FROM: Michael Hammond, GOA legislative counsel
RE: Obama’s Gun Control Proposals
DATE: January 16, 2013
THE PRESIDENT’S EXECUTIVE ACTIONS
Here’s a brief list of Obama’s Executive Orders and my comments:
(1) Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
COMMENT: This is potentially the most far-reaching of all of the proposals, if it means, for example, that: (a) The Department of Education begins targeting the names of all ADHD kids — past and present — under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and these names get included in the FBI’s secret list of prohibited gun purchasers, and (b) the Army begins sending names of active duty servicemen under the DoD authorization provision which requires all commanders and military health professionals to ask soldiers about their guns.
(2) Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
COMMENT: I presume these “unnecessary legal barriers” are the things like the GOA-prompted gun amendments, and I presume “information” includes whether a family owns a gun, for purposes of crafting a national gun registry.
(3) Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
COMMENT: Again, information concerning persons with ADHD, PTSD, post partem depression, etc., are not things which most Americans would want to be sent to a secret FBI list in West Virginia.
(4) Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
COMMENT: Ditto.
(5) Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning any seized guns.
COMMENT: Every week, we get complaints from gun owners whose seized guns are held for months, or even years, or even forever, with the law enforcement authorities daring the gun owners to spend tens of thousands of dollars to sue to recover the gun. There is no problem that law enforcement authorities cannot currently hold guns for long periods of time.
(6) Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
COMMENT: What do you want to bet that the letter will impose onerous new requirements?
(7) Launch a national safe and reasonable gun ownership campaign.
COMMENT: We do not need our tax dollars be taken from us to run advertisements telling us we cannot keep loaded guns for self-defense.
(8) Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (CPSC).
COMMENT: Remember the 2005 Kohl amendment requiring us to pay to have gun locks made available, whether or not we want or need them? Don’t be surprised if they begin mandating more expensive locks and safes. Or, if — in the name of making guns 100% “childproof” — their regulations make it much harder for gun owners to access their firearms in an emergency.
(9) Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
COMMENT: There are currently statutory restrictions to sharing trace data, which the administration has long chafed under. There is a danger that Obama is trying to end-run these restrictions by executive fiat.
(10) Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
COMMENT: We assume that the “information” contained in this report is (1) the revelation that a majority of crime guns come form a few large dealers; and (2) the revelation that some FFL’s lose guns.
(11) Nominate an ATF director.
COMMENT: Previous candidates have been rejected because Obama has uniformly favored anti-gun ideologues.
(12) Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
COMMENT: This group, in general, is already probably better trained than most federal officials.
(13) Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and enforce gun crime.
COMMENT: Gun Owners of America does not believe that gun restrictions are wise or constitutional.
(14) Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
COMMENT: This is unlawful under federal appropriations riders.
(15) Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
COMMENT: I presume they’re talking about microstamping, which is currently being held in abeyance in most parts of the country because there is no evidence it can practically and safely be implemented. What do you want to bet that Holder will attempt to remove that roadblock.
(16) Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking patients about guns in their homes.
COMMENT: It does prohibit that, as a result of language crafted at GOA’s behest. And the reason is that those notes will make their way into electronic records, which will become a de facto national registration system.
(17) Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
COMMENT: This rat-out-your-patient provision should send chills running up and down the spine of doctors, particularly psychiatrists. It certainly puts them in jeopardy if they don’t turn in their patients and something untoward happens. It should also discourage seriously dangerous people from seeking treatment.
(18) Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
COMMENT: There are roughly 130,000 public and private schools in the country. Hiring “1,000 school resource officers and school counselors” is merely a drop-in-the-bucket when it comes to covering all our schools. GOA believes that its approach of letting those, who are qualified by a state to carry firearms concealed, to also carry at school would provide the greatest deterrent to potential killers — in the same way that Assistant Principal Joel Myrick was able to stop and apprehend a school shooter at his Mississippi high school.
(19) Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
COMMENT: These response plans will minimize or even denigrate the importance of armed citizens providing self-defense.
(20) Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
COMMENT: But, if Medicaid victims of post partem depression, PTSD, and ADHD are sent to the Medicaid system, clients would be foolish to use them.
(21) Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements in ACA (Affordable Care Act) exchanges.
COMMENT: Ditto.
(22) Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
COMMENT: Ditto.
(23) Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
Gun Owners of AmericaCOMMENT: Ditto.
