A trio of gun-control items

Posted by Kromey at 2:09pm Jul 22 '11
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Normally I'd post such things separately, but there's been so little discussion on here on the topic lately that I'm just going to throw them all together into one post, to save myself some effort when it gets ignored.

First off, we're going north (or east, depending on where you're at) of the border, into Canada. There, the national long-gun (i.e. rifle, shotgun) registry looks like it's going to be repealed this fall. Since its inception it has been opposed by, well, everyone except the politicians who irrationally support it. It serves no useful purpose, and instead sucks up time and money from both the Canadian government and law-abiding Canadian gun owners.

[T]he registry not only proved to be expensive and errorprone, it drove a wedge between police and lawful Canadian firearms owners, who became justifiably frustrated at being deemed public safety risks simply because they owned a firearm. The Liberals' hysterical insistence that harassing duck hunters and sport shooters was somehow necessary to pay proper homage to the victims of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre (which wouldn't have been prevented with a registry anyway) has been particularly grating.
(Source) [Note: I have no details on the aforementioned tragedy, nor what specifically about it wouldn't have been prevented by the registry (although it's easy to come up with a million possible reasons), but it seems like something that could be easily Googled.]

Next, we'll come back home, to find the NRA winning 5 Congressional votes on gun control issues:

The key vote came last week to bar a new rule that would require gun dealers in Southwest border states to report the sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber. The NRA also was able to stop the administration from blocking the importation of shotguns that have various features not liked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, like extended magazine tubes and adjustable stocks. Those features are typical on guns used for competition.

Also blocked in House committee was a ban on the sale of firearms to those on the FBI's terror watch list and funding to enforce the Army Corps of Engineers ban on gun possession in the 11 million acres the [sic] oversee.
(Source)

Note mentioned in the quote is the defeat of an attempt to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment; the attempt was based on the assertion (put forth by MAIG, near as I can tell) that the Tiahrt Amendment has obstructed the Congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal, something the Congressmen leading that investigation dismiss as being simply not true.

Finally, we take a venture into foreign policy, where we find that 50 Senators have signed letters to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton opposing a UN Arms Trade Treaty that includes civilian firearms within its scope. I haven't posted about this previously because information is hard to find and the NRA, when they released the statement delivered to the UN by their president, was pretty boringly cliché, but the UN has been working for quite some time on an ATT ostensibly aimed at impeding terrorism by imposing strict limitations on the trade of firearms.

As Senator Jerry Moran's letter warns, "(A)s the treaty process continues, we strongly encourage your administration to uphold our constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership. These freedoms are non-negotiable, and we will oppose ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty presented to the Senate that in any way restricts the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens to manufacture, assemble, possess, transfer or purchase firearms, ammunition and related items."
(Source)