The gun industry plans to file lawsuits on Wednesday challenging requirements that weapons dealers along the U.S. border with Mexico report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles, escalating the fight with the Obama administration.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives last month ordered more than 8,000 gun dealers in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California to report such sales to try to stem the “iron river” of guns flowing to the violent Mexican drug cartels.
Dealers are required to report sales of two or more rifles to the same person at one time or during any five business days for semi-automatic weapons greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine.
Two Arizona gun dealers backed by the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, will file a lawsuit in Washington as will the National Shooting Sports Foundation which represents the firearms industry, the groups said.
They will argue that ATF was not authorized by the Congress to require reporting such information about semi-automatic rifles purchases, rather it was only allowed to require reporting about handgun and revolver sales, according to copies of the lawsuits.
I can think of no good reason why any law abiding U.S. citizen–particularly if living near the Mexican border–should object to such a reporting requirement.
Thinking isn’t your strong suit greg.
1) They don’t have the authority to REQUIRE them to report such sales
2) Considering the govt. was (technically) the largest exporter of firearms to Mexico, it’s flamingly hypocritical
3) It is a defacto firearms registration list which is illegal
@Greg:
As HR says, “thinking is not your strong suit, Greg”. Consider this;
Amendment 2, U.S. Constitution;
It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed, except in certain cases”. It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed, except by the Executive Branch”. It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed except when the public allows it”.
It says “shall NOT be infringed“. Period. End of story.
And once in place along the border, Obama can easily say, gee, it works so wonderfully well, lets do it in the other 53 states.
There is no purpose to be served by this registration scheme other than as a trial ballon to see what they can get away with without going through the Congress or even the normal regulatory public comment procedures…which if they were applied in this case, public comments were summarily ignored in order to achieve their higher purpose of infringing on the law abiding.
There are already laws and procedures in place against straw purchases which were egregiously ignored by the Department of InJustice and the Bureau of Alcoholics, TooBadniks, and FirePants… including two individuals with felony criminal records whose background checks were most likely tampered with to allow guns to walk to Mexico under this Fast and Fuzzythinking program.
Government officials, likely including political appointees up at least as high as the Attorney General broke multiple laws, and federal officers and innocent people died by the guns that walked…that’s reason enough to doubt the sincerity, veracity, character, good intentions, and patriotism of the Obama administration. Most likely High crimes and misdemeanors sufficient for impeachment in my humble opinion.
@johngalt, #3:
That’s not the end of the story, unless you want to allow criminals, crazy people, and gun runners to freely purchase firearms. Preventing such things from happening always involves some degree of infringement.
There seems to be some confusion around here between simplistic thinking and purity of principle.
GREG YOU HAVE PURE PRINCIPLE, DO YOU THINK THAT PRINCIPLE ARE ALWAYS PURE, WHEN DID YOU OR ANY IN GOVERNMENT apply the pure principle,
what is for you a pure principal?
simplicity is a pure principle, the words are there simple as you can read it.
that is simple as that