I am not a Marine, but I have been honored over my years to count several formerly active and now-retired U.S. Marines as close personal friends. Additionally, I worked with many active-duty Marines during my years serving with the CIA in the 1970s and as a Member of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
The United States Marine Corps represents the very best of what America stands for, most notably attributes of ethics, reliability, loyalty, patriotism, strength, and innovation.
These are some of the reasons why I and many others, including several former Marine officers, have grave concerns about policies now being forced onto the Corps, especially by a pair of official documents published over the past nearly three years — Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030.
The Marine Corps has served our country honorably in every major foreign conflict since before we became an independent sovereign nation. One of our country’s most beautiful memorials is the one just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., depicting the four Marines raising the American flag at Mt. Suribachi during the fierce battle for Iwo Jima in February 1945.
Despite the tremendous successes and great human cost borne by the Marine Corps in fighting to protect our national security, the service periodically has faced serious bureaucratic attacks here at home. Some of these challenges have been rooted in inter-service rivalries, with others based on myopic fiscal concerns or the well-known bureaucratic game of change-for-the-sake-of-change.
The current attacks on the Marine Corps structure and culture, however, truly are existential.
The changes recommended by these documents are considered by retired Marine Corps generals who have studied them thoroughly, not only “unnecessary and unwise” and based on “unproven, experimental capabilities that will not be fully operational until 2030 or beyond,” but which in the interim will result in the “stripping away of proven and necessary capabilities.”
Discarding existing capabilities in order to pay for projected capabilities – the so-called policy of “divest to invest” – might be a useful and appropriate tool in certain businesses and government settings. The policy certainly finds favor among “green eyeshade” pencil pushers looking only to save a dollar.
As a policy by which to maintain a strong, flexible, and innovative fighting force able to meet lethal measures by an adversary in various geographic areas, such short-sighted measures are dangerously counter-productive.
Purposefully creating tactical technological and personnel gaps in America’s ability to meet and successfully defeat military challenges to our interests abroad whenever and wherever those events arise (which is the very raison d’etre of the Marine Corps) — as the proposals in both of these 2030 plans would do – will be a disservice not only to the men and women of the Marine Corps, but to our very nation.
Many of the policies proposed in the Washington-centric “Force 2030” documents (with a number of proposals already being implemented) reflect misguided assumptions that could prove disastrous if fully implemented.
For example, while China remains a major and serious threat to continued U.S. hegemony in the world, it is far from being the only threat we face currently or over the horizon. Yet, Force Design 2030 seems clearly to rest on the premise that China is and will remain the sole serious military threat the United States will face, and the one for which the Marine Corps must be reconstructed to face.
Building a Marine Corps on such pinched perspective greatly reduces its ability to meet the myriad threats from other states and non-state actors; threats the men and women who wear its uniform have met and bested for decades.
In its predisposition to rely on technology rather than the human warriors who for centuries have served honorably as Marines, both “Force 2030” documents and their advocates are succumbing to the siren song now being heard among police reformers – move law enforcement resources from personnel into weaponry and technology. It is a proven recipe for failure, yet one clearly favored by the current Marine Corps reformers.
Finally, as if to drive a nail into the coffin, these advocates for change propose to open up the Corps for civilians to slip in “laterally” without having to endure basic training or be immersed in the culture and ethos that makes a Marine a Marine. Perhaps this will allow the Corps to bring in a future Sam Bankman-Fried if a perceived need arose for an officer knowledgeable about crypto-currency?
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
Few things strike greater fear into the hearts of many congressional Republicans — especially senators — than the specter of a “government shutdown.”
The fact – not the myth – however, is that not one of the more than a half dozen government “shutdowns” the nation has survived since the 1970s was anything close to a “shutdown.” Still, many in the GOP quake at the mere mention of one, and rush to vote “Aye” for whatever spending bill is placed before them in order to avoid being labeled by their Democrat colleagues and the corporate media as budgetary Scrooges.
While these so-called “shutdowns” do result in temporary problems for the functioning of the government and its millions of workers, the occurrences are neither government-wide nor permanent. In every case, the results are both temporary and partial, affecting only certain, “non-essential” federal workers.
Government shutdowns are the result of budget disputes between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress or between the Congress and the White House, but always accompanied by both parties’ failure to do their jobs and pass appropriations bills to fund all government agencies by the end of the fiscal year each September 30th.
