We’ve been having a debate at GraniteGrok about which of us supports a filibuster on the threatened new Senate “gun control” bill, and who thinks we should let’er rip…i.e. “Let’s have a public debate in Congress. Let’s see a vote! Let’s see who wants to impose de facto national gun registration.“ Count me among…
…those at the ‘Grok who want the open debate. Why? There’s an election next year. I want them all—Republicans and Democrats alike!—on record as to how they will vote on new 2nd Amendment restrictions on buying and selling implements of self-defense (aka firearms). Especially the Republicans….but even more among the Democrats up for election next year. There was an extensive (and approving) story by the biased reporters (not to be confused with the editorial writers, who usually get it right) in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here are some of the outtakes from the story (in red print), preceded by my commentary:
First, a few words about the usually good Republican senator who may be turning into an anti-self-defense fool…Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. He joined with Democrat Sen. Manchin of West Virginia:
The Toomey-Manchin measure would require all people buying firearms online and at gun shows to undergo a background check through a licensed dealer, who must keep a paper record of the sale. The lawmakers agreed to exempt gun sales or transfers between family members, friends and neighbors. Currently, only people who buy from federally licensed dealers are required to undergo background checks. “The more people learn about what this bill actually does, how it does it, how reasonable it is, the fact that it doesn’t undermine any law-abiding citizen’s Second Amendment rights—I think support will grow,” Mr. Toomey said.
If you believe that, Senator Toomey, you are foolish indeed…and you need to be replaced in the Senate when next you run, with a real Republican.
Securing a bipartisan agreement on background checks considerably boosts the chances that the Senate will back an expansion of the checks, one of President Barack Obama’s priorities in toughening gun laws. But GOP opposition to that and other proposed measures is expected to remain intense. Several Republicans who supported Thursday’s procedural vote to bring the bill to the floor indicated their support doesn’t stretch to passing the legislation itself.
Quite so. Count me among them. I want to see who votes for this abortion of a law…both Republicans and Democrats!
Meanwhile, Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had tried to scuttle the bill, may use procedural tactics to prolong debate on some amendments they find objectionable, Mr. Lee’s spokesman said. However, they opted to let the Senate move on to the bill without a protracted debate. “In the coming days we’re going to have an extensive debate on different approaches—whether we should be targeting violent criminals, which is what I think is the right thing to do, or whether instead the approach should be to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens,” Mr. Cruz said.
By all means! God bless Senators Cruz, Lee, and Paul…but let’s see who votes which way on this!
Several Democrats up for re-election in 2014 in Republican-leaning states said they were open to considering it. “I just want to make sure that it’s a real action—but without infringing on the ability of individuals to pass down guns or to exchange guns within families or friends,” Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) said Thursday. “I’ll look at the compromise,” said Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, noting that he had discussed the deal while riding an elevator with Mr. Manchin earlier Thursday. Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska has said he needs to look at the measure’s language before deciding whether to support it. Both are up for re-election next year.
All three of those Democrats—up for election next year!—are lying, of course. They’d LOVE to mandate background checks for every American. They’d LOVE to mandate gun registration throughout the country. They’d LOVE to outlaw ALL firearms and abolish the Second Amendment. But they’re in states where people value the Second Amendment, and will resist at the ballot box. To the people in Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana, I say OFF WITH THEIR HEADS IN THE NEXT ELECTION! GET RID OF THEM!
But of course in order to do that, FIRST we’ve got to get those pro-crime, anti-self-defense, lying Democrats on the record! So forget about the threatened filibuster: Let’s have the debate! Let’s see how everyone votes!
Oh…”the Yellow Line”? The one I mention in the headline above? That comes from Matthew Bracken’s seminal essay, “Dear Mr. Security Agent,” which I’ve referenced in GraniteGrok before. Here’s how Bracken explains the Yellow Line:
Disastrous unintended consequences will happen if Congress passes new laws banning presently legal firearms. To make it very easy to remember, and in the spirit of our beloved Department of Homeland Security’s old color-coded security threat levels, let me spell out three lines of demarcation.
The Yellow Line:
The yellow warning line will be crossed with national gun registration laws, including laws forbidding private gun sales without government permission. When that law passes, millions of Americans will feel that they have been pushed directly to the edge of the abyss above the mass graves of history. Defenders of the Second Amendment know what happened in Turkey, the USSR, Germany, China, and other nations that fell under totalitarian rule: in every case a necessary preliminary step on the road to genocide was national gun registration, followed by confiscation. The Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust say, “Never again!” And so do we.
All Democrats and some Republicans want to move America toward—some would say over—the Yellow Line with this new “bipartisan gun control bill.” If you want to know what “the Red Line” and “the Dead Line” are, you can read Bracken’s entire essay. But for now, let’s get everyone on record as to which side they’re on.
That’s why we need the debate to move forward in the Senate, and why I oppose a filibuster on the bill at this time.
