One dark and foggy Georgia night, I heard a knocking on my front door.
I rushed to the door, only to hear the echo of horse hooves galloping
off in the distance. From the faint glimpse of the rider that I was
able to see, he appeared to be wearing a three corner hat and a long
flowing cloak. As I turned to go back inside the protective confines
of my warm house on that damp and foggy evening, I noticed a parchment
scroll attached to our large brass doorknocker. Reading it by the warm
glow of the fireplace, I soon realized that the scroll contained
a message of great importance. Quickly, I sat down at my computer to
generate an ascii file that would help spread the word much more
quickly than the mysterious rider who had appeared at my door that
evening. Let's all do our part to help that rider, whoever he was,
and help spread the word far and wide across the land for all to see
and hear
WHY THE STAGGERS INSTANT BACKGROUND CHECK IS NOT
A HARMLESS ALTERNATIVE TO THE BRADY BILL
and
THE DAMAGE BEING DONE BY THOSE WHO ARE SUPPORTING IT
by
PUBLIUS
Many gun owners are embracing the notion of the instant background
check as if it were some kind of life preserver in the stormy seas of
gun control. Rather than putting on a life jacket, they are trying to
swim with a rock! The instant background check is itself gun control.
It is something that would normally be unacceptable those who we
find to be supporting it. The people supporting the measure can
only whine in its defense, "Well, isn't it better than the Brady
Bill?" Who said we had to choose? The National Rifle Association,
which many of us have supported as a bulwark against gun control, has
been promoting the instant background check as "Gun Control That
Works!" as if we had been supporting the NRA in a search for that
"perfect" gun control law. When questioned on this issue, NRA
representatives say, "We are going to get something; it's better than
the Brady Bill." Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.
Their support of Staggers puts the anti-gun lobby in a position to
say, "See, now even the NRA admits we need waiting periods and
background checks!"
Anyone who has ever set up an ambush or been caught in one should be
able to see what has happened. Upon recognizing the threat of the
Brady Bill on one side of the road, gun owners, under the leadership
of the NRA are diving for cover in the booby-trap filled ditches on
the other side of the road. Either way we've had it. The only way to
survive an ambush is not to walk into it. We have already walked into
it. If you do find yourself in a kill zone, your only hope to salvage
anything is to attack. Sometimes, you must attack in two directions.
Anyone reading this article will know that the Brady Bill is wrong and
illegal. We will now set forth some arguments against the Staggers
Instant Background Check.
The biggest difference between the Brady Bill and the Staggers Instant
Background Check is about 168 hours, assuming the Staggers process is
actually instant which is not guaranteed in its language. No right
thinking citizen will deny that the Brady Bill infringes on his
Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Does the Staggers Bill pass the
constitutional test since it infringes your right "instantly?" Just
because it's fast doesn't mean it's Constitutional. Both bills
convert your right into a privilege held hostage to the whim of
bureaucrats and government employees. To quote Senator Joe Biden, "As
the Supreme Court has written, 'The fact that a given procedure is
efficient, convenient, and useful in facilitating the functions of the
Government will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution.'
"-- Congressional Record, January 10, 1991, page S121.
Many are under the impression that the database to be compiled under
the Staggers Bill will include only prohibited people. Nowhere in the
bill is the compilation of data restricted to prohibited persons. The
language of the Staggers Bill grants broad, sweeping powers to the
Attorney General when it comes to his mandate to create the database
he will need to interdict sales of handguns to prohibited persons. The
Staggers Bill gives the Attorney General the power to collect data
"NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF LAW." Under Staggers, nothing
will be confidential.
If the bill is to ever accomplish its stated purpose, at some point in
the future, it will have to be determined that one's absence from the
database will have to be cause for rejection. The reason for this is
that if you are not in the database, you might be an illegal alien,
who is restricted but would not be on any database, or you might be
using false credentials to avoid being rejected. Thus, if you are not
on the database, you will have to be rejected since you can not
prove your eligibility to purchase. Anyone who gives a false name and
social security number that doesn't happen to match the data on a
restricted person will be able to walk out with a gun. Therefore,
the database will have to include all citizens who would not be rejected
should they try to purchase a gun as well as those who would be rejected.