This year, 18 Republican Senators blinked in their very open dispute with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over the massive $1.7 trillion spending package laid out before them just days before Christmas. Following that senatorial GOP capitulation, nine Republican House members jumped onto the spending spree bandwagon orchestrated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her soon-to-disappear majority in the lower chamber. Not surprisingly, departing Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was one of the Republican Nine.
Headlines announcing the passage of the $1.7 trillion package lauded the “bipartisan” nature of the votes, and emphasized that it would “avert [a] government shutdown.” Conveniently missing in such media coverage, of course, was any explanation that, as in the past, most federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and our military forces, would have continued to operate even if Senate leaders had failed to reach agreement prior to the December 23rd “shutdown” deadline.
Top Republican budget negotiator Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama led the 18-member strong Republican “aye” bloc, by trumpeting that the big package had “a lot of stuff in it.”
There was indeed a lot of “stuff” in the bill, in terms of both spending and substance. Included on the spending side was yet another multi-billion dollar aid package for Ukraine. On the substance side was a provision clarifying that the vice president’s role in certifying presidential election results is purely ceremonial, and another increasing the requirements for Members to contest the electoral vote certification.
Left on the Senate floor were several measures important to the GOP, such as extension of the Title 42 immigration requirement that has served at least to temporarily and partially slow the massive flood of illegal immigration unleashed by the Biden Administration. An amendment that will somewhat continue the Trump-Administration imposed Title 42 policy was adopted at the request of Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Montana Democrat Jon Tester.
Republican efforts to stop the massive $80 billion increase to the IRS hiring budget were, not surprisingly, unsuccessful. Also set to receive significant budget increases are Democrat priorities at the EPA and the National Labor Relations Board, among many others.
The massive spending bill included a significant number of “community funding projects,” a euphemism adopted recently to avoid use of the term “earmarks.” Just between the two top Senate budget negotiators – Shelby for the GOP and Vermont’s Patrick Leahy for the Democrats – nearly $1 billion in such spending flowed to their two states alone.
Still, at the end of the day, as explained by such otherwise self-proclaimed fiscal conservative Republicans as South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, the “emergency” aid to Ukraine and increased budgets for our own defense were the price to pay to avoid the dreaded “government shutdown.” Graham was in the House back in Dec. 1995 and Jan. 1996, when Speaker Newt Gingrich and a solid House majority had President Bill Clinton on the ropes in that winter’s equally mis-named “shutdown” — on the ropes, that is, until as just happened last week more than a quarter century later, the GOP folded.
Some things just do not change.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
Anti-Second Amendment Democrats are at it again, this time in Washington State, where Gov. Jay Inslee just held a press conference to urge the legislature to pass three cookie-cutter gun control measures. If the legislature grants Inslee’s wishes, law-abiding residents of the state wanting to exercise their Second Amendment rights will be severely impacted. At the same time, the edicts wend their way through the court system, to be eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Inslee knows the wheels of justice turn slow on such matters, and, like his counterpart in New York, he is more than happy to take advantage of judicial lethargy in his crusade to limit Second Amendment rights.
Inslee recites the timeworn litany of false facts on which the gun control movement is founded: (1) “assault-style” rifles are “weapons of war” and have no legitimate use by civilians, (2) firearms manufacturers and retailers enjoy immunity from being sued beyond that applicable to manufacturers or retailers of other products, and (3) because a license is needed to drive a car there is no reason not to require a license to purchase a firearm.
The “weapons of war” narrative is factual and historical nonsense. The AR-15 rifle, invariably cited by the Left as an example of such a firearm, is, in its lawful configuration, a semi-automatic rifle; capable of firing a single bullet with each pull of the trigger. It is not – unless unlawfully modified — an automatic rifle, meaning one that fires multiple rounds so long as the trigger remains depressed and there are rounds in the ammunition clip.
Calling the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle a “weapon of war” displays the ignorance of those who use the term (including President Biden). The AR-15 rifle is not issued to our military because it cannot fire automatically. The standard rifle issued to our armed forces as a “weapon of war,” so to speak, is the fully automatic M-16, not the AR-15. Issuing AR-15s to any military for use in combat would be suicidal.
Moreover, claiming, as Gov. Inslee did, that there is “no legitimate reason for [such rifles] in our society” is blind to the fact that the AR-15 rifle – the most popular in America — has a long and well-known history of being used for hunting, marksmanship, and self-defense. Whether Inslee and his cohorts know this or do not understand the difference between an AR-15 and an M-16, they are perpetuating a lie designed to limit or prevent individuals from fully exercising their rights under the Second Amendment.
