Tuesday night the Senate “leadership” released the text of the Uniparty’s latest infringement
on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment and like clockwork 14 RINOs voted to move the bill to the Floor, indicating the bill is likely to pass the evenly divided Senate.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) was quick to condemn this shell game where bills are written behind closed doors, tweeting:
Here we are voting to move on a bill negotiated entirely behind closed doors, released only an hour ago, that no one has had time to fully read, that ignores the national crime wave & chips away instead at the fundamental rights of law-abiding citizens. NO
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) also promptly condemned the process and the bill, tweeting:
This bill won’t stop the violent shootings by deranged criminals. But it will restrict the freedoms of law-abiding Americans and put too much power in the hands of politicians and political officials. Stopping gun violence starts with more funding for police and tougher sentences for the criminals who violate gun laws—not taking away due process from law-abiding gun owners.
Here are some the key criticisms of the bill, which, as predicted, does nothing to harden schools and much to try and strip constitutional rights from Americans, especially young adults 18 to 21 years of age:
* The bill’s juvenile criminal records provision is structured so that it will almost certainly require a 10-day waiting period for all or nearly all law-abiding gun purchasers under 21 before they can purchase a gun.
o The bill has no mechanism for getting juvenile records to the FBI, instead requiring the FBI to reach out to states for juvenile records and mental health records anytime someone under 21 seeks to purchase a gun. The FBI can then put a “hold” on the gun purchase for up to 10 days while waiting to see if there are any records in the state’s system. The result is effectively a mandatory waiting period of 10 days before anyone under 21 can purchase a gun.
o Even if the FBI had faster access, the bill has no safeguards to prevent the Biden DOJ from using the 10-day “hold” on every young gun purchaser as a way of making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights.
* The bill’s funding for so-called “red flag laws” has no safeguards to protect due process. The bill only includes general language requiring that state red flag laws include “due process rights” of some kind, and only requires a hearing “at the appropriate phase” of a gun seizure. It leaves it entirely up to the states or to the Biden DOJ to decide what is the “appropriate phase” when you deserve a hearing, and what counts as sufficient “due process protections” within those hearings. We have the woke left already trying to kick students and even professors out of colleges, or have people fired from their jobs, for slights like using the wrong pronouns. How long do you think it’ll be before these federally-funded red flag law programs will be used to take guns—before any sort of court hearing even takes place—from people who have done nothing other than express their support for the Second Amendment or for the wrong political candidate or party?
* The bill redefines “gun dealer” to include gun hobbyists and collectors, turning them into federal criminals overnight, as long as they are trying to make a profitable trade. The bill eliminates the current requirement that a dealer sell guns as part of their “livelihood” and instead just requires that the dealer have subjective intent “to predominantly earn a profit,” creating a subjective standard that could sweep in collectors and private gun owners. The bill's authors can't even identify a single case where current law was insufficient to prosecute an illegal gun dealer, or describe who is supposed to be covered by this new definition.
* The bill closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by leaving it entirely up to the courts to decide who can lose their Second Amendment rights. The bill redefines misdemeanors for domestic violence to including anyone in a current or “recent former dating relationship” with the victim, but then forces the courts to decide whether someone’s dating relationship was sufficiently “serious.”
o Only a bill this stupid would ask the courts to start figuring out if people’s dating relationships are “just a fling” or something serious.
o Current law already prohibits possession of a gun by anyone subject to a restraining order relating to potential violence toward anyone with whom they cohabitate.
Other Provisions
* The bill requires that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issue guidance about increasing access to health care and mental health care, especially in schools. It’s unclear whether this will actually cause any potentially problematic gun purchaser in school to receive care that they would not otherwise receive. The bill also requires expanding a 2014 pilot program for behavioral health care services and billing, although that program hasn’t yet had clear results.
* The bill creates a new federal crime for “straw purchases” where someone intentionally buys a gun on behalf of someone else. While this sounds helpful, straw purchases are already illegal under federal law. Further, while the bill establishes a maximum sentence of 15 years for straw purchases (up from the current maximum of 10 years), judges already routinely sentence straw purchasers to just a few years or less, so increasing the maximum sentence doesn't change anything.
* The bill criminalizes smuggling guns out of the United States (current law only criminalizes smuggling guns into the United States). There’s no indication that this will have anything to do with reducing shooting deaths in the United States.
These are the 34 Republican senators who voted against the bill. The Capitol Switchboard is (1-866-220-0044), call today and thank your Senator if he or she stood for the Constitution and the Second Amendment and opposed this phony bill which does nothing to improve school safety.
John Barrasso, Wyoming
Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee
John Boozman, Arkansas
Mike Braun, Indiana
Tom Cotton, Arkansas
Mike Crapo, Idaho
Ted Cruz, Texas
Steve Daines, Montana
Deb Fischer, Nebraska
Chuck Grassley, Iowa
Bill Hagerty, Tennessee
Josh Hawley, Missouri
John Hoeven, North Dakota
Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi
Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma
Ron Johnson, Wisconsin
John Kennedy, Louisiana
James Lankford, Oklahoma
Mike Lee, Utah
Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming
Roger Marshall, Kansas
Jerry Moran, Kansas
Rand Paul, Kentucky
Jim Risch, Idaho
Mike Rounds, South Dakota
Marco Rubio, Florida
Ben Sasse, Nebraska
Rick Scott, Florida
Tim Scott, South Carolina
Richard Shelby, Alabama
Dan Sullivan, Alaska
John Thune, South Dakota
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama
Roger Wicker, Mississippi
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