WND EXCLUSIVE
KEY LAWMAKER CALLS FOR BLOCKING FUNDS TO DOJ
Aim is to disrupt Obama executive orders on guns
Leo Hohmann
President Barack Obama announced 10 new executive actions he says are designed to curb “gun violence,” but his political opponents say it’s an attempt to harass law-abiding gun owners with new regulations that wouldn’t have prevented a single mass shooting over the last several years.
As a result, the GOP Congress is mulling ways to block the initiative, which some legal scholars say is an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power.
The clearest and quickest avenue of attack might be the legislative power of the purse, blocking funding to the U.S. Department of Justice.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/01/Rep.-John-Culberson.jpg
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, chairman of the powerful appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department, appears to be the first Republican congressman to call for defunding Obama’s executive orders.
In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Culberson warned against enforcing the new gun restrictions, the Hill reported.
“The next 12 months will be an especially dangerous time for Americans who treasure our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Culberson told the Hill.
He said his letter puts Lynch on notice that she may not have the funding to carry out Obama’s executive orders.
“I have formally notified Attorney General Lynch that I will aggressively protect our Second Amendment rights using Congress’ power of the purse,” he added. “I notified the attorney general that if the Department of Justice attempted to create new restrictions on our constitutional rights that I would use every tool at my disposal to immediately restrict their access to federal funding.”
Obama’s edicts require expanded background checks for the purchase of guns, call for physicians to report patients into the background check system, and increase the budget of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms so it can hire more than 200 new agents.
‘This is the safest the nation has been in 50 years’
Obama admitted that his orders won’t stop “all” of the mass shootings. But the more pressing question is, would they stop any of them? No administration official has been able to provide evidence that any of the mass shootings over the past four years would have been stopped by the new regulations.
In fact, the overall U.S. murder rate has been plummeting since the early 1990s, even as mass shootings have increased at gun-free zones, according to Pew Research Center.
Steve Stanek, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank based in Illinois – said Obama’s hometown of Chicago recorded 467 murders in 2015 and 943 murders as recently as 1992. Nationally, the murder rate is less than half what it was in the early 1990s and similar to early 1960s levels, when there were no background checks, waiting periods, or age limits to buy guns, no licensing of gun dealers and no Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
These facts dispel two myths about stiffer gun-control regulations, he said.
“First, this is the safest the nation has been in at least 50 years, when there were almost no gun-control laws compared to today, showing there’s almost no link between violence and gun laws,” Stanek said.
He also said the major news media and politicians are making America sound much scarier than it really is.
“They’ve done this knowing that frightened people are more willing to hand power to government,” Stanek said.
Obama will be holding a nationally televised town hall Thursday night with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an effort to pitch his gun-control policies.
No time for a ‘lecture on gun violence’
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the subcommittee on immigration and the national interest, said Tuesday that if Obama were really serious about making the nation safer, he would do more to keep violent felons in jail and cut immigration to more manageable levels.
image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/12/Cruz-sessions.png
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
But instead of focusing on the perpetrators, those who use guns to kill other people, Obama has chosen to focus on the guns purchased by law-abiding citizens.
“While President Obama lectures the nation on gun violence, and seeks to limit law-abiding Americans’ exercise of their constitutional rights, his administration’s policies have let loose thousands of dangerous criminals onto America’s streets,” Sessions said in a statement.
The proven method for saving the lives of innocent Americans is not disarming them, he said.
“The proven method for saving the lives of innocent Americans is to arrest, prosecute, convict and jail criminal offenders, especially armed career criminals illegally using guns,” he said. “This is the way to reduce gun violence.
“Instead, Obama has presided over a stunning drop in the prosecution of gun crimes,” Sessions added.
There were a mere 6,002 convictions for gun crimes in 2015, a decrease of more than one-third from just 10 years ago.
In the very communities most racked by gang violence, the administration has also helped to replenish the ranks of the perpetrators by ordering federal prosecutors to ignore mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking.
