Good friend and your fellow freedom fighter Clint Richardson will be guest hosting for Dr. True Ott on MicroEffect this week. Click here for more information.
Licensing mandates dealers to turn over plethora of information to authorities under new legislation
Tennessee has followed Texas in demanding that dealers obtain licenses and turn over a plethora of information to authorities before being able to host a gun show in another devastating attack on the second amendment.
The legislation, HB 2422, which has not yet passed, would make it a Class A misdemeanor for any person to organize, plan, promote, or operate a gun show without government approval.
The bill makes it a crime for anyone who wishes to operate a gun show unless they follow the following procedures;
(1) Notifies the TBI and the chief law enforcement officer in the county in which the gun show is to be held of the dates, times, and location of the gun show;
(2) Verifies the identity of each gun show dealer participating in the gun show by examining a valid photo identification document of the dealer, before commencement of the gun show;
(3) Requires each gun show dealer to sign a ledger with information identifying the dealer, including the dealer’s name and address, before commencement of the gun show; and
(4) Maintains a copy of the records described above in (2) and (3) at the gun show promoter’s permanent place of business for one year from the date of the gun show.
The legislation also contains a blanket ban on all unlicensed gun sales within 1,000 feet of an unapproved gun show.
The bill would take effect on January 1, 2011 if signed into law.
As we highlighted yesterday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in Texas, despite there being no law to justify such demands.
A caller to the Alex Jones show brought attention to BATF notices handed out at the entrance of the Texas Gun And Knife Show, on North Lamar, in Austin this past weekend.
The flyers (pictured below) state that anyone selling a firearm “will be asked to comply with” conditions including operating through a licensed FFL dealer.
The notice also states that “Selling firearms in the parking lot will not be permitted.”
“The lady at the front desk used her ‘mommy voice’ to get everyone’s attention.” Scott from Austin told The Alex Jones show, noting that the owners of the private building where the gun show was held were contacted by the APD and the BATF and directed to hand out the notices.
Scott also told listeners that a petition in protest of the directions was being handed around at the show.
The police in Austin, at the behest of the federal Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms, has attempted to shut down legal gun sales. The Texas Gun Shows website has the following posted: “Vendor notice – Austin show only: At the direction of the Austin Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, ONLY LICENSED FFL DEALERS will be allowed to set up and sell firearms at the N. Austin show location.”
The “notice” posted at Texas Gun Shows.
FFL is short for “Federal Firearms License.” It is a federal license that enables an individual or a company to engage in a business pertaining to the manufacture of firearms and ammunition or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms. It does not control gun sales between individuals on the local level.
Texas residents may purchase rifles, shotguns, handguns ammunition, reloading components, or firearms accessories. No permit or registration is required under state law. It is unlawful to knowingly sell, rent, give or offer to sell, rent or give any firearm to a person under 18 years of age, without the written consent of his parent or guardian, but entirely legal for adults to sell firearms.
The BATF and Austin cops are attempting to discourage gun sales with this color of law trick. It is not backed up by any law on the books. It is intimidation.
In recent years the feds have attempted to portray entirely legal gunshows as a nexus for criminal activity. Gun Show Undercover, a project of the City of New York and its mayor the anti-Second Amendment extremist Michael Bloomberg, has traveled around the country and filmed what it declares to be illegal gun sales. The BATF claims that 30 percent of guns involved in federal illegal gun trafficking investigations are connected to gun shows.
The BATF claims Mexican drug cartels exploit the so-called gun-show loophole. “Guns are purchased illegally, sold at a profit to drug dealers and used to kill innocent people and police officers, all while local law enforcement authorities lack the federal support they need to do their job,” Bloomberg wrote in April, 2009. “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has estimated that 90 percent to 95 percent of the guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes have been purchased in the United States, because Mexico’s laws make it much more difficult for criminals to buy guns.”
