Local Authorities Stand Up to Obama’s Gun Control Agenda

IS THIS THE WATERSHED MOMENT?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 27, 2013) — County commissioners in Franklin County, IN unanimously passed an ordinance which nullifies any federal legislation limiting citizens’ Second Amendment rights to own a firearm.

In an interview, Franklin County Sheriff Ken Murphy said that he would uphold his oath to the U.S. Constitution in regard to the Second Amendment rights of his constituents.  At least several dozen county sheriffs throughout the country have refused to enforce edicts from the federal level which they perceive as restrictive of their constituents’ constitutional and Second Amendment rights.  Some sheriffs have contacted Obama and Biden directly.

Legislators in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma have introduced legislation in response to Obama’s “executive actions” aimed at curbing gun violence which Eric Holder is reportedly already beginning to implement.

On Thursday, the Borough of Gilberton, PA approved a Second Amendment Preservation Resolution “to prevent the unconstitutional enforcement of any federal, state or local acts, laws, orders, rules, or regulations in violation of the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States along with Article I, section 21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution ‘The right to keep and bear arms’.”

On Wednesday, January 16, while flanked by children and gun control advocates, Obama signed the executive actions, which included the suggestion that doctors should inquire of their patients regarding guns in their homes.  Obama’s actions followed the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14 during which six school personnel and 20 first-graders were killed by a reported lone gunman.

Putative Vice President Joe Biden organized a “task force” which, although including some producers of violent video games, focused on limiting ammunition clips and certain types of weapons to those applying through legal channels to buy them.

People who commit violent gun crimes are often not legal gun owners.  Although few members of the public own true military-style fully automatic assault weapons, the rifle allegedly used by Adam Lanza on December 14 has been classified as such despite evidence that it is operated similarly to a handgun.  The Hartford Courant reported that the rifle Lanza used was “military-style,” although stating later in the article that “By law, it’s not even an assault weapon.”

The media does not normally distinguish between automatic weapons such as those used by the military and semi-automatic firearms legally available to civilians.

Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has advocating never allowing “a serious crisis” to “go to waste.”  As promised, Obama has begun changing regulations on his own after receiving letters from children who reportedly “had expressed their concerns about gun violence and school safety to the one person they think can make a difference — the president.”

The children have apparently not been taught about the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the way in which legislation is passed at the state or federal levels.  Newtown Schools Superintendent Janet Robinson has stated that a girl asking for tighter gun control “should be listened to.”

But did Robinson receive any letters supporting a citizen’s right to bear arms in order to stop a criminal or insane person from senselessly taking lives with an illegally-seized weapon?

Robinson has rejected the idea that school personnel be armed to protect children from an intruder.

Obama agreed with Robinson that the children’s “voices should compel us to change,” but referred only to children asking him to restrict firearms to legal gun owners.  Have “the children” been told how many home invasions, robberies, carjackings, attempted murders, and other violent crimes have been stopped because someone owned a firearm and defended himself?

During a press conference on January 14, Obama attempted to convince his audience that lawful gun owners would not have their firearms confiscated.

From 2009 to 2011, the regime knowingly transferred firearms to Mexican criminals purportedly to track where they were taken afterward, although thousands were lost and hundreds of Mexicans and a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed as a result.  Putative Attorney General Eric Holder claimed he did not know about the operation until several weeks before he was called to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2011.

Border Agent Brian Terry was killed exactly two years prior to the incident at Sandy Hook.

While not directly faulting Holder, Inspector General Michael Horowitz cited the “failed strategy and inappropriate tactics” used to carry out Fast & Furious (p. 489).

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has suggested that the real purpose of the program, Fast & Furious, was to turn Americans away from firearms ownership.  Holder has long been a supporter of gun control, even through “brainwashing.”  Just prior to the first hearings on Fast & Furious, Obama said during a press conference with then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the provisions of the Second Amendment do “not mean that we cannot constrain gun runners from shipping guns into Mexico.”

A report on Fast & Furious released by the Oversight Committee stated that Mexican officials discovered the “true nature” of the operation after Border Agent Brian Terry was killed with one of the guns which had been transferred to a criminal.  The report concluded, “Unfortunately, Mexico and the United States will have to live with the consequences of this program for years to come.”

On December 7, 2011, CBS News reported in an opening paragraph on to the Fast & Furious operation:

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

The report goes on to quote Sen. Charles Grassley as having said in the course of the Fast & Furious investigation:

There’s plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement. But, we’ve learned from our investigation that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. It’s pretty clear that the problem isn’t lack of burdensome reporting requirements.

Issa had told CBS:

In light of the evidence, the Justice Department’s refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable.

On Saturday, residents of Newtown participated in a march advocating stricter gun control.

As Obama and Holder implement their agenda regardless of congressional action, seven people have been killed by criminals in Obama’s adopted home town of Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel is mayor.