Moreover, as the country’s most popular rifle, the AR-15 is in regular and common usage by citizens, making it lawful to own, according to clear Supreme Court precedents.
The red herring that firearms manufacturers and retailers enjoy a degree of legal immunity unique to them also is not true.
The federal law oft-cited by those urging adoption of laws to make firearms businesses liable for an individual’s criminal use of a firearm is the 2005 “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.” Far from giving firearms manufacturers and retailers broader immunity from being sued than is enjoyed by other businesses, however, the law simply placed firearms retailers and manufacturers on the same legal footing as those who make and sell other consumer goods, such as automobiles.
So long as the product — a gun, a car – is not manufactured negligently or sold to someone the retailer had reason to believe would use it criminally, there is no cause of action against the business or the manufacturer.
This brings us to the third leg of the gun-grabbers wobbly stool – comparing a driver’s license to a government-issued firearm license.
While the licensing argument might seem “common sense” to the uninformed, it rests on a patently false premise that a firearm is no different from an automobile in terms of government regulation.
It may come as a news flash to Inslee, but a firearm, unlike a car, is explicitly protected in the Constitution against arbitrary government prohibition such as mandatory licensing. Common sense, and the Supreme Court of the United States (as recently as in last June’s Bruen decision), hold that the power to license is the power to deny.
Neither common sense nor Supreme Court rulings deter zealots like Jay Inslee from pursuing their unconstitutional but politically expedient game of gun control.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
For more than half-a-century, Uncle Sam has been giving banks the legal tools to snoop into the otherwise-private affairs of their customers. Now, they are monitoring the exercise of their Second Amendment rights.
Thanks to a recent move by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, headquartered in Switzerland), U.S. banks are starting to build databases on their customers’ purchases of firearms and ammunition. And, of course, they are ready and quite willing to share that information with federal law enforcement in the name of providing a public service to identify “mass shooters.”
This invasion of privacy began in earnest with enactment of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which mandated that banks assist federal law enforcement in uncovering, investigating, and ultimately prosecuting violations of federal law.
Banks have long complained about the burdens of compliance with the 1970 law and several related laws signed since then due to the multi-faceted regulations they spawned. But the trove of data these procedures have allowed banks to gather and database has more than paid for the costs of compliance.
These laws’ main focus, according to the Treasury Department, which has primary responsibility to their enforcement, has been money laundering. Over the years, however, the many-headed hydra we call the system now includes virtually any banking customer activity that a bank employee might consider to be suspicious. In fact, banks’ primary tool in this regard is a document called a “Suspicious Activity Report” or “SAR.”
Then there is the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in the immediate aftermath of the 911 attacks.
The vast reach of the Patriot Act has been a shot of adrenaline to bank “secrecy” laws, creating new sets of problems for banking customers, especially those who operate lawful businesses overseas or engage in transactions with foreign persons or businesses. Banks have at times decided it is easier to simply close down accounts of customers with overseas connections, rather than run the risk of coming under suspicion from Uncle Sam.
The paperwork required of any current or prospective customer of a financial services institution looking to borrow funds for a home, car, or other legal purpose, has ballooned since the Patriot Act’s passage.
As troublesome as this absurdly massive paperwork burden has become for homebuyers and vehicle purchasers, the banking sector is now zoning in on something far more problematic: customers’ exercise of their Second Amendment rights here at home.
Banks are devising ways to “identify mass shooters before they strike.”
Just how banks have gotten into the business of identifying potential mass shooters is linked to their ability to access purchase codes whenever one of their customers uses a bank-issued credit card. Since every credit card purchase is embedded with an identifiable “merchant category code” (MCC) — now including purchases at stores that sell guns and ammunition — banks are able to gather and database such information and share any resulting “suspicious” purchases with the feds. How? Why by submitting an SAR!”
One bank in particular has been at the forefront of the move to institutionalize credit card codes for gun and ammunition purchases, and now to database that information — Amalgamated Bank, Priscilla Sims Brown leading the charge.
Amalgamated is hardly alone in this effort. It enjoys the support of gun control groups and major credit card companies, including American Express, Visa, and Mastercard.
Not surprisingly, Democrat members of Congress, led by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are eager to find ways to further expand the information the banks are able to gather from such credit card purchases.