If it is set up this way, it constitutes a major civil rights problem
with many privacy issues at stake. If it is not set up this way, they
can not promise that it will be instant or "effective." Either way, the
bill and its promises are frauds.
Some of you are asking, "Well, if they're gonna lie, they'll get a gun
anyway, right?" RIGHT! So if THEY're going to lie, why bother
checking US?
Remember, whenever the Government constructs something that doesn't
work, they never throw it out, they try to fix it. Given the cultural
paradigms we are facing, crime will continue to increase with or
without gun control; if this bill is in place and the rate goes up,
they will try to "improve" it. You can do a lot of "improving" if you
are mandated and licensed to do so "NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER
PROVISION OF LAW!"
As to the accuracy of the database, we can only speculate and look to
other government agencies or private credit reporting services as
examples of how accurate these records might be and what might be
involved in correcting errors. To comment further is probably
unnecessary.
The bill as written only applies to handguns. It is called, "The
Felon Handgun Purchase Prevention Act of 1991." Since the same
restrictions that prevent restricted people from owning handguns also
prevent them from owning any guns, how long do you think it will be
before we have the "Felon Firearms Purchase Prevention Act of 19XX?"
This might not be necessary, however, because the bill as written
perpetuates the ambiguous definition of "handgun" from the Gun
Control Act of 1968 to include "a firearm... designed and intended to
be fired by the use of a single hand." The question of "intent" is
always a tricky legal point. Many people shoot pistols with two hands;
certain movie stars have been known to fire M-60 belt-fed machine
guns with one hand. Unfortunately, the technical experts of the NRA
have left enough ambiguity in this definition for the anti-gun
faction to exploit to our disadvantage. Then, as the crime rate
continues to soar, they might substitute another term for "Felon," ad
infinitum. Deep inside, gun owners and activists know this is the
anti-gun agenda, yet we find them supporting the bill.
Along with illegal aliens and convicted felons, the following classes
of people are prohibited from purchasing firearms under section 922
(g) of title 18, United States Code, which is referenced in the
Staggers Bill:
1) Any Fugitive from Justice.
2) Anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any
controlled substance.
3) Anyone who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who
has been committed to a mental institution.
4) Anybody Dishonorably Discharged from the Armed Forces.
5) Anyone who has renounced his U.S. Citizenship.
6) Anyone who has been indicted by a Grand Jury or accused by a
Prosecuting Attorney of a Felony.
The Attorney General is mandated by the Staggers Bill to prohibit any
and all of the above classes of people from purchasing a handgun by so
identifying them on the Hotline. He is authorized to collect, compile
and use this information. As the Staggers Bill provides,
"NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF LAW, the Attorney General may
secure directly from any department or agency of the United States
such information on persons for whom the receipt of a handgun would
violate section 922(g) of Title 18, United States Code." Given the
scope of the information required and the sources from which it might
be obtained, one can clearly see that no aspect of anyone's life will
be safe from the scrutiny of the Department of Justice. In case you
might one day wish to buy a gun, the Attorney General will have the
authority to compile on you a file that will include a review of your
military record, medical (mental health) records, census data,
NCIC and criminal records, and social security number, which will be
your Federal Identification Number for handgun purchases under
Staggers.
It would not be outside the mandate of the Attorney General to require
testing of blood or urine samples at the point of sale to prove that
you are not an unlawful user of or addicted to controlled substances.
Nor would it be outside his mandate to require that you take a loyalty
oath or pledge allegiance to the flag to demonstrate that you have not
renounced your United States Citizenship.
At this point, some of you understand that the Staggers Bill is not as
harmless as it appears and you oppose it. Most of you, however, are
lapsing into denial. You are saying, "I don't care what they find out
about me, I don't have anything to hide ." Or, "Sure such a database
could be abused if it fell into the wrong hands, but it can't happen
here, this is America. We have Constitutionally protected rights.