Bloomberg has pushed for closing down gun shows. “More than 350 mayors from both political parties have joined together to urge Congress to repeal these restrictions – and to close the gun-show loophole, a step both Sen. John McCain and President Obama have supported,” he wrote.
In response to this propaganda, Fox News reported that 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S. Most of the illegal guns sold in Mexico originate from South Korea, China, and Russia. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
For now, gun sales between adults are legal in Texas. Residents of Austin should not be intimidated by this bogus color of law attempt to chill the Second Amendment.
On his Sunday show, Alex responded to the Austin cops and feds trying to shut down legal sales between individuals at gun shows.
I invite readers to undertake a brief thought experiment with me. The Jan. 1 front-page article “Homicide totals in 2009 plummet in District, Prince George’s” reported that the District has just experienced its lowest total number of homicides in 45 years. This was also the first full year after the D.C. handgun ban was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, and therefore the first year that city residents were able to maintain handguns legally in their homes.
The thought experiment is this: If the numbers had, tragically, gone the other way, and 2009 had the highest number of murders in nearly a half-century, imagine the hue and cry that would have gone up from opponents of Second Amendment rights. There can be no doubt that The Post’s editorial page would have cried ominously that the increase was linked to the court decision, and anti-gun activists of all stripes would have been hysterical.
More disturbing still is that the article made no mention of the Heller decision. Surely, regardless of one’s political opinions, it is reasonable to expect that a news article focused on a remarkable and startling change in the homicide rate would at least mention the landmark ruling that led to the only significant change in the District landscape in 2009.
This is the definitive book on (1) how every American State has forsaken its DUTY to maintain a Militia, that force that is “necessary to the security of a Free State,” (2) how states can revitalize their Militias, and (3) how Citizen’s Homeland Security Associations (CHSA) may be organized.
This book should be read by every State governor and every State legislator in the USA. But it should be read by every citizen that desires liberty…true liberty in their lifetime.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
Vieira devotes five of the twelve chapters in the book to the formation and operation of the CHSAs. He contends that a program of public education be instituted to inform the public of the necessity of state militias.
Citizen’s Homeland Security Associations are completely different than the “Committees of Safety” of old. The CHSA is a grass-roots organization that will build awareness in the populace in anticipation of the formation of the Committees of Safety and legislative action on re-forming state Militias.
The original Committees of Safety were composed of actual members of the States’ legislatures, recognized activists and other leaders within the States…who were appointed to theCommittees by the legislatures, to serve as the legislatures’ agents and advisors, and to carry on the legislatures’ work during recesses. The Committees were never independent of the legislatures, and never carried out any plans that were not approved by the legislatures.
The chief concern of the Committees was the safety of the public: “to put the territory under their supervision in a state of defense and maintain it there effectively.”¹
The author wrote this book in 2007, and mentions that we don’t have much time to reinstitute militias in the states before societal events begin to occur that will throw America into chaos. It’s now almost three years since publication, and many of the events have taken place, while more events loom just over the horizon.
We can thank the government schools of the entire United States for the dearth of knowledge in the populace about the Constitution and the necessity of the State Militias. But what could we really expect? The very Federal government that benefits from the LACK of militias could hardly be expected to promote a concept that would diminish their power. Still, remember that the Federal Department of Education did not exist before 1980.
“Those who have been once intoxicated with power and have derived any kind of emolument from it can never willingly abandon it.” ~ Edmund Burke
So, what of the states? Education has always been a state issue. Can you think of any reasons that states would shrink from their obligation under their own state Constitutions to maintain a state militia?
How about these?
(1) State legislators and governors view themselves as servants of Washington.
(2) Maintaining a state militia is expensive. The money could be used for other purposes that would make more voters happier.
(3) Nearly 150 years have passed since the War of Northern Aggression, in which Lincoln called up the state militias to invade the Confederate States of America. So generations of state legislators have not seen a need for militias.
(4) Besides, states have a National Guard, don’t they? What’s the difference?