It probably won’t be long before your friendly hometown bank will be filing even more secret Suspicious Activity Reports with the feds, or simply closing down your account if it decides you are buying too many guns or too much ammunition.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
As the Congress careens toward passing a multi-trillion dollar “omnibus” spending bill before adjourning sine die, at least two states – California and New York – are preparing their own massive spending sprees, called “Reparations.”
If such multi-hundred-billion-dollar packages are enacted in these two most populace of states, it will lead to one of the biggest runs on government treasuries in American history – far more expensive and expansive than President Biden’s paltry-by-comparison “student loan forgiveness” program.
While the concept of reparations – paying former slaves and their descendants for the horrors of slavery in centuries past – has been around since the end of the Civil War (and resurrected occasionally since then), it is only in the past several years that it has taken hold as a serious policy discussion at the federal and state levels.
Considering that slavery has been outlawed in the United States by constitutional amendment and statutory law for more than a century and a half, and with the last actual slave having died in 1940, a threshold question to be posed to those officials pressing for reparations is, on what basis should those living today with no conceivable relationship to slavery be compensated?
As with all things racial these days, the answer is, of course, “equity.
A 2020 policy paper published by the Brookings Institute, Why we need reparations for Black Americans, makes the liberal case for mandating that governments and private entities pay reparations for every “Black person who can trace their heritage to people enslaved in the U.S. states and territories” as well as for all “Black people who can show how they were excluded from various policies after emancipation.” Just try and place any meaningful limits on those two categories of persons.
Brookings expressly includes among recipients of this largesse, former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle (who have made millions since leaving the White House in January 2017), current Vice President Kamala Harris, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.
The Brookings proposal does not detail how these oh-so-necessary reparations would be funded, but with equity as its foundation even raising the question of funding likely would be deemed racist.
Undaunted by the monumental cost of reparations proposals, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has placed a preliminary price tag of $559 billion on the payment plan that has been recommended to him by the California Reparations Task Force. Newsom’s estimate is based on giving qualified recipients (every Black California resident who descended from enslaved persons) $223,200 cash. Considering how virtually every public program in the Golden State balloons in cost many times beyond original estimates, the $559 billion must be considered a mere starting point.
Legislators in New York have jumped on the reparations bandwagon in the wake of California’s big-hearted proposal, with one Assemblywoman, Taylor Darling of Long Island, scoffing that Newsom’s $223,500 payout was “too low.” While the Empire State’s Gov. Kathy Hochul has not yet fully joined the reparations chorus, with Assemblywoman Darling challenging her that failing to do so would be a “slap in the face,” it is only a matter of time before Hochul locks arms with Newsom on the issue.
Officials in other states have not gone as far as California or New York in pressing the reparations button, but considering the lure of “free money” for large voting blocs that the idea represents, they will likely start joining the parade. The NAACP has been on record for years supporting reparations, and when one of its local chapters in North Carolina recently called formally on the local government to establish a reparations commission, the city of High Point quickly fell in line and did so.
Where this clamoring for current-generation Blacks to receive cash and other pecuniary benefits such as free tuition and housing payments as recompense for wrongs committed against enslaved peoples eight or more generations ago winds up, is unclear.
However, with the divisive issue of race being pressed to the forefront of so many public concerns and policies, and with Democrat officials at all levels of government exhibiting a breathtaking disregard for fiscal responsibility, it is easy to foresee reparations becoming the next great New Deal, robbing American taxpayers (who would never dream of enslaving someone and who would be committing a crime if they did) of even more their hard-earned money.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appeared giddy last Thursday as they surrounded a phone in the Oval Office and announced that basketball player Brittney Griner was “on her way home” from Russia. Quite a different scenario would have presented itself had White House photographers been present as the family of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan learned that he would not be coming home from a Russian prison.
Viktor Bout’s family also celebrated as the convicted arms dealer arrived in Russia after being released from prison in the United States. He received a hero’s welcome from President Vladimir Putin, who negotiated his release for the motherland.
Griner is portrayed by the Biden Administration and its friends in the media and on Capitol Hill as a heroic victim, with her release illustrating the strength and resolve of the President and his Team. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There was nothing heroic about the facts surrounding Griner’s predicament, and the Biden Administration in reality was beaten like a drum in this prisoner exchange, which depicts, if anything, its abject weakness in handling matters of diplomacy and national security.