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102
Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585
FAX: 703-321-8408
www.gunowners.org
Read more at Ammoland.com: http://www.ammoland.com/2013/01/larry-pratt-comments-on-president-obamas-executive-actions/#ixzz2IcPMPbGn
Translation: a sh!t ton more taxpayers expense to reduce and ultimately eliminate your 2A freedom. Marginalization and vilification of gun owners will continue apace.
Another thing: your doctors do not need to know a out your firearms at home. Tell your kids that doctors do not need to know. Kids being kids, they may very well give information anyways.
Kids being kids, they may very well give information anyways.
Your kids should never be alone with a doctor anyways. If they do say something to the doctor, say something to the effect of it being a BB gun that you use to shoot paper targets or pop cans occasionally and that you have had since childhood.
I’m glad someone else sees how tyranny will be forwarded under the guise of ambiguity.
As a commissioned officer in the United States Army, I can tell you that there is no Army or DOD Regulation requiring commanders to ask their Soldiers about POWs (Personally Owned Weapons). They have now been specifically AUTHORIZED to ask about POWs. Big difference between being authorized, and being required.
FWIW, those of us in FORSCOM that have been using the FORSCOM Risk Assesment tool for Soldiers answer a question as to whether or not we own a POW – basically to give the first-line supervisor a chance to discuss it with the servicemember, make sure it’s stored safely, etc.
what is the difference between authorized and required?
You’re kidding, right?
One means a Commander is ALLOWED to – which is an important thing, for Commanders with high-risk Soldiers.
One means a Commander has to. Which is not the case.
The eventual threat of a weapon pointed in your direction.
Say what? Was that a sentence?
they could both mean the same thing depending on context. i was just making sure they weren’t requiring it. thanks
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao surrounded themselves with children when it came to promoting their bullshit and the gullibly ignorant American sheeple believe it.
I’m pretty sure Gaddafi used em as human body sheilds. May be mistaken though.
Don’t forget the Palestinians and Israelis in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield
Why did the US ever pick a side in that cluster?
• The Right: We must stand strong with (people who use kids as human shields)!
• The Left: (People who use human shields) are victims of oppression!
Ferchrissake, let ’em settle it themselves. It’s like getting involved in your neighbor’s fight over bills.
The executive orders are a lot of bureaucratic blather that translates into the following: The government will say please on some things, add new boxes to check on some forms, and generally complicate everything it can touch, all paid for by our money.
$500 million according to some estimates so lets call it a billion when it done, but hey, its not like he is spending his money so what’s a few billion among friends
why does it cost so much? we could do all these things at my multinational corporation, and it wouldn’t cost a dime. just change some forms, send some memos, make some phone calls, and tell people to work on extra projects.
We are talking governments here, if you want a good read on gun control costs I suggest you look at this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry
We are still trying to get rid of the thing and our entire firearms act is a joke,all because of a knee-jerk reaction to a school shooting.
Fight for your rights or lose them forever.
It’s created new government departments to run all these things and that means more government employees, more health benefits, more pensions, more insurance, more budgets and so on and so forth. The government is its own biggest constituent and will do whatever it takes to keep on growing and to never let a single government employee go.
Ironic to see segregation is alive and well. Black kids on one side, White kids on the other.
I thought the same thing.
Hope & change, jim jones provided hope & change too, his version of it. o’s not quite a little hitler yet, I don’t find much that he is doing reassuring though, Randy
I have ADHD at 26 and I’ll be keeping my constitutionally protected firearms, sorry gun grabbers. I stopped taking the medicine a year ago so I could enlist in the Army anyways.
ADHD is usually Normally Active Little Boy disease, which schoolmarms hate. Plus they get paid more per student after they diagnose you.
Big Pharma gets paid more too.
i didn’t know that GOA put those riders in the Affordable Care Act.
all the news outlets were attributing it to the NRA. figures.
“The Department of Education begins targeting the names of all ADHD kids — past and present — under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and these names get included in the FBI’s secret list of prohibited gun purchasers.”
I call bullshit.
“(14) Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
COMMENT: This is unlawful under federal appropriations riders.”
The NRA lobbied to stop research on cause/prevention of gun violence. We need to change this so we have data on what works and what doesn’t.
18) Pearl High School killing: “As swiftly and inexplicably as it began, the rampage was over. Woodham turned and headed back outside while Myrick, 36, a commander in the Army reserves, sprinted to his own truck and retrieved the .45 automatic he kept there. Spotting Woodham near the parking lot, he shouted for him to stop. Instead, Woodham got into his car and tried to drive away, but he lost control and came to a stop as Myrick raced up to him.” http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20123633,00.html
At least B. O. is using a token white boy.