President Obama is quietly moving forward on gun control.
The president has used his executive powers to bolster the national background check system, jumpstart government research on the causes of gun violence and create a million-dollar ad campaign aimed at safe gun ownership.
The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.
[my emphasis]
Note the rhetorical move here: giving federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners is, by way of sentence structure, equated with keeping guns away from criminals, for which future legislative efforts are being prepared. The extant legislative efforts having been exhausted, of course.
Privacy? That’s not a right or a concern we need worry about — unless, of course, you want to have a baby scraped from your uterus, or bang a man in the ass in front of Texas law officers. Then its sacrosanct.
It is unclear whether the National Rifle Association (NRA) will challenge any of the executive actions in court. A spokesman for the NRA did not return a request for comment.
[…]
Obama’s steps began the same day he unveiled his 23 gun control proposals in January, when he issued a memorandum requiring all nine federal law enforcement agencies to submit guns they confiscate to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing.
According to a notice sent by Attorney General Eric Holder last month, the agencies will have to submit a report to the Justice Department (DOJ) within the next month showing they are compliant.
The move, and several more like it, is aimed at strengthening the quality and quantity of records contained within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), according to a DOJ spokeswoman.
For years, federal law enforcement officials and gun control advocates have complained that the NICS gun records are not complete, making it easier for people with criminal records and mental illnesses to buy guns.
A key factor in strengthening the NICS database, they say, is getting states to report more information on mental health and criminal history records.
Earlier this month, the DOJ announced a $20 million grant program aimed at incentivizing states to submit more mental health and criminal history information into the NICS database.
— in case you were wondering what the going price was for your medical privacy —
Also this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget said it would consider changing rules to make it easier for states to share mental health records with the NICS.
Through these moves, [Mark] Glaze[, the director of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group] said the administration has addressed two of the main reasons for incomplete trace data: a lack of money and privacy concerns.
“By taking direct aim at the two biggest problems inhibiting the database, they are taking a significant chunk out of 50 percent of the system’s weaknesses,” said Glaze.
In January, Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to begin studying the causes of gun violence for the first time since Congress, at the behest of the NRA, began blocking funding for such research in 1996.
As geoff B notes in an email to me, “privacy concerns” here, with respect to the 2nd Amendment, are characterized as a kind of obstacle, a second obstacle being heretofore a lack of bribe money available to “incentivize” states to sell out the privacy of their citizens. King Obama, blessed be He and His Name, has fixed that, however. By executive fiat.
Moreover, the article suggests, the NRA has been standing athwart common-sense anti-privacy measures yelling stop!— and as a result, bad people have done evil things. Liberty being well and truly overrated if what comes along with are concerns over security, particularly, the government being out of every conceivable monitoring loop to protect us from ourselves.
Yet, the reason the NRA and other civil liberties groups don’t want to give the government access to an inventory of our private property, or details of our health — particularly with respect to our weapons — is not, as this article intimates, that they are pro-crazy people with guns, but rather because they know, as do we, the government to be political, and so its aims and motivations and policy are always going to be driven by ideology and expedience, two dangerous threats to rights that are supposedly out of the purview of man, especially once the checks and balances are removed from the equation.
As with “global climate change,” gun control will soon be billed as a matter of medical necessity, and when you live in a system where the government controls health care, your choice may soon be that you can choose between maintaining that “free” universal health care, or surrendering your weapons, which pose a (statistically-manipulated) “outsized danger”. That is, you’ll be free to choose which “right” you value more, the right to your arms or the new “right” to have health care.
Thanks, John Roberts!
Too, what comes to count as mental illness — and a potentiality for violence such that “we” must “act” to “take away the threat” — will be greatly expanded, and will reach into (I predict) such things as prescription drugs, and (as we’ve already seen written about in government documents and studies) the kinds of sociopathology that can be inferred, supposedly, from, say, a distrust of federal government, a desire for limited government, activism within the TEA Party movement, and other markers of potential domestic terrorism.
If the ACLU were in any way the organization they claim to be, they’d be standing alongside the NRA, proposing joint lawsuits to stop this kind of executive overreach and police state tactic.
Time will tell.
But for the Rick Morans out there who continue to pretend we’re living in a status quo world of dueling political parties within an inviolable constitutional framework that promotes and protects a republican system of representative government wherein the citizen is the sovereign, here’s a newsflash: we ain’t, and your failure to acknowledge that fact as it’s become increasingly more apparent makes you complicit in our collective repositioning as subjects.
That you’re wrong is bad enough. But that you argue vehemently against reality for a pay check and some prestige just makes you a whore — and not one of those “with a heart of gold”-kinds, either.
