"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-- Alexander Hamilton
At this point, we don’t yet know much about the gun-related bills that will be introduced. What we do know is that there will be several bills that will open the way for back-door gun control by elevating various minor offenses to felony status, which results in an automatic lifetime revocation of gun rights for anyone convicted of such an act. GOUtah! opposes such legislation, and we encourage you, if you haven’t done so already, to contact your state senator and your state representative and ask them to oppose all such bills. At the end of this alert is the same pre-written letter we’ve included in the last couple of alerts, just in case you haven’t contacted your legislators yet.
To find complete contact info for your own state senator and state representative, including e-mail addresses, home phone numbers, and mailing addresses, go to GOUtah!’s website [listing].
Letters to your State Senator and State Representative can be sent to the State Capitol via regular mail, Ffax, or e-mail. Regular mail gets the most attention and is good to use for communications that aren’t time-critical. Faxes work well for time-critical stuff, but you need to make sure that you put the name of the legislator you are contacting at the top of the page where it’s easy to see. Also, you can phone your senator and representative at home in the evening during the week (if they live within commuting distance of the Capitol) or you can phone them at home on weekends, or you can leave a phone message for them at the Capitol during regular weekday business hours. E-mails are OK, but are not generally as effective as letters, Faxes, or phone calls. But an e-mail message is certainly better than nothing, and in some cases when time is very limited it may be the best way to go. Each legislator has a laptop on his desk and gets frequent e-mail updates.
Here is the general Capitol Hill contact info for the Senate and House. Please keep this in a handy location so you can use it in the future. Note that the addresses have changed since last year, because the Legislature has moved back into the Capitol Building. For e-mail addresses and home phone numbers, please refer to the GOUtah! website .
[your senator’s name goes here]
As you’ve probably heard, several residents of Washington, D.C. have sued that city over its longstanding gun ban. Among other things, the D.C. ban includes a complete prohibition on the possession of handguns by private citizens, with the exception of handguns that were legally owned and registered prior to 1976. The ban also requires that citizens who own rifles and shotguns keep those weapons unloaded and either locked up or disassembled in their own homes.
The plaintiffs won, and the court overturned the D.C gun ban. Or, to be more precise, a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that these regulations are in violation of the 2nd Amendment, and ordered the D.C. city government to eliminate them. The city appealed the court’s decision and has been allowed to keep the ban in place while the appeal process goes forward. The appeal has made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will now decide three questions:
GOUtah! believes that the answer to each of the above questions is "YES!", but we’re not sure how many Supreme Court justices believe this.
Astonishingly, the Bush Administration submitted a "friend of the court" brief to the Supreme Court supporting the D.C. gun ban, arguing that the ban on handguns and the ban on keeping fully- assembled rifles and shotguns in one’s own home do not violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
We simply don’t know what to say about this, other than to observe that this is not the first time the Bush Administration has stabbed gun owners in the back. We need to work to ensure that the next President of the United States is someone who actually believes in the Second Amendment. For an excellent legal analysis of the Bush Administration’s bizarre position on this matter, written by Dr. John Lott, please click [here].
Date:
From:
To:
Dear :
As a gun owner and voter living in your district, I encourage you to oppose any legislation during the upcoming 2008 General Session that could have the effect of elevating a misdemeanor to felony status. Federal law permanently strips a citizen of his right to possess a firearm if he has any sort of felony record, even if his felony was non-violent, and even if nobody was harmed by his actions.
When Congress passed this law in 1968, it was aimed at murderers, rapists, robbers, and other truly dangerous criminals who constituted the bulk of convicted felons at the time. Nowadays, all sorts of minor acts can result in a felony conviction, which in turn automatically results in a permanent loss of one’s gun rights. Martha Stewart was convicted of a felony several years ago for having allegedly told a fib to a federal investigator regarding a questionable stock trade. She’s now permanently barred from even touching a firearm. While I don’t condone Ms. Stewart’s actions, I don’t see why she should be permanently prohibited from having a self-defense weapon.
By the same token, the Utah Legislature annually considers several bills that would confer felony status on relatively minor offenses. Until the federal gun laws get changed, I will view any such legislation as a form of back-door gun control, and I encourage you to oppose it. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
That concludes the GOUtah! Political and Legislative Alert #280 for 20 January 2008. We hope this information will be of assistance to you in defending your firearms rights.
Remember that getting this information is meaningless unless You Act On It Today. If you just read it and dump it in the trash, your gun rights, and the gun rights of future generations go in the trash with it. Get involved, get active and get vocal!
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