My colleagues and I are working hard to protect the 2nd Amendment. One measure I’ve taken is cosponsoring the Gun Owner Registration Information Protection (GRIP) Act, which would put an end to these two sweeping gun control measures. The GRIP Act would clarify existing law prohibiting the federal government from storing information acquired during the firearms background check process. Additionally, it would clarify the prohibition on the use of any federal funding by states or local entities for the storage or listing of sensitive, personal information related to the legal ownership or possession of firearms.
Jerry Carl
U.S. Representative Alabama’s First Congressional District
April 12, 2021
Carl: The fight to protect the 2nd Amendment
[Even if successful this would hardly “protect the 2nd Amendment”. It would be little more than a gesture in the correct direction.
This is not to say that Rep. Carl and his colleagues are enemies of the 2nd Amendment or even that they do not understand the problem or are not doing the best they can given the current situation.
But what is ultimately going to be required is the repeal of thousands of the laws that infringe the 2nd Amendment and the prosecution of those in government who have, or conspired to, violate our rights. Sure, it would have an extremely low chance of passage at the Federal level today, but how about introducing legislation providing for the funding of Federal law enforcement and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute state officials who have advocated for, passed, and enforced some of the most egregious gun control laws?
Just introducing such legislation will move the Overton Window and be a “shot across the bow” of the current course of gun grabbers.—Joe]
Yeah, the trick is not passing laws, it is getting the Federales to obey them. Last time I checked, it is illegal to stand up a coup against the President.
That said your proposal to prosecute state and local officials for violating the 2A is great. I have long advocated this. (And the pandemic response has added a whole bunch of other things they need to be prosecuted for.) Can’t pass it now but just proposing will have salutary effects. I do have a question as to whether Federal prosecutors and LE are so corrupt that they would simply sabotage the effort. I shudder to suggest a new agency to do this (Department of Constitutional Enforcement), but the situation does seem similar to Khrushchev’s creation of the Strategic Rocket Forces because he couldn’t get the Red Army to obey orders and build ICBMs.
Expecting one part of the federal government to reign in another part of the federal government is like having your mother-in-law preside if your divorce hearing; you may get lucky and have an unbiased saint to deal with but don’t count on it. The states and local governments and ultimately We the People are responsible for enforcing the Constitution. Unfortunately many of us live in communist states or cities. The Constitution is merely a blueprint for the federal government written in plain language so anyone can see whether it’s being followed but we have been so far gone from the way things are supposed to be, for so long even most liberty minded people ( including myself) don’t get it right. We no longer live in a constitutional republic, we live in an oligarchy enforced by a permanent bureaucracy. The rot is to the core and is self perpetuating through indoctrination and propaganda from every corner.
I don’t disagree that the states are a better locus of prosecution than the Feds but we are talking about Federal enforcement. The DoJ is completely hopeless so you would need another organization. Don’t underestimate the power of bureaucratic rivalry, though. The FBI and CIA have been at loggerheads forever.
Assuming the various bureaucrats can be made to obey such a law, this one is actually quite significant. The main issue with background checks, and universal ones in particular, is that they serve as a way to build a registry of gun owners.
The Brady Act required the background check info be destroyed for all except failed checks. The feds keep them anyway, “For audit purposes.” Later, the U.S. attorney general testified it wasn’t possible to delete the records.
Laws and funding need to be eliminated. People need to be prosecuted.
I don’t think there is any other way.
I was unaware DELETE FROM NICS_TRANS WHERE RESULT <> ‘DENY’ was beyond technical capability of a database system.
Anytime I hear an official say something cannot be done I know they are lying through their teeth. Anything a system creates can be destroyed. Especially electronic records. They just use the excuse because they don’t want to lose all that juicy data on the citizenry.
The fact that NICS ‘Proceed’ records can be retained for audit purposes but does not specify a quantity is a failing of the law. 99.9% of all records can be kept for testing and audit purposes as long as one record is destroyed within 24 hours (as the law requires) to meet the letter of the law.
Our failing is not dealing with the fact that abuse is the default outcome in government databases. Assume the worst and then design backwards to deal with it. The best way being to specify hard limits, rules and engineer them in. Ideally the best data to be kept being no data at all. We can design ephemeral systems that only write on failed checks and do real-time for everything else as an implementation choice. Done it.
Shouldn’t any audit be an attempt to verify that procedures are in line with the law, and that the law is being followed?