Besides, the Staggers bill is specific in its instructions that the
data collected can not be used for any other purpose or shared with
any other agencies!" We won't bore you with the predictable, worn out
comparisons to Nazi Germany. After all, that can't happen here. The
following passage, however, might give you a new slant on something
that did happen here.
"That same day Dr. Henry Field...was summoned to Grace Tully's
office...She told Field that the President was ordering him to
produce, in the shortest time possible, the full names and
addresses of each American-born and foreign-born Japanese listed by
locality within each state...She explained it was to be done by
using the 1930 and 1940 censuses...
...The project had begun less than 90 Minutes after Grace
Tully had given the assignment. Field telephoned her that all was
going well but he needed security from the Marine Corps. Soon each
entrance to the Census Building was guarded by an armed Marine. In
the meantime a bank of IBM sorting machines was set up to extract
the Orientals for each state from 110,000,000 cards; then they were
to be resorted for the Japanese.
The Census Bureau finally had the name and address
of every Japanese in the United States, a total of 126,947...Copies
were distributed to the FBI and the governors and military
commanders in each state.
--From Infamy by John Toland, Berkley Books, New York, 1982.
According to author Toland, the above occurred around November 26,
1941; eleven days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was, then,
no state of emergency. This must have been done by Executive Order or
bureaucratic whim. If you doubt the above, have you ever wondered how
the Government was able to find all the Japanese so quickly after the
attack?
The wording of the Census Act guaranteed that the above could not
happen. The guarantees of the Staggers Bill regarding the
confidentiality of the database that it would create are every bit as
strong. The question, then, is that if we can not guarantee, even by
law, that such a database will not be abused, why create it?
Especially, why allow it to be compiled when the expressed intention
of such a database is to infringe one of our rights?
With the Staggers machinery for denial in place, it would only take a
stroke of a pen to build a waiting period into it or to include
parameters for rejection that do not at this moment exist. For
example, crime in the cities could be stopped by denying permission to
purchase to people of a particular Zip Code, or of a particular race;
or how about this for a safety measure: No handgun sales to people
with children under 12. There are people who would support that. If
we had had this machinery in place during the War in the Gulf
recently, we could have denied all Arab Americans access to guns.
Remember, under Staggers, "NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF
LAW," the Attorney General will have access to all the census records
we filled out last year.
Those of you who are still in denial are thinking, "Well, that's
extreme. It wouldn't happen. We might have detained ethnic minorities
in camps back in the 40's, but that was then. This is now; there are
organizations that would stop that kind of thing. The ACLU, the
SCLC, the NAACP, the ADL, would intervene if firearms purchases were
denied on the basis of race, ethnic background, religion, Zip Code,
or anything like that." This is wishful thinking. Every major
"Civil Rights" organization in this country is rabidly dedicated to
disarming anyone they can, regardless of race, color, creed, or
national origin.
While the Brady Bill is specific in its infringement of our rights,
the Staggers Bill is more like a computer with many expansion ports.
As written, it may not seem that powerful. But give the bureaucrats
some more of our money, and a little time, and they will build it into
an infringement machine that will leave the authors of the Brady Bill
with their heads spinning in disbelief and marveling at its
efficiency.
To sum up the argument: In order to avoid being subjected to the
prior restraint of the Brady Bill, which itself is unacceptable,
unlawful, and unconstitutional, we are being asked to accept the prior
restraint of the Staggers Bill which converts our right into a privilege
and creates a database/bureaucracy which could be used to further
infringe our Second Amendment Right and all our other rights. If
Staggers is passed with our help, or our approval, or without our trying
to stop it, they can not only claim victory but our sanction as well.
And that is the greatest victory we could ever give them. They might
be able to deny our rights through force or deception, but we don't
truly lose our rights until we give our sanction and blessing by
supporting legislation like the Staggers Bill.
PUBLIUS is a pseudonym for The Big Truth, Inc., an
organization dedicated to the proposition that if
you can tell the TRUTH OFTEN enough and LOUDLY
enough, people will come to believe it.