(h/t GeoffB and JD)
Even with the contrasts as stark as they are between what was and what will soon be, none of this will be reported widely. Our further loss of liberty will be lamented by we few, who will, as you said, be classified as mentally ill.
I have said before there will be blood and death before this is over. I had hoped I was wrong, but every day I’m more sure that I’m right.
Jeff, you might as well create a macro or key shortcut for the statement “Obama uses executive power to…”.
I expect this simple step would save you dozens of manhours a year.
Two, two and a half, out of three. That’s above average for this crew.
Sikh man cites religion in lawsuit against gun controls
Hasn’t some turd introduced a bill to repeal the 22nd (?) amendment so that King Barack can continue to
serverule?Soon, as paroled criminals currently must, we will be forced to waive our rights against searches and seizures of our homes and vehicles and our rights of free speech and religion along with the right of self defense.
All in the name of being allowed access to medical care.
This is what national health care has always been about for Progressives; CONTROL.
The big stick over your head while telling you what you will and won’t be allowed to do.
The 2A attacks have actually been a side show and merely a convenient auxilliary pickup if they worked.
All the talk about what you’re currently allowed to do or own or outlaw gunsmithing is pie in the sky as they can take away those rules in an instant.
Only those who have no paper trail and are “clean” will even come close to be allowed a normal life.
If you’ve ever owned a weapon or talked of owning a weapon, you will become a target and will be forced to swear under penalty of law that you do not own a weapon. If you are found to be lying they won’t even have to incarcerate you, they’ll just cut you off electronically from being able to exist.
Think that’s paranoid? How much of what’s happened in the last 4 years would you have doubted before? How close do you think we are from they’re effectuating such a system?
Drones in the sky, email taps, cell phone taps, gps tracking your car, medical records, criminal records tied together, your purchase records, your banking records, your high school grades, your military service.
These are all available NOW to any entity that can gain access.
AND WHO HAS ACCESS RIGHT NOW?
cranky-d
I suspect that most won’t recognize the tipping point.
In fact we may have already passed it as we don’t know what other preparations they’ve kept secret.
Who will make the first moves? Will YOU step out into the street, armed, not knowing if you’ll be alone or not?
Even if crowds of weapon owners do gather and do come to a unified purpose, how effective will they really be initially? Initially they’ll get their ass kicked and the Media and Gov’t will hide it and distort the truth and NO ONE WILL KNOW.
Because they control the organs of communication.
ALL OF THEM.
Scott Hinckley, yeah. But to be fair, he (I don’t know his name) does that no matter who is in office.
Just checked, leigh. Jose Serrano, D-NY. And this is the eighth time he introduced the bill – 4 times during Bush’s tenure, so it isn’t a Barack thing.
“Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to begin studying the causes of gun violence…”
Let’s see, DHS and Westpoint (and some other government institutions I can’t remember) have been studying terrorism for the past few years and all decided that the biggest threat to the U.S is Tea Party types. Gee, I wonder what the CDC will determine the cause of gun violence to be? If it’s not some sort of mad, excessive belief in the Constitution, maybe it will be something like “unfairness” or “racism.”
They would have to shut down internet access to truly control the flow of information. I’m not saying they couldn’t do it, but it would be noticed.
I think there might in fact be a case for amending the 22nd to allow a President to serve three terms.
Can you imagine what was inadvertantly given up by denying Reagan a third term, just to make sure the Democrats never threw up another Roosevelt?
Of course, Bill Clinton stands, loud and proud, as a counter-argument.
Don’t you think they’ll decide that guns cause gun violence?
cranky-d
they don’t have to shut down a thing. All they need to do is what they do now; shape the story or prevent it appearing outside some low trafficked sites or sites that can be painted with an “extremist” brush. (sorry jeff)
You’re not thinking like they do and you’re giving credit to those who are not as concerned about this as you or I.
Plenty of people do not use the internet for news or do not use the internet at all.
And 50% of those will be in favor of any action taken since it will be worded specifically to assuage and cover any alarming aspects.
We are already experiencing that sort of thing NOW.
Don’t you think they’ll decide that guns cause gun violence?
I’d expect more objective specificity, like bourgeois gun violence, say, or morally suspect right wing gun violence, as distinguished from justifiable inner city gun violence, which as you know, is merely a function of doing business on the mean streets of our shining Chicagos.
CDC will come to the conclusion that owning a weapon or speaking out about preserving the 2A is prima facie evidence of mental defect.
Happened in the USSR all the time. Speaking out was considered indicative of mental imbalance and liable to incarceration/rehabilitation.
Given Gov’t controlled health care and the fact that a Doctor can have you involuntarily committed for at minimum 3 days and in some areas 2 weeks for “observation”. Such committing will be entered on your record and render your ability to legal own weapons, gone.
