American gun-owners, en masse, are \u201ccasting their ballots\u201d on how much they believe Barack Obama\u2019s campaign-trail promise to \u201cnot take away your guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019re driving the price of ammo through the roof, swarming gun shows and leaving the pallets and floors of the ammo suppliers\u2019 booths as naked as a wheat field after the locusts pass through.<\/p>\n
My friend Glen Parshall, at Bargain Pawn in North Las Vegas, recently put up a single round of .380 (a most unimpressive handgun caliber) for sale online at AuctionArms, selling it for $17 to another dealer back East.<\/p>\n
It was mostly a joke, of course. Glen says he\u2019s sending the round in a little red velvet jewelry case; the buyer wanted a receipt that he could frame and hang on the wall to show his customers \u201cHow much this stuff costs these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Handgun ammo isn\u2019t really $17 a round … yet. But it\u2019s a joke with a point.<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
The gun-grabbers and hoplophobes — now nearing a veto-proof majority in Congress with the defection of Arlen \u201cMagic Bullet\u201d Specter to the Democrats and the likely success of the Democratic lawyers in \u201crecounting till it works\u201d to seat professional comedian Al Franken from Minnesota — don\u2019t have to \u201ctake away our guns\u201d if they can sign some kind of international treaty (bypassing and overruling U.S. statute) that bans ammunition reloading as \u201cmanufacturing without a license,\u201d and then drives the price of both firearms and ammunition through the roof by requiring every bullet and brass cartridge to bear some kind of \u201cmatching but unique identifying number,\u201d supposedly for the use of police in tracking \u201cweapons used in crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Naw, no bad guy will ever file off the numbers or simply use stolen rounds, the way they use stolen cars with stolen license plates as getaway cars. Why would they do THAT?)<\/p>\n
Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners of America, has words of warning about the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember candidate Barack Obama? The guy who \u2018wasn\u2019t going to take away our guns?\u2019\u201d Pratt\u2019s GOA asked in a recent release.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, guess what? Less than 100 days into his administration, he\u2019s never met a gun he didn\u2019t hate.<\/p>\n
\u201cA week ago, Obama went to Mexico, whined about the United States, and bemoaned (before the whole world) the fact that he didn\u2019t have the political power to take away our semi-automatics. Nevertheless, that didn\u2019t keep him from pushing additional restrictions on American gun owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s called the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms. … To be sure, this imponderable title masks a really nasty piece of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, when the treaty purports to ban the \u2018illicit manufacture of firearms,\u2019 what does that mean?<\/p>\n
\u201c1. \u2018Illicit manufacturing\u2019 of firearms is defined as \u2018assembly of firearms [or] ammunition… without a license….\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHence, reloading ammunition — or putting together a lawful firearm from a kit — is clearly \u2018illicit manufacturing.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cModifying a firearm in any way would surely be \u2018illicit manufacturing,\u2019 GOA concludes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf these provisions (and others) become the law of the land, the Obama administration could have a heyday in enforcing them. Consider some of the other provisions in the treaty:<\/p>\n
\u201c* Banning Reloading. In Article IV of the treaty, countries commit to adopting \u2018necessary legislative or other measures\u2019 to criminalize illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember that \u2018illicit manufacturing\u2019 includes reloading and modifying or
\nassembling a firearm in any way. This would mean that the Obama administration could promulgate regulations banning reloading on the basis of this treaty — just as it is currently circumventing Congress to write legislation taxing greenhouse gases. …<\/p>\n
\u201c* Micro-stamping. Article VI requires \u2018appropriate markings\u2019 on firearms. And it is not inconceivable that this provision could be used to require micro-stamping of firearms and\/or ammunition — a requirement which is clearly intended to impose specifications which are not technologically possible or which are possible only at a prohibitively expensive cost.<\/p>\n
\u201c* Gun Registration. Article XI requires the maintenance of any records, for a \u2018reasonable time,\u2019 that the government determines to be necessary to trace firearms. This provision would almost certainly repeal portions of McClure-Volkmer and could arguably be used to require a national registry or database.\u201d<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
Meantime, the Libertarian Party points out even the statistics used by Mr. Obama to supposedly justify his \u201cemergency need\u201d to \u201cblock the flow of arms to Mexico\u201d are bogus.<\/p>\n
