevent this from happening many supporters of the Second Amendment are urging their Senators to defeat the "motion to proceed" with the Leahy Bill which would prevent the Bill from being considered.
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