by Bob Barr | Aug 26, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham is busy. He is openly touting the need for bipartisan legislation encouraging states to enact “red flag” gun confiscation laws, which place in the hands of local and state-level judges the near-absolute power to order confiscation of a person’s firearms. At the very same time, he talks openly of the well-known abuses by the federal Department of Justice and the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that set in motion unlawful surveillance of persons connected with the 2016 Trump campaign. Graham’s “love-hate” perception of judges — in which they are alternatively to be trusted or mistrusted with the power to take away individual liberties otherwise protected by the Bill of Rights — is a view apparently widely held within the Congress and in the real world. Many self-avowed Senate conservatives – Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz among them – now appear willing, if not anxious to vest lower-level judges with powers to secretly undermine individuals’ Second Amendment rights; just as the FISC judges appear to have done to the Fourth Amendment rights of Carter Paige, George Papadopoulos, and others in 2016. Such extreme faith in state judges is misplaced; not because judges are inherently bad or dishonest, but because they are human, just as are presidents and members of Congress. When a judge is asked to place limits on an individual with the goal of preventing future acts of violence or harm committed by that individual, it is only natural for the judge to err on the side of caution. After all, what judge wants to be later blamed for not having taken...
by Bob Barr | Aug 21, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The historically racist origins of gun control are hardly a topic for debate. As noted by Cato Institute’s David Kopel, the matter of arming blacks in America was the subject of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision; with one Supreme Court justice warning about the rights of free blacks “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Kopel also notes that as a part of the Black Codes passed in the South during the early post-Civil War Reconstruction, free blacks were required to secure permission from police in order to carry firearms. From Harriet Tubman, who carried a pistol with her during the heroic rescues of slaves, to abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who quipped “a man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box” — there is perhaps no other group in American history whose members understand intimately the “right to self-preservation” embodied in the Second Amendment than black Americans. It is therefore more than a little curious as to why Democrats continue to push gun control measures that are inherently, historically, and intentionally designed to disenfranchise minority groups from their Second Amendment rights. In spite of a downward trend of gun violence in America, even as gun ownership soars, Democrats contend there is both an “epidemic” of gun violence sweeping the country, and that access to firearms is the culprit. This mindset guides virtually every part of the Democrats’ gun control agenda; with no apparent regard to who actually is or will be impacted the most by their plans. Carried to its natural end, the philosophy of gun control virtually ensures the only people left with...
by Bob Barr | Aug 19, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Senate Democrats are still seething over the Republican majority’s refusal in 2016 to schedule a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Democratic senators now are brazenly threatening to “restructure” the Supreme Court, in an eerie replication of FDR’s effort to “pack” the High Court following his 1936 reelection. Democratic senators filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief this month in support of New York City’s draconian gun control policies, and used it to undermine the legitimacy of the court. “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal,” the group wrote. The five Democratic senators who signed onto the Supreme Court brief, led by Rhode Island’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, proposed changing the very structure of the Supreme Court in order to better insulate it from “political” pressures that do not fit their policy preferences. While this approach is subtler than the party’s vicious attacks on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it is far more sinister. While the Constitution mandates that there be “one Supreme Court,” with each justice holding what is in effect lifetime tenure, the number of justices on the court has by law been set at nine since 1869. This long-standing structure was challenged in FDR’s notorious 1937 scheme. Roosevelt’s true goal — despite language cleverly camouflaging it as an effort to streamline the court’s docket — was to dilute the power of some then-sitting justices...
by Bob Barr | Aug 14, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Last week I wrote about the speech America needs to hear from President Donald Trump, specifically, a forceful and unequivocal denunciation of extremism, including calling out those who camouflage their noxious racism behind the façade of support for the President or the GOP. It is high time the Democratic Party does the same, for its leaders to clearly, publicly, and expressly disavow extremism on the Left. For too long, Democratic political leaders – including the many currently vying for their party’s 2020 nomination – have been allowed to address the violence infecting contemporary American society by not addressing it, and piously pointing the finger of blame at Trump. While Trump’s signature direct and thinly varnished rhetoric makes it easy for his critics to pin blame on him for misdeeds of others, such a simplistic and deliberately biased assessment misses the point entirely. Deeply divisive and dangerous forces have been eating away at the foundations of civil discourse in our country long before January 20, 2017. It is disingenuous in the extreme for Democrats to absolve themselves of any liability for this downward trajectory of civility. As with alcoholics seeking to recover, a willingness to admit the problem exists is the essential first step to recovery; in its absence the underlying problem – whether alcoholism or violence – simply worsens. This is the stage at which the Democrats find themselves now, as the party decides whether or not to recognize that it, too, is blameworthy for the violent wreckage that has become political discourse in America. The New York Post described Connor Betts, the Dayton shooter, as perhaps “Antifa’s first mass killer.” Before...
by Bob Barr | Aug 12, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Some Republicans in Congress are seeking to pass a “red flag law,” which would grant law enforcement to do what legal precedent has rarely permitted — forcefully enter homes and confiscate lawful firearms without any evidence of a crime. The effort is being led by members such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). Beyond the bite such a law would take out of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, it would permit the government to override both the Second Amendment — which guarantees the right to possess a firearm — and the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to provide “due process” based on “equal protection” before it may take a person’s property or otherwise abridge their fundamental rights. The trigger for such confiscatory power is not that the person committed a crime with a firearm; but rather that someone fears he or she might do so. This is, of course, a legitimate concern, but one that must not cavalierly be cast into law. Any reasoned view of responsible government recognizes that there will be times law enforcement should act to prevent a crime from occurring, especially one likely to cause harm or death. The question is how and under what circumstances the government may so intervene. If we are to remain a nation “of laws not of men,” preventive government action always must be consistent with and not undermine existing constitutional provisions; including the Second, Fourth, 14th Amendments, and others. Many of the 17 state-level red flag laws have been adopted since the February 2018 Parkland, Florida mass shooting; all are constitutionally defective to one degree or another. Many...
by Bob Barr | Aug 5, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller In interviews following the horrendous mass murders by lone gunmen in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio over the weekend, Texas’ governor and lieutenant governor, President Trump, and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy commented that factors involving mental illness, along with cultural factors such as the popularity and pervasiveness of violent video games, and information available to internet-savvy young adults on the “dark web,” needed to be considered in analyzing and developing strategies to prevent future mass shootings. Democrats were — as usual — quick to dismiss any suggestion that video gaming or other cultural factors (except for “racism” perpetrated by President Trump) might be among the factors causing what has become an all-too-familiar pattern of young males using firearms to commit mass murder. This knee-jerk reaction against consideration of such factors limits the likelihood that government at any level will be able to develop a comprehensive strategy seriously to address the problem of mass shootings; foredooming law enforcement simply to doing their best to respond to such incidents. None of the Republican leaders declared that violent video games were the sole, or even necessarily the major factor prompting last weekend’s or other recent mass murderers to act as they did. They simply urged the inclusion of such matters in any serious, long-term strategy to stave off future such horrendous incidents. Predictably, of course, the $140 billion global video gaming industry consistently pushes back against any hint of a link between mass shootings in real life and the gun carnage depicted in the industry’s phenomenally popular games such as “Call of Duty.” The industry’s opposition is...