If that were indeed the case, the existence of any record that is not a denial, and older than 24 hours, should be a serious nonconformance requiring corrective action.
Or, perhaps the powers that be are not held to the same standards as the rest of us.
Government is never held to the same standard. For instance, if you call a private corporation and the person on the phone gives you wrong information that costs you a lot of money, you can sue and recover that money, or have a judge hold them to the wrong information that person gave you as a representative of the company. If you call the IRS for information on how to complete and file your tax papers, they can be so wrong that only the family dog would believe what you were told. Toughski Shitski. You have to follow the law regardless of what the halfwit on the IRS help line told you. The fact that you followed the advice of the halfwit creates no duty on the part of the government, or the IRS specifically.
Similar handling of the executives of a corporation. They have no personal immunity against the criminal or negligence behavior of the corporation. The executives of the government have to have been caught committing a personally criminal act before they are at risk of being brought to justice. Wasting taxpayer money, creating an unsafe work and home environment, unsafe public areas, etc. means nothing more than an opportunity for making a new campaign promise rather than prosecution.
And who would do the prosecuting? A General Inspector?
I spent 10 years working for an ‘independent’ watcher aka Think Tank. We did studies, investigations, reviews, and in general provided technical advice to senior government officials. However, not once do I recall anyone being even demoted, let alone prosecuted for anything based on our advice. The system was simply not set up to do that. All reports and advice were carefully coordinated to insure that our advice was was acceptable to the officials.
So the question becomes who is watching the watchers watch corrupted officials? In the final analysis such systems of checks and balances do not seem to work very well if at all. Perhaps the SS did a better job but given that they were on the loosing side I have doubts.
So it still comes down to those unwritten rules and attitudes.
There are laws – both formal and informal – for us and there are laws – both formal and informal – for the bureaucrats, but it seems to me that there is not much overlap especially when mass psychosis infects the bureaucrats and their supporters.
The problem for us is that the majority of the bureaucrats and their supporters hate our world view and will do everything they can to eliminate it. Putting new laws on the books will do nothing to change their behavior and their attitude that they are in control.
And we should not forget that living in such an environment takes a toll on us. We need a divorce if we are to remain sane.
And Mr. Carl is showing us just how out of touch with reality he and congress are. If the communist are refusing to understand and be bound under their terms of employment in the government.
Or the plain letter law of, Shall not be infringed. Or even 18 USC 241 & 242.
What does he think they will obey? Some crap he and his friends scribbled?
Sorry congressman Carl. These are communist. They understand political power comes from the barrel of a gun. History has proven them right in every example.
Disarmament and death is what’s going to happen. The only choice left is sides.
Thinking about Mr. Carl’s benevolent fantasy, and reading the comments here, brings me back to previous thoughts. First, John Adams’ quote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” followed by my frequent assertion that the U.S. Constitution has one quite substantial flaw: There is no enforcement mechanism for prosecuting, or correcting, the violation of its precepts beyond the concept of altruistic benevolence.
I suspect we’re at that point where Ripley’s quote from Alien is applicable and, unfortunately, I don’t there there’s another viable solution. I also don’t think more than a small percentage of Americans would support anything sufficiently severe to actually resolve the problem. We’d very much prefer perpetual attempts at “reforms” and “GRIP Acts” despite a mounting suspicion such are mere theater.
I doubt it will matter much, however; as surely as centrifugal overcomes centripetal as RPM increases, expecting any substantial unification around our basic Constitutional principles from a massively fragmented society is, at this point, a pleasant but unsatisfying delusion.
I doubt we’ve reached the “every man for himself” stage yet, but I think we can see it from here.
This GRIP Act reminds me most of all of the Nazi laws providing for “Protective Custody” for the people they don’t like and want dead.
Could there be no enforcement mechanism because the Founding Fathers, thanks to the thorough education they got in every form of government humans had ever invented throughout history they know that when that becomes necessary there are no mechanism possible since once that lid is kicked off, and killing or putting the collar back on tyrants becomes necessary, there’s no telling what will come out of hell?
We already have the ONLY law needed to protect our rights regarding firearms etc.
The Second Amendment. If followed as written and as intended there is NO NEED for ANY OTHER LAW to protect that right. If those in power refuse to obey the Second Amendment than NO OTHER LAW can possibly prevent them from infringing that right. The ugly reality is you only have the rights you are willing to fight for, die for and MOST importantly KILL FOR. If the people who willfully violate your rights aren’t killed for doing so they have NO INCENTIVE to stop violating them.