COMMENTARY & OPINION

From the desk of

Bill Ramey

3/23/18

COMMENTARY & OPINION

Betrayal: How the REPUBLICANS Are Gutting the Second Amendment

 

by Daisy Luther

 

Everyone likes to blame the Democrats for gun control, but here’s a news flash: those of us who fervently believe in the Second Amendment are actually being betrayed by members of the Republican party who are in Congress right now. The budget bill on the table right now would gut the right to bear arms for millions of Americans, it’s already passed the House and Senate, and the Congress is controlled by Republicans.

The spending bill that Congress hopes to pass is more than 2200 pages, according to Senator Rand Paul, who was outraged at being given less than a day to read the entire bill. Senator Paul live-tweeted his reading of the bill last night, and it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody else in Congress spent the evening reading it before they voted.

Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses - and parties. $1.3 trillion. Busts budget caps. 2200 pages, with just hours to try to read it.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 10:01 AM - Mar 22, 2018

Well here it is, all 2,232 budget-busting pages. The House already started votes on it. The Senate is expected to soon. No one has read it. Congress is broken... pic.twitter.com/izvJlUEgUM

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 11:02 AM - Mar 22, 2018

How the spending bill affects our Second Amendment rights

 

In this budget bill are some insidious things that affect our Second Amendment rights.

The bill revives an Obama-era restriction on firearms for senior citizens.

Just before President Obama left office, his administration finalized new regulations banning Social Security recipients from buying a gun if they have trouble managing their finances.

About 10 percent of all people 65 and older risked being classified as “financially incompetent” – about 4.2 million in all.

Using the Congressional Review Act, Republicans and two Democrats passed a bill overturning the regulation. But the bill did more than that. It also prevents any future president from reinstituting the ban without new legislative authorization from Congress.

Unfortunately, the spending bill passed Thursday allows the ban to be reinstituted because it reauthorizes the 2007 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act. This act allowed government agencies, not just the courts, to determine if someone is mentally incompetent to buy or possess a gun.

House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said during testimony late Wednesday that he was “disturbed” that the bill would undo part of Republicans’ good work. But by Thursday morning, the House leadership had decided to go ahead with the measure. (source)

And that’s not all.

The bill funnels $50 million dollars into strict anti-gun organizations, namely the STOP School Violence Act, designed by the Sandy Hook Promise, which advocates extreme gun control.

At the same time, the bill forbids the use of federal money for arming and training school staff. That’s right – our tax dollars will be put to work against us. And representatives that are supposed to be pro-gun are allowing it to happen.

Finally, the bill will authorize the CDC to research “gun violence.” But the CDC has been allowed to research this for years, despite what you see to the contrary from the MSM. In 1996, the Dickey provision prohibited the CDC from using government funds to advocate or promote gun control.” There is no such provision in the current bill.

It isn’t just Democrats who are passing this bill.

 

This bill has passed the House by a vote of 256-167.  The breakdown in the House of Representatives is 238 Republicans and 192 Democrats. If the Republicans were truly looking after our gun rights, as they like to advertise, this bill wouldn’t have passed the House.

In the wee hours, it went before the Senate, where 60 votes were needed to pass it.  The Senate has 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats, and the bill was passed by a vote of 65-32.

In short, the “pro-gun” Republicans have betrayed their constituents yet again. Way to go, Republicans.

The President will most likely sign it according to White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

“In order to get the defense spending primarily, (and) all the rest of our priorities funded, we had to give away a lot of stuff that we didn’t want to give away,” Mulvaney said. (source)

And that’s not all.

The spending in this bill is truly obscene. You’d think an American budget would be focused on American interests, right?

Senator Paul tweeted these highlights lowlights.

o $5m for Vietnam Education Foundation Grants
o $2.579m for Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe
o $15m to USAID for promoting international higher education between universities
o $2.696bn for International Disaster Assistance

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 4:47 PM - Mar 22, 2018

o $1m for the World Meteorological Organization
o $218m for Promoting Democracy Development in Europe (yep..the birthplace of democracy needs promoting)
o $25m for International Religious Freedom
o $10m for disadvantaged Egyptian Students

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 4:47 PM - Mar 22, 2018

o $12m for Scholarships for Lebanon
o $20m for Middle East Partnership Initiative Scholarship Program
o $12m in military funding for Vietnam
o $3.5m in nutrition assistance to Laos
o $15m in Developmental assistance to China
o $10m for Women LEOs in Afghanistan

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) 4:47 PM - Mar 22, 2018

Seriously.