The White House, of course, claims that in securing the release of the basketball player, the United States got everything it could out of the Russian government. This very well may be the case, but it is hardly cause for celebration. It is, if anything, a tacit admission that America no longer carries the weight it used to in international politics, especially when it comes to playing hardball with our adversaries, and that Washington now is forced to settle for the other side’s demands rather than ours.
The contrasts between the two named participants in this prisoner swap would be comical were they not evidence of such a serious matter. On the one hand is Viktor Bout, a man already proven in an American court of law to have trafficked in illegal arms against our national security interests, now freed from prison with a dozen years still remaining on his 25-year sentence. On the other hand is Brittney Griner, a lesbian female basketball player who admitted in a Russian court that she broke that country’s laws by bringing cannabis into the country.
Bout, known as the “merchant of death,” is now free to resume his pre-conviction career of arming terrorists; Griner will no doubt return to the basketball court and rake in millions of dollars in book and movie deals along with product endorsements.
The Biden Administration continues to assure us that it tried its very best to secure Whelan’s release and that it never caved to Russian demands that only one American imprisoned in Russia – Griner or Whelan, but not both — would be released in return for Bout’s freedom. The appearance, if not the reality of the Griner-Bout swap, however, indicates that the Administration in fact did prioritize Griner over Whelan. This, despite Griner having been caught red-handed bringing cannabis oil in her luggage into Russia and later admitting to her crime, while Whelan has consistently denied the espionage charges against him.
This Administration’s refrain that it did absolutely everything it could to secure Whelan’s release as well as Griner’s, is followed quickly with the promise that our government “will never give up” working to secure the release of Paul Whelan.
That promise may appear rather hollow, insofar as there is no American still imprisoned in Russia who would appear to have the political cache needed to motivate this President to continue to press for the former Marine’s release.
What is worrisome, however, considering the degree to which Putin outplayed Biden in this instance, is the possibility that the Russian leader might relent and offer to release Whelan. If that happens, heaven knows what other vital national security interest of ours Biden might give up, possibly even agreeing to release Robert Hanssen, the former FBI special agent who is serving multiple life sentences at the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado after being convicted in 2001 of having been a double agent for the Soviet Union for over 20 years.
For a president as weak and seemingly clueless as our current commander-in-chief, sadly, nothing should surprise us.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
Are national science grants being used to subvert American values?
The “Convergence Accelerator” program, not to be perhaps confused with an atomic particle accelerator at a physics research lab, is part of a multi-faceted government program under the auspices of the taxpayer-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) to equip individuals to “identify [and] correct misinformation.”
The NSF was established in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense…” Not surprisingly, the projects it now funds (with an annual budget of nearly $9 billion) have crept far beyond its original high-sounding mission, to now include what has become one of Uncle Sam’s top priorities: countering “misinformation.”
“Misinformation,” defined as the “inadvertent spread of false information,” has proved an elusive target for the feds. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this year actually created an office – the Disinformation Governance Board — to zero in on the threat, but was pressured just months later to jettison the idea in the face of extensive public pushback. With that setback, other, less visible parts of the government have stepped into the breach. Enter the NSF.
A query of NSF’s website for grants awarded for “misinformation” reveals dozens of recent and ongoing taxpayer-funded projects on the topic, directed to numerous colleges and universities and ranging in amounts from a few hundred thousand dollars to the University of Georgia in April 2022, to a massive $5 million grant to the University of Wisconsin on September 15th of this year.
This $5 million grant is particularly problematic, if by “problematic” one considers a federal government agency using taxpayer dollars to equip “journalists” and others with tools to identify and neutralize what the administration considers “misinformation.” The “Abstract” for this “Convergence Accelerator Track F” is surprisingly transparent in its design and goal:
“This project . . . will help end users such as journalists to (1) identify trending misinformation networks on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, [and] (2) strategically correct misinformation within the flow of where it is most prevalent online . . .”
Furthermore, the project will “partner” with domestic and “international news and fact-checking organizations” (such as the World Health Organization, which is itself engaged in a major project “immunizing the public against misinformation”). It will engage in “ongoing collaboration with journalists” and others in developing digital dashboards to be employed by “end users” such as “election administration officials and commercial outlets” (my emphasis).