“Those engaging in drug-trafficking are some of the most dangerous, violent and ruthless criminals in America,” Sessions said. “Indeed, in this type of illegal enterprise, the barrel of a gun is the preferred collection and enforcement tool.”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that “last year, federal prosecutors went from seeking a mandatory minimum penalty in two out of every three drug trafficking cases, to doing so in one out of two. This represents the lowest rate on record.”
With the full support of the Obama Justice Department, the Sentencing Commission has reduced the sentencing guidelines for all drug traffickers, including those currently in prison, resulting in the early release of more than 46,000 convicted felons. America is already seeing those released commit violent crimes. The Department of Justice reports recently released criminals have a 77 percent recidivism rate.
Criminologist Matt DeLisi of Iowa State University testified before Congress that “releasing 1 percent of the current [federal prison] population would result in approximately 32,850 additional murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts, auto thefts, and incidents of arson.”
That means the unprecedented and dramatic 11 percent drop in the federal prison population that has already occurred under the Obama administration could result in another 361,350 murders, rapes, robberies and other serious crimes. Yet the president wants legislation to permanently and substantially relax criminal sentencing.
“Every day, lax sentencing costs lives,” Sessions said.
Tyrone Howard, a gang member with 28 arrests and two prison sentences for drug crimes, was convicted for another serious drug crime but sent to a diversion program instead of jail. He then murdered NYPD officer Randolph Holder.
Raleigh Sizemore, convicted of operating a methamphetamine lab, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was paroled after just three years. He then executed Richmond, Kentucky, police officer Daniel Ellis with a gunshot to the head.
Then came the case of Kate Steinle, the young woman who died in her father’s arms July 1 because a five-time deported illegal alien was roaming free in a sanctuary city aided and abetted by the administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws.
Sessions points to the countless other Americans gunned down by criminal aliens, who he says should never have been allowed into the country in the first place.
“In just the last three years, ICE encountered and then let go 235,000 criminal aliens, taking no action to remove them. Yet the victims of their crimes, and their demands for justice, are not heard in the Oval Office.
“How many thousands of lives would be saved if we enforced our immigration laws, our guns laws, and our drug laws? Public safety is not being held hostage by the “gun lobby,” as Obama claims, “but by the open borders lobby and the anti-law enforcement lobby,” Sessions said.
Another political analyst sees the entire executive gun-control move as a diversionary tactic.
President Obama has chosen to make gun control the focus of his last months in office at a time when imminent national security threats exist with ISIS terror investigations in all 50 states, an international refugee crisis in which the United Nations is steering Muslim populations from the Middle East and Africa into Europe and America, rising tensions with Russia and Iran, and a deteriorating relationship with Saudi Arabia.
“Gun buyers and sellers should follow federal and state laws and disregard the president’s feckless ‘orders,’” added Michael Warder, a retired vice chancellor at Pepperdine University and now a consultant. “It’s a diversion from problems of war in the Middle East, terrorism in the West, slow recovery, huge buildup of national debt, China assertion of power in Asia, Russian incursions in Europe. Media and citizens should not take the bait.”
Obama mainstreaming ‘If Congress fails to act’ mantra
David Harsanyi, senior editor at the Federalist, said Obama has achieved one thing for certain. He will be remembered as the president who “mainstreamed” the idea that if Congress “fails to act,” it’s OK for the president to make law himself.
Hillary Clinton has already applauded Obama’s legislative acts because, as she put it, “Congress won’t act; we have to do something.”
“Perhaps no post-World War II president (and maybe none before) has justified his executive overreach by openly contending he was working around the law-making branch of government because it has refused to do what he desired,” Harsanyi writes. “Whether a court finds his actions constitutional or not, it’s an argument that stands, at the very least, against the spirit of American governance. Today, many liberals call this ‘leadership.’”
Create confusion among private gun owners
According to the fact sheets put out by the White House, the ATF will not have any clear rule on who qualifies as being “in the business” of selling guns.
“Rather, it will have a vague standard that seems designed to create regulatory uncertainty and effectively obstruct any statutory safe harbor (in 18 U.S.C.(a)(21)(C)),” said Eugene Kontorovich, professor of law at Northwestern University near Chicago. “Under the ATF’s approach, even a few transactions, when combined with other evidence, can be sufficient to establish that a person is ‘engaged in the business.’”