You all really have no idea of the web they’ve created/have available.
Depends on Obama’s intended use for the CDC gun violence study results. If it’s to identify potential “crazies” who should be prevented from possessing guns, then they’ll identify something broad and vague to maximize the number of gun permits denied.
There’s no “disease” that causes gun use, no more than there is a disease that causes car accidents. It’s just a tool. So maybe they’ll just chip away at all of the disqualifying behaviors/habits/health issues, such as anyone who has ever taken an anti-depressent or has been treated for substance abuse.
[…] quote of the day goes to Protein Wisdom’s Jeff Goldstein in his article about El Presidente’s push to use executive powers to move his gun control […]
Scott Hinckley, thanks! I knew he had a Spanish name and was from New York, but blanked after that.
The government is going to research the causes of gun violence? Will they examine the effects of lousy public education that leads to dismal job prospects, high drug use, membership in gangs, and the culture of violence among our inner city youth? Will they examine the caustic effects of multi-generational economic dependency on government’s failed anti-poverty programs that have destroyed the family unit in our inner cities? Will they examine Hollywood’s glorification of violence?
Why do I even ask, of course they won’t.
Whaterver the CDC concludes, you can depend on that conclusion not supporting the Second Amendment. It will become settled science no matter how they have to twist or massage the data, just like climate change.
The IRS has decided it doesn’t want to be left out, so don’t forget them…
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/03/26/17474082-how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing?lite
How long before they start “needing” more information to properly provide that service if it happens.
Demolition Man wasn’t a cool movie because of the three seashells or the mini-tunes.
Probably just one of my paranoid brain droppings, but since the inception of the mandatory background check process, all records were to be destroyed after 24 hours….so where is all this data for tracing, etc., coming from? Put another way, how exactly do you broaden access to data that isn’t supposed to exist?
jamiec:
See here and here.
Just. Unbelievable.
A bill is heading to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk that Republican lawmakers say would give members of the Secret Service broad arrest powers in the state and could provide a framework for federal agents eventually to enforce gun restrictions.
h/t Resister in the Rockies
The objection was never to what Nixon was doing. Just to Nixon himself.
“could provide a framework for federal agents eventually to enforce gun restrictions. ”
yea i think they be batf
“Just to Nixon himself.”
they saved some their love for w
Nah. Obama would have never worked to convict Alger Hiss and expose the Soviet penetration of the US government. He would have applauded it, helped it. Hell he, Obama, is the crowning achievement of all their work with the CPUSA.
Plus, Watergate’s conventional wisdom narrative is as accurate as the one the Left made into the conventional wisdom about those who tried to expose the Communist infiltration of the US. Lies masking truth.
Not that I’m in love with Nixon. But the things I find wrong with his Presidency are mostly ones the left quietly agrees with, takes credit for and uses themselves.
It’s an article of faith among many that Nixon was responsible for Vietnam, when he’s actually the one that got us out (whereupon the Dem Congress stabbed our allies in the back, leading to the Fall of Saigon).
Nixon was a good president. He gets a bad rap, but if you take time to read about him, he was a remarkable man. Tenacious and paranoid, sure. But also humble. I can think of no other president, past or present who has set the good of the country before his own ambition and stepped down from the presidency.
The next closest would be Gerald Ford who threw his chances at reelection on the sword by pardoning Nixon, saving the country from savaging itself in putting a former president on trial, but inadvertently putting Jimmuh Carter’s Jew-hating feet on the path to the White House.
Well, you can’t blame Saint Kennedy of the hollowed-out head now, can you?
Yes, I could. But it wouldn’t be proper or decent on Holy Saturday.
Perhaps later next week we can discuss St. Kennedy’s myriad failings.
I would say he was a cynical man, and not someone I would uphold as a model worthy of emulation. Michael Knox Beran discussed some of those policies goeff was talking about here:
You could also look up Tory Socialism, which is something not unlike the Republican party thinks they need to embrace if their to ever win over the moderates and independents and appease the low-info voters
[…] tears apart the […]
EPA also.
Nixon probably never understood that his involvement in the prosecution and conviction of Alger Hiss meant he was marked for destruction by the Left forever. The Left never forgive and always exact revenge eventually.
That and the fact that he was peasant, relatively and metaphorically speaking.
For Batboy if he’s around.
Hickock45 on the Swedish 6.5x55mm Mauser
I couldn’t resist linking to you here: http://bobagard.blogspot.com/2013/03/privacy.html
“Making it easier for John Law” is NOT the primary purpose of the Bill of Rights.
Hard to credit, I know.
Illinois succeeds from the Union apparently.