Here are the Republican representatives who voted against this bill. If your representatives are not on this list, you’ve been betrayed by someone promising to represent you who voted for laws he or she probably didn’t even read:

• Rep. Ralph Abraham
• Rep. Rick W. Allen
• Rep. Justin Amash
• Rep. Brian Babin
• Rep. Joe Barton
• Rep. Jack Bergman
• Rep. Andy Biggs
• Rep. Rob Bishop
• Rep. Diane Black
• Rep. Marsha Blackburn
• Rep. Rod Blum
• Rep. Dave Brat
• Rep. Mo Brooks
• Rep. Ken Buck
• Rep. Ted Budd
• Rep. Mike Coffman
• Rep. James Comer
• Rep. Carlos Curbelo
• Rep. John Curtis
• Rep. Warren Davidson
• Rep. Jeff Denham
• Rep. Ron DeSantis
• Rep. Scott DesJarlais
• Rep. Jeff Duncan
• Rep. John Duncan
• Rep. Tom Emmer
• Rep. Blake Farenthold
• Rep. Matthew Gaetz
• Rep. Tom Garret
• Rep. Greg Gianforte
• Rep. Louie Gohmert
• Rep. Paul Gosar
• Rep. Garret Graves
• Rep. Morgan Griffith
• Rep. Glen Grothman
• Rep. Andy Harris
• Rep. Jody B. Hice
• Rep. Clay Higgins
• Rep. George Holding
• Rep. Trey Hollingsworth
• Rep. Mike Johnson
• Rep.  Jim Jordan
• Rep. Trent Kelly
• Rep. Mike Kelly
• Rep. Steve King
• Rep. Congressman Raúl Labrador
• Rep. Darin LaHood
• Rep. Doug LaMalfa
• Rep. Bob Latta
• Rep. Billy Long
• Rep. Barry Loudermilk
• Rep. Mia Love
• Rep. Thomas Massie
• Rep. Brian Mast
• Rep. Tom McClintock
• Rep. Mark Meadows
• Rep. Alex Mooney
• Rep. Markwayne Mullin
• Rep. Dan Newhouse
• Rep. Kristi Noem
• Rep. Ralph Norman
• Rep. Gary Palmer
• Rep. Steve Pearce
• Rep. Scott Perry
• Rep. Ted Poe
• Rep. Bill Posey
• Rep. John Ratcliffe
• Rep. Tom Reed
• Rep. Jim Renacci
• Rep. Tom Rice
• Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
• Rep. Todd Rokita
• Rep.Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
• Rep. Keith Rothfus
• Rep. David Rouzer
• Rep. Steve Russell
• Rep. Mark Sanford
• Rep. David S. Schweikert
• Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner
• Rep. Jason Smith
• Rep. Lloyd Smucker
• Rep. Chris Stewart
• Rep. Mark Walker
• Rep. Randy Weber
• Rep. Daniel Webster
• Rep. Bruce Websterman
• Rep. Roger Williams
• Rep. Ted Yoho
• Rep. Lee Zeldin

I’ll update with the Senators when I can find the list.

If you voted Republican to protect your 2A rights, you were betrayed.

 

The long and the short of this?

• Who you vote for doesn’t matter.
• Having more Republicans than Democrats in Congress doesn’t matter.
• Our system is broken, and what you think about it doesn’t matter.

As long as our government passes bills with thousands of pages instead of single item bills, the public will continue to be betrayed and deceived. Those who believe that voting Republican will ensure their continued right to protect themselves have been deceived and until we refuse to keep putting these people in office who are there to serve themselves, not their constituencies, we will continue losing our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.

How is voting for the “lesser of two evils” working out for you?

What if we opted not to put any kind of evil in office, not just the lesser one? What if we opted to put the best of our country in positions of power, not just the less horrible of our country?

When are we going to say that we’ve had enough? At the rate we’re going, probably when it’s already too late and our corrupt system has enslaved us to the point that rebellion is futile.

The mainstream media is acting like Senator Rand Paul is a lunatic who is determined to shut down the government, but in reality, Senator Paul seems to be one of the only people in Washington DC who performing his due diligence.

Write to your local Senators and call their offices. (Find the contact info here.) Demand that they vote no on this spending bill.  We have to stop passing policies that haven’t even been read by those voting on them. Lawmaking should not be a game of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Government shutdowns have happened before and they’re mostly theater. We’ve been perfectly fine without them.

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About the Author

 

Daisy Luther

 

Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full, leaving all links intact, giving credit to the author and including a link to this website and the following bio. Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, The Organic Prepper. Daisy is the publisher of The Cheapskate's Guide to the Galaxy, a monthly frugality newsletter, and she curates all the most important news links on her aggregate site, PreppersDailyNews.com. She is the best-selling author of 4 books and lives in the mountains of Virginia with her two daughters and an ever-growing menagerie. You can find Daisy on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Ramey comment:    

Do you still believe America will not be destroyed totally?  Sleep on.