I’m sure there are others, but those reasons should do for now.
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” ~ John Adams
Here are some of my own thoughts on secession and state militias.
1. Any individual who has reached the age of majority in the United States who does not own a firearm has accepted the position that they have no duty to be a part of the well-regulated Militia that is NECESSARY for the security of a Free State.
2. Any state of the fifty states that comprise the United States of America that either has enacted or will enact any legislation that infringes on the individual right to keep and bear arms has accepted the position that a well-regulated Militia is NOT NECESSARY for the security of a Free State. That state government is an enemy to liberty and a lackey of Washington.
Patrick Henry did not say “Give me safety and security or give me death.”
3. There is seemingly very little interest in the general populace or the state governments to revitalize state militias. But there is interest coming from a restless citizenry about state secession. We must tie the two together into an inseparable bundle, as one relies upon the other.
4. Here is a forecast of how secession and militias will likely play out.
a. Economic meltdown, bank holidays, hyperinflation
b. Societal chaos, riots, rampant crime
c. Washington declares martial law and tries to clamp down
d. The grave crisis jolts states out of their slumber, and secessions begin
e. States NOW begin reformulating their militias
f. The citizenry, in full panic mode, get very focused on liberty issues
g. The United States goes the way of the Soviet Union and dissolves
This is an extremely exciting time in which to live in America. The people of the nation have been lulled to sleep over generations. The tyranny laid upon them is destructive, and any type of destructive force is based in low energy. Happily, freedom and liberty are creative forces of a very high energy level. Just like light dispels darkness, so too will liberty eventually win over tyranny. People will be drawn to the energy of liberty.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. … God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” ~ Thomas Jefferson, 1787
¹Agnes Hunt, The Provincial Committees of Safety of the American Revolution (Cleveland, Ohio: Western Reserve University, 1904), at 161.
Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis has introduced the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB1230) – prefiled for the 2010 legislative session. The bill“Asserts the right of the State of Missouri to regulate the intrastate use and acquisition of certain firearms pursuant to the reserved powers of the state over intrastate commerce and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
While the bill’s title focuses solely federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s mandate that powers not delegated to the federal government are “reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.” It states:
Amendment X of the Constitution of the United States guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Missouri certain powers as they were understood at the time that Missouri was admitted to statehood. The guarantee of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Missouri and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Missouri and the United State
Amendment II of the Constitution of the United States reserves to the people the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Missouri was admitted to statehood, and the guarantee of the right is a matter of contract between the state and people of Missouri and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Missouri and the United States
Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.
Firearms Freedom Acts have already passed in both Montana and Tennessee, and have been introduced in a number of other states around the country. (Click here to see the full list)
The Federal Government, by way of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms expressed its own view of the Tenth Amendment this week when it issued an open letter to ‘all Tennessee Federal Firearms Licensees’ in which it denounced the opinion of Beavers and the Tennessee legislature. ATF assistant director Carson W. Carroll wrote that ‘Federal law supersedes the Act’, and thus the ATF considers it meaningless.
Constitutional historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman sees this as something far removed from the founders’ vision of constitutional government:
“Their view is that the states exist for the administrative convenience of the Federal Government, and so of course any conflict between state and federal policy must be resolved in favor of the latter.”
“This is another way of saying that the Tenth Amendment is not binding on the Federal Government. Of course, that amounts to saying that federal officials have decided to ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t suit them.”
“We’re not depending on permission from federal judges to be able to effectuate our state-made guns bills. And, we’re working on other strategies to wrest essential and effective power from the federal government and put it where it belongs.“
The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.
All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.
While some advocates concede that a federal court battle has a slim chance of success, they point to the successful nullification of the Real ID Act as a blueprint to resist various federal laws that they see as outside the scope of the Constitution.
Some say that each successful state-level resistance to federal programs will only embolden others to try the same – resulting in an eventual shift of power from the federal government to the States and the People themselves.
Michael Boldin is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center
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