by Bob Barr | Dec 22, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall 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”...
by Bob Barr | Dec 20, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller 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,...
by Bob Barr | Dec 15, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall 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...
by Bob Barr | Dec 13, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller 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...
by Bob Barr | Dec 8, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall 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...