This sinister NSF project, and others under its “misinformation” umbrella, fits within the overarching effort by the Biden Administration to undercut and neutralize conservative information sites including The Daily Wire, Epoch Times, and The Federalist, all of which (and others) already are considered “unreliable” purveyors of misinformation; as opposed to what Washington considers “reliable” outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
This nefarious effort against what the Administration considers inherently dangerous “misinformation,” also fits nicely into what President Biden identified in a presidential “Fact Sheet” on June 15, 2021 as a new “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” In that document, “misinformation” is conflated with “domestic terrorism” and therefore justifiably targeted by the feds (using taxpayer money, of course).
Attacking the DHS-created Disinformation Governance Board earlier this year was made easier by virtue of the publicity with which the Department announced its launch and the ill-qualified individual chosen to lead it.
Hiding this maleficent effort behind the veil of “science” and using the cover of the NSF to carry its water, makes it far more difficult for critics to attack what they correctly see as a very real plan to subvert the independence and objectivity of journalism and the American electoral system.
This makes it even more critical that the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives use its oversight and appropriations power to highlight and put a stop to this dangerous and underhanded strategy when the 118th Congress convenes on January 3, 2023.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
Big city mayors from across the country are again calling on Uncle Sam to address a problem they are unwilling to tackle – in this case, violent crime in cities under their control. This week, some six dozen mayors belonging to the United States Conference of Mayors sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Schumer and Senate Minority Leader McConnell, demanding that the “lame duck” session of the Senate pass two pieces of extreme gun control legislation that were adopted by the House in early 2021.
The mayors, of course, do not refer to the bills – H.R. 1808 and H.R. 8 – as “gun control” legislation; that would be too honest. For them, the measures, which would dramatically restrict the type of firearms that can be lawfully owned and sold, are “gun safety” measures. In these mayors’ pinched view of the Second Amendment, such limitations do “not in any way infringe on Second Amendment rights”; in much the same way that to others, restricting what books one might read would “not in any way infringe on First Amendment rights.”
Such hypocrisy aside, the two “gun safety” bills which passed the House almost completely along party lines, have nothing whatsoever to do with the “safety” of firearms, and everything to do with outlawing certain firearms and firearms accessories. The legislation also mandates that virtually every transfer of a firearm, including between private individuals, be run through the FBI database known as the National Instant Check System or “NICS.”
Both H.R. 8 and H.R. 1808 are purposefully convoluted, drafted in such way so as to confuse all but the most expert firearms lawyers and Federal Firearms Licensees. In essence, H.R. 8 purports to plug the so-called “gun show loophole” over which Democrats have obsessed for decades, while H.R. 1808 resurrects the 1994 “Clinton gun ban” (which sun-setted a decade later without resulting in any measurable benefit for preventing gun violence).
Among the mayors who signed the missive to Sens. Schumer and McConnell are the usual suspects – big city Democrat mayors who preside over serious violent crime sprees in their jurisdictions. Included among the signees are the chief executives of such crime-ridden cities as Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Portland (Oregon) — all are big cities with extremely high incidents of gun deaths.
It is, of course, far easier to clamor for federal gun control (whatever you call it) and demand congressional action, than it is to take measures such as tougher policing and prosecutions that are among the responsibilities of big-city mayors. Hence the calls for the Senate to act.
Calling on Congress to pass gun control legislation is becoming a tired refrain from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. This week’s letter to Schumer and McConnell, for example, mirrors ones sent back in 2019. The difference this time around, of course, is the fact that both houses of Congress are in lame duck session. It is during such times that legislation which otherwise would stand little chance of passage can be pushed through.
Still, with this lame duck session facing an already crowded calendar of “must pass” spending measures and highly controversial measures such as a national pro-abortion bill, mustering the votes necessary to overcome the 60-vote filibuster majority for another extremely controversial measure as gun control, will likely be more than the Senate leadership is willing to take on.
Complicating the scenario, however, is the fact that when the 118th Congress convenes in early January, it will be with a Republican House majority that will almost certainly not pass gun control measures such as were adopted by the House in 2021 and which now await Senate action. This increases the pressure on Schumer to twist as many arms as possible, including moderate GOP members, and make deals he might not otherwise entertain, in an effort to ram through some form of gun control that could then be sent back to the House before it, too, adjourns sine die later this month.
The bottom line in this politically charged environment is that while major, high profile gun control legislation is unlikely to pass the Senate during this lame duck session, Second Amendment supporters had best watch out for “smaller” anti-gun measures to sneak through before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.