by Bob Barr | Jul 26, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller You hear it all the time, from Democrats as well as Republicans: “The most important responsibility of our government is to keep us safe.” It is so axiomatic that no one ever really questions it, regardless of whether it is posited in a discussion about COVID restrictions, national security policy or law enforcement. But it is not an accurate statement. The primary responsibility of the federal government is not to keep us safe; it is to protect and guarantee our liberty and our individual rights as guaranteed by (not given by) our Constitution. This principle is clearly described in the Federalist Papers, and is every bit as relevant today as when those essays were drafted 233 years ago, regardless of the context in which it is applied. In the context of the Second Amendment, for example, debating the pros and cons of gun control, if we start with the premise that the “primary responsibility of the government is to keep us safe,” then we have ceded to the Left the basic “playing field” on which the extent to which the right to keep and bear arms is to be decided. Flowing directly from this premise is the next building block of the gun control movement — that only those gun “rights” that can be shown by their advocates to be “needed” for self-defense are to be permitted. If the government and its advocates then show that a particular firearm or firearm accessory is not “needed,” it properly can be outlawed without violating the “right to keep and bear arms” guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Furthermore, if it is conceded that...
by Bob Barr | Jul 19, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller To assist in its drive to demean American culture and history, the Biden administration has turned to the United Nations. Last week Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony “Tony” Blinken, actually invited the U. N. to come to America to study how racist and violative of human rights the United States is. This study will be conducted under the leadership of former socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who now serves as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She will be aided in this effort by the U. N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a 117-member subsidiary of the United Nations with a history of anti-U.S. bias such that former President Trump in 2018 rescinded our country’s membership in the organization. Biden reversed that decision on Feb. 8, shortly after deciding to rejoin both the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization. Among the nations that will now sit in judgment on our country’s human rights record are such human rights luminaries as China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela. Biden always has held the U. N. in high esteem, with its massive bureaucracy headquartered on the banks of the East River in Manhattan that sits on real estate donated by the Rockefeller family seven decades ago. Despite many of the United Nations’ previous so-called “peace keeping” missions having themselves been plagued by serious human rights violations, Biden and Blinken obviously consider the international body an appropriate judge of U.S. culture and history. Now, five months after we formally rejoined the UNHRC, one of its top officials, known as “rapporteurs,” will be among those studying and passing judgment on the...
by Bob Barr | Jul 14, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Townhall In a 1983 speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire;” perfectly capturing the moral and political danger presented by that communist regime. Reagan properly cautioned Americans not to “ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses” of an enemy that was “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Unfortunately, what was clear to Reagan about the Soviet Union in 1983 appears only as a blur to Joe Biden about China today. If the Soviet Union were the evil empire, then China is surely the evilest empire. The Soviet Union’s global ambitions for its evil empire were hampered by its own incompetence. China, however, actively spreads its insidious tentacles across the world with a shocking mastery, facilitated by the apparent unwillingness of global leaders, including Biden, to take the threat seriously. Today’s China presents for the United States and other western powers a far more complex and multi-faceted danger than that posed by the Soviet Union in the second half of the last century. While China’s military build-up, and its well-documented willingness to use that power (especially as it relates to Taiwan) is a real concern, it is but one dimension of the broader threat, and in some ways not the most serious. Take, for instance, China’s push for greater influence in American academic institutions by way of funding educational programs and centers, under the guise of benignly teaching Chinese language and culture. As a white paper published at the Heritage Institute earlier this year suggests, this funding is a Trojan horse for Beijing to expand its influence in...
by Bob Barr | Jul 12, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In a breathtaking assault on the Constitution of the United States, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed a new law and an executive order targeting his self-declared “Gun Violence Disaster Emergency.” While the governor’s disdain for the Second Amendment is well-known, the degree to which his July 6 executive order targets the amendment is unprecedented. His actions undercut not only the right to keep and bear arms codified in the Second Amendment, but also broader rights guaranteed against government intrusion by the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the fundamental right to contract protected in the main body of the Constitution. Even before Cuomo’s brazen executive action last week, New York maintained among the broadest and strictest gun control measures of any state, according to which, among other restrictions, it is almost impossible for a citizen to obtain a required permit to purchase a handgun or secure permission for a concealed carry permit. Despite the existing array of gun control mandates, Cuomo decided the Empire State now suffers from a “gun violence” emergency necessitating even more extreme measures. The executive order issued last week based on this bogus conclusion, is modeled after COVID pandemic executive mandates Cuomo issued last year, which were used by officials to strip New Yorkers of the most basic of civil liberties. The “gun violence” on which Cuomo premised his dictatorial actions has nothing to do with lawful ownership of firearms by citizens of the state. The increased violent crime under which New Yorkers are now suffering is a product of disastrous measures undertaken by the governor, the state’s attorney general,...
by Bob Barr | Jul 5, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Most taxpayers would agree, even if at times grudgingly, that the top priority for expenditure of federal dollars is our national defense, including the technology and hardware with which to win wars, that is, weapon systems. These priorities are funded according to an acquisition system as complex as it is costly, perhaps best illustrated by the $1.7 trillion F-35 “Lightning” fighter jet program that has been plagued by numerous delays and cost increases over the course of its two decade long development history. Broadly considered, the process by which weapons systems are funded – including everything from four-wheel drive vehicles to massive aircraft carries capable of launching dozens of long-range fighter jets — is known as “weapon system acquisition.” It is a labyrinthine process that has more in common with a Rube Goldberg cartoon contraption than a well-oiled machine. The process is fully understood only by a tightly knit fraternity of current and former top-level Department of Defense officials, key Members of Congress and their staff, and the handful of major corporate defense contractors, the largest by far of which is Lockheed Martin. As stated by the U.S. Department of Defense in a recent “Program Acquisition Cost by Weapon System,” the goal of this crucial component of our national defense is simple: to ensure that the weapon systems available to and utilized by our men and women in uniform “are unmatched throughout the world, ensuring that U.S. military forces have the advantage over any adversary.” Few objective observers would dispute the proposition that our fighting forces and global capabilities remain the best in the world. There is,...
by Bob Barr | Jun 28, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. President Joe Biden does not even offer the American people the benefit of music while cities across our country are aflame in murders. Instead, the president has decided to target for punishment the one group of businesses in the front line of ensuring that firearms do not fall into the hands of criminals: Federal Firearms Licensees or “FFLs,” which includes businesses engaged in the retail sales of firearms and ammunition. These businesses are heavily regulated by government at all levels, most especially the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The regulatory regimen each of these tens of thousands of businesses must follow in order not to lose their federally issued license to sell firearms includes maintaining detailed records for every firearm that comes into or leaves their possession. The businesses are subject to periodic, often unannounced visits by ATF personnel who can demand access to their records and inventory. Every firearm sold by an FFL must be accompanied by a federal form meticulously filled out by the prospective purchaser, double-checked by the salesperson and then submitted electronically or by phone to the FBI for a background check before the purchaser may take possession of the gun. Additionally, it is a federal felony offense for an FFL to permit a so-called “straw purchase,” that is, allowing the purchaser of record to buy the gun for someone else not lawfully qualified to possess it. These myriad requirements apply whether the firearm is a .22 caliber derringer, a 12-ga. pump shotgun or an AR-15 rifle, which is by far...