Such factors include whether the seller processes credit cards, rents tables at gun shows and has formal business cards.
And while the new rules are vague, WND reported that Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, has already put out a warning that she will be watching gun owners closely and ready to prosecute anyone for making illegal sales without background checks and licenses.
“The main point of this approach appears to be to create uncertainty for non-business dealers,” Kontorovich said. “The statute passed by Congress is clearly intended to apply only to those who pursue gun sales as a substantial part of their ‘livelihoods.’ However, under the ATF’s guidance, it will be very hard for people to know in advance whether they will be considered ‘engaged in the business.’ Combined with the White House’s announcement that greater enforcement resources will be dedicated to these issues, the intended and likely effect will be to scare away those who legitimately do not need a license under current law.”
Tim Schmidt, president and founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, said in a statement Tuesday: “President Obama’s anti-freedom, pro-socialism executive order and his blatant push for more gun control – is a direct response to calls from anti-gunners who, by the way, do not comprise the majority of people in this country, to do ‘something’ about the perceived level of gun violence across the U.S.”
He called the action a “gross overreach of power that directly and negatively affects millions of law-abiding men and women in this country.”
“It’s been shown time and time again that background checks do nothing to reduce crime,” Schmidt said. “And yet, the president is determined to appease the people – the media, mainly – who claim they do.
“It’s pretty clear to me that Obama’s endgame is simply to disarm as many law-abiding Americans as possible,” Schmidt suggests. “Not only is it dangerous, it’s unconstitutional.”
Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., issued the following statement on his website:
“Yet again, the president has resorted to a favorite tactic – political intimidation – to restrict liberty and further his agenda. The current definition of a gun dealer is reasonable and clearly delineates law-abiding Americans who sell guns for their livelihoods, and law-abiding Americans to whom guns are a hobby and a constitutional right. Changing that definition to an arbitrary threshold targets gun owners for increased government intrusion while doing nothing to stop gun violence. Americans shouldn’t have to bring their lawyer to a gun show, nor should they fear a knock at the door because they sold or traded legal firearms to their relatives or other gun collectors. We already know how the IRS has used its immense authority to abuse American citizens—there’s no reason the administration’s activists can be trusted with that power to enforce an arbitrary redefinition passed without the people’s representatives. The administration needs to rethink its plan.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, released the following statement in reaction to Obama’s gun-control measures, saying he was “extremely troubled” by his use of executive action to limit Second Amendment rights.
“The president failed to get a gun control bill through a Senate controlled by his own party in 2013. Now he’s decided to take certain actions to bypass Congress. Make no mistake, these actions are a direct affront to our Constitution, which dictates that Congress, not the executive branch, makes laws. But the president has repeatedly shown that he believes that if the citizens of this country, through their representatives, stand up to him, he can go around them through executive fiat. Examples are numerous and extend to our lands, our waters, our energy sector, our financial and healthcare industries and to our technology sector. The implications of this kind of overreach for our constitutional form of government are profound. But his most recent actions to limit who can buy, sell and trade in firearms is particularly troubling for Alaskans, many of whom depend on their guns for protection and to feed their family.“Alaskans are horrified by murders carried out by criminals and terrorists, such as what happened in San Bernardino, CA. But we understand that whittling away our right to bear arms and keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is not the way to prevent these tragedies.“The president claims that he’s acting because Congress ‘has failed’ to do so. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Congress has acted. We have listened to the people we represent who soundly reject the president’s overreach. And we will continue to listen to them, and do all we can to protect their constitutional rights.”
Related stories:
Related commentary:
Obama’s gun-hating political theater, by Thomas Sowell
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/key-lawmaker-calls-for-blocking-funds-to-doj/#kOb3RQlthA3OuwA8.99
My comments: Obama again Violates his Oath of Office to Defend the Constitution. He and the Democrats want Complete Control over every aspect of American life, and will use Any Means to achieve this.
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