First off, let\u2019s stipulate that if Mexico and the United States want to end the violence stemming from the trade in marijuana and cocaine, the answer is the same as when we wanted to end the bootleggers\u2019 alcohol-related violence in 1933: legalize marijuana and cocaine.<\/p>\n
Distributors of competing brands of whiskey — a much more socially and medically destructive drug than marijuana, cocaine, or the opiates — don\u2019t have to resort to shooting it out in the streets to settle their contractual disputes, because their trade is LEGAL.<\/p>\n
But the LP says Obama\u2019s numbers are purposely faked to create the impression Mexico\u2019s drug war would run out of arms if we could simply disarm all us gringos.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs Barack Obama \u2018bitterly clinging to falsified numbers\u2019 in his bid to push his anti-gun treaty?\u201d asked the Libertarian Party in an April press release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States,\u201d said Mr. Obama in a face-to-face April meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
But that claim, the LP points out, \u201cis blatantly false. According to information supplied by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) the real number is closer to only 17 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a reason Obama is intentionally spreading false information about American firearm businesses,\u201d says Donny Ferguson, Libertarian National Committee Communications Director. \u201cHe … promised anti-gun groups he would enact gun bans and is hoping to scare people into voting away their own rights. …<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only does Obama want to renew failed gun bans here in the United States and register all gun owners, he\u2019s hoping to literally scare up enough support for an international anti-gun treaty the Senate has been rejected for over a decade.<\/p>\n
The Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA), requiring all guns to be marked and tracked by the government, was signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, but never ratified, Ferguson of the LP points out.<\/p>\n
But Obama\u2019s \u201890 percent\u2019 talking point has absolutely no factual basis, the LP proceeds to demonstrate.<\/p>\n
\u201cATF Special Agent William Newell tells Fox News that between 2007 and 2008, around 11,000 guns used in Mexican crimes appeared to come from the United States and were submitted to the ATF for tracing. Of those, only 6,000 could be successfully traced. Of those, only 5,114, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover, were found to have come from the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cObama\u2019s \u201890 percent\u2019 number refers, not to the percentage of \u2018guns recovered in Mexico,\u2019 as Obama claims, but to the \u2018percent of the traced firearms\u2019 according to a BATFE spokeswoman.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Mexican authorities report that in those two years, a total of 29,000 guns were recovered at \u2018crime scenes.\u2019 That means 68 percent of the guns recovered by Mexican police did not even appear to come from the United States. That means only 5,114 out of 29,000 guns used in Mexican \u2018crimes\u2019 were found to have come from the United States,\u201d the Libertarians conclude. \u201cThat figure would be 17 percent, not the 90 percent repeated by Obama.<\/p>\n
Further weakening Obama\u2019s case is the fact firearms manufacturers such as Colt legally shipped some of those United States-originated guns into Mexico for permitted uses, such as by the Mexican military.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearch finds most of the guns used by Mexican criminals come from overseas black markets, Russian crime organizations, South America, Asia, Guatemala and even the Mexican army.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deserters sell their rifles, or simply go to work for the drug barons, bringing their service weapons with them.<\/p>\n
During his term in the Senate, Obama earned an \u201cF\u201d rating from Gun Owners of America, as well as from the National Rifle Association. In an April 11, 2008 campaign speech in San Francisco, Obama claimed gun owners are simply \u201cbitter,\u201d racist people who \u201ccling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren\u2019t like them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cObama is \u2018bitterly clinging\u2019 to falsified numbers, hoping he can take away the constitutional rights of \u2018people who aren\u2019t like\u2019 him,\u201d The Libertarian Party concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American gun-owners, en masse, are \u201ccasting their ballots\u201d on how much they believe Barack Obama\u2019s campaign-trail promise to \u201cnot take away your guns.\u201d They\u2019re driving the price of ammo through the roof, swarming gun shows and leaving the pallets and floors of the ammo suppliers\u2019 booths as naked as a wheat field after the locusts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2nd-amendment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-3q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2980,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/2980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}