NRA Ignoring Immigration Threat To Gun Rights

Mitch McConnell’s surrender on immigration reform last week could have major consequences for Second Amendment rights.

Deportation amnesty is one of the biggest threats to gun rights because it will add millions of anti-gun voters to the electorate in one fell swoop.

The vast majority of illegal aliens are Hispanics, and Hispanics are one of the most anti-gun demographics in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, 62% of Hispanics prefer expanding gun control to percent gun rights, compared to 39% of white voters.

Gun Owners of America estimates that amnesty could add more than 8 million anti-gun voters to the electorate. The consequences of this would be nothing short of devastating. GOA explained:

“This is exactly what happened to California -- which was once a Red State,” GOA explained in a 2014 alert. “Because of the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty bill of 1986, the state lurched violently to the left and now can’t pass gun control restrictions fast enough.”

Yet GOA seems to be the only gun group drawing attention to the issue. As David Codrea noted in a series of columns last year, the NRA avoids addressing the immigration issue like the plague.

The NRA launched an advertising campaign last year devoted entirely to non-gun issues such as the IRS scandal and national security. Immigration reform was one of the few aspects of Obama’s agenda that the campaign failed to acknowledge.

The NRA also declined to punish the seventeen NRA A-rated Senators who voted to confirm Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who stated during his confirmation hearings that illegals have “earned the right to be citizens.”

Now, with Obama’s amnesty order on the verge of becoming law, the NRA is doing a major disservice to its members by failing to acknowledge amnesty for what it is --- a grave threat to gun rights.

Congressman Introduces Bill To Ban Body Armor And Homemade Firearms

A Democratic Congressman introduced three anti-gun bills last week that would put severe restrictions on body armor and home-assembled firearms across the country.

Representative Mike Honda of California says the bills are “sensible, reasonable measures to limit the damage that can be inflicted by guns.” He added that the bills will “modernize our gun laws.”

The first bill, the Home Assembled Firearms Restriction Act, would outlaw the sale, manufacture and import of so called “80 percent lowers,” the unfinished receivers that are used in home gun assembly. It was co-sponsored by seven other Democrats.

The second bill, the Homemade Firearms Accountability Act, would mandate that all home built firearms have a permanent unique serial number and are reported to ATF for entry into their databases.

The last bill, the Responsible Body Armor Possession Act, would ban so-called “enhanced body armor.” The bill defines this as “any wearable armor including helmets or shields that offer a ballistic protection of Type III or above” as determined by National Institute of Justice standards.

Rep. Honda tried and failed to pass several similar bills in Congress last year. He was also a sponsor of the infamous “ghost gun” bill that passed the California Senate last year but was so poorly written that it was actually vetoed by liberal Democratic Governor Jerry Brown.

He is unlikely to have much more luck in a Republican-controlled Congress, and these bills amount to little more than political grandstanding.

“Pro-Gun” Lawsuit Is About Money, Not Rights

The Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit last week against I-594 in Washington State. It will do nothing to protect the rights of Washington state gun owners.

The lawsuit only addresses one small aspect of the law -- the restrictions it places on out-of-state gun owners. It says nothing about gun owners who live in Washington, nor does it mention that universal background checks are a clear infringement on the Constitution. Even if the lawsuit is successful, the worst aspects of I-594 will remain intact.

Why doesn’t the lawsuit challenge the legislation head on?

Because the organization behind it – the Second Amendment Foundation – does not believe that universal background checks are unconstitutional. It supports them.

Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb admitted this in a press release, saying:

“We’re not trying to stop background checks. We’re taking action against a poorly-written and unconstitutionally vague measure that criminalizes activities that are perfectly legal anywhere else in the country, thus striking at the very heart of a constitutionally-protected, fundamental civil right.”

This is not the first time that Gottlieb has promoted background checks – far from it. He endorsed the Manchin-Toomey Amendment that nearly passed U.S. Congress in 2013. Last year, he released a video calling on gun groups to “lead, not follow” on the issue of background checks.

Gottlieb says that gun owners have to compromise on background checks because otherwise we will be dismissed as “extremists”. He says that we have to give up our rights because it is the only way to keep the Second Amendment intact.

But the late Aaron Zelman, founder of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, felt that Gottlieb had a different motivation for supporting background checks: fundraising. In August 2014, Claire Wolfe wrote:

“[Zelman] despised Alan Gottlieb and saw him as an opportunist who used scary mailings to turn SAF/CCRKBA into a fundraising factory. He saw Gottlieb as a person who needed and wanted ‘gun control’ because that’s what kept the money and the publicity flowing.”

The I-594 lawsuit is nothing more than a publicity stunt. It is not meant to protect gun rights. It is meant to raise money. Why else would a group that supports background checks take the trouble to challenge them – unless they thought there was money to be made?

It was recently reported that Gottlieb uses his gun rights groups to funnel money to the private companies that he owns:

 “While tax documents show Gottlieb collects $72,000 in pay annually between Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee, millions of dollars raised by those nonprofits have gone to Gottlieb’s for-profit direct-mail business, Merril Associates. According to tax records nonprofits must file, Second Amendment Foundation paid Merril Associates $4.1 million between 2002 and 2012, while Citizens Committee paid the company nearly $1.1 million in that time.”

There are millions of patriots in this country who won’t budge an inch in their support of the Second Amendment. It is a shame that some people will bargain away our rights just so they can turn a profit.

Liberal Professor Demands Repeal Of Second Amendment

An obscure liberal academic who teaches “conflict resolution” at Portland State University has written a newspaper editorial saying that the “stupid” Second Amendment should be abolished completely.

“Repeal the stupid Second Amendment. Surround it, grab it, bring it in the back room, pull down the shades, and end it,” writes Tom H. Hastings in the Wisconsin Gazette.

Hastings’ argument hinges on a particularly deranged piece of leftist logic: that the Constitution somehow impinges on the government’s freedom rather than the other way around.

Hastings writes that the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which upheld the Second Amendment rights of private citizens, was in fact a violation of the rights of state and local governments to pass whatever gun control laws they want.

“Now when a city or state wants to outlaw firearms, too bad,” he writes. “The conservatives took away their powers and rights in favor of Big Brother.”

In other words, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the real oppressors, not the government that routinely infringes on them.

This perspective, despite how ridiculous it sounds, is not uncommon among left-wing academics. As Gina Loudon pointed out in World Net Daily, it is an argument that they use to indoctrinate impressionable young students:

“[Hasting’s argument] is the cultivation of a very dangerous twist of truth that statists are busily evangelizing in our universities. They take the natural independence/ invincibility bent of young, inexperienced (pre-wise) youth at the college level and teach them that Big Brother is not the overreaching bureaucracy of regimes like the Obama administration, or other socialist governments. They say instead that Big Brother is somehow our Founding Fathers, and their documents like the U.S. Constitution and our Bill of Rights. They give their fable the ominous twist of the archaic haunting of dead, white men who lived more than 200 years ago, trying to control our lives today. Then they ask the obvious question that culminates from such a scenario: Why would you want to live under the rule of ‘Big Brother’ (200-year dead, old, white men who can’t possibly understand society today)?”

Perhaps this is why so many young people continue to vote for Socialists and Democrats, despite the fact that students generally support civil rights and freedoms. They have been tricked into believing that supporting freedom means ignoring the Constitution.