* Crossposted from: FREEDOM'S_VOICE
    FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JULY 14, 1996
    THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
    Disarming young men of color
    Having just completed his Fourth of July celebration of the birth of
our American liberties, midwifed by such illegal militia conspirators as
George Mason and George Washington (who in his second address to Congress
called firearms "the eye teeth of liberty" and said "we must keep them near
us always,") President Clinton on July 8 announced a 17-city program to
trace weapons by computer, pledging to go after the apocryphal "single
shadowy supplier" in each neighborhood who illegally puts guns in
teen-agers' hands.
  Under Clinton's plan, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would
operate a federal computer system "so that local police and prosecutors can
find the dealers who illegally sold them to children."
  It's already illegal to sell handguns to juveniles, "a factor that makes
the president's program easier to implement because it does not require the
passage of new legislation that could lead to a debate on gun control," The
Associated Press reported July 8.
  Pardon me, but the other thing that "makes the president's program easier
to implement" is the fact that the ATF is already well on the way to
completing - in direct defiance of the express orders of Congress - a
central, computerized record of every firearm sold in America.
  "There's something very peculiar about this whole situation," warns Aaron
Zelman, president of the Milwaukee-based civil rights group Jews for the
Preservation of Firearms Ownership. "Several years ago, if ATF wanted to
trace a gun, they went to the manufacturer, who told then which dealer that
gun was sold to, and so forth. But Clinton is talking about a computer
system."
  "The way this came about is that they (the ATF) did something illegal,"
Mr. Zelman says. "It is the law that when a gun dealer goes out of business
they have to turn in their records of firearm sales, what are called their
'yellow sheets.' The government has been computerizing all this. It's
against the law for them to do this, but they've been doing it."
  The 1986 federal Firearms Owners' Protection Act prohibits "any system of
registration of firarms, firearm owners, or firearms transactions or
dispositions." This congressional intent was reinforced in the ATF's 1996
appropriations bill, which specifies: "No funds appropriated herein shall
be available for salaries or administrative expenses in connection with
consolidating or centralizing, within the Department of the Treasury, the
records, or any portion thereof, of acquisition and disposition maintained
by federal firearms licensees."
  "So, in typical Clintonesque style, they've done something illegal and
now they're really proud about it, now they're touting it."
    But the most important point, says Mr. Zelman, "is that registration of
firearms has historically proven to be the precursor to confiscation, and
that has proven to be the precursor to great evil. It leads to a police
state, and in some of those police states, government criminals become mass
murderers.
  "In 1928 the Weimar Republic, because it had problems with street crime,
registered guns and gun owners. When that government fell five years later
and the Nazis came to power, they simply took over the existing
registration lists, and went door-to-door, and the rest is history."
  (Mr. Zelman, with Jay Simkin, is co-author of the book "Gun Control:
Gateway to Tyranny," available for $22 postpaid from Jews for the
Preservation of Firearms Ownership, 2872 S. Wentworth Ave., Milwaukee
53207.)
  Dan Schultz, founder of the Lawyers' Second Amendment Society in Los
Angeles, agrees.
  "I believe this is designed by the Clinton administration to not work, to
then allow them to say: 'If only we had a more expansive system, if only we
could spend more money. ...' It's a means to get to full registration and
full confiscation. ...
  "It's also worth noting that this is supposed to be administered by the
ATF," says Mr. Schultz. "But the ATF is a taxing body. It's supposed to be
focusing only on those things covered by the 1934 Firearms Act: making sure
the taxes are paid on machine guns. There's no Article 1 Section 8
authority for this on the federal level."
  When people die in car crashes, we crack down on drunk drivers; we don't
ban cars.
  "Children with guns" sounds frightening, but as little as 40 years ago
lads of 16 were a common enough site along America's country roads with
varmint rifles slung over their shoulders, and none of us feared for our
lives.
  Young thugs shooting off firearms in the city already violate many of the
nation's 20,000 gun control laws. Why not just enforce some of those?
  After I watch my neighborhood gun store owner laboriously write down my
name and address next to the serial number of the $1,600 1917 Mauser
handgun I wish I could afford, Mr. Clinton worries I may immediately dash
downtown and sell this piece of history to a stranger with a handkerchief
on his head for $200, knowing full well he's about to use it to stick up a
7-Eleven.
  Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?
  Virtually all guns used in crimes are stolen. "Tracing" them is useless.
The major exception are police murders. Has Mr. Clinton's ATF traced the
Remington .308 used by FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi to murder Vicki Weaver, in
order to find out who "put it in his hands," leading to the prosecution of
that "single shadowy supplier"?
  Increased crime is a poison fruit of the systematic destruction of hope,
initiative and self-responsibility which are the stock in trade of the
Republicrat welfare-police state. Mr. Clinton and his statists, having
(start ital)caused(end ital) the current plight of our inner cities, can
hardly expect to solve it by sacrificing the 14th Amendment on top of the
Second, as they seek to selectively disarm young men of color.
  (The Lawyers' Second Amendment Society web page is at www.mcs.net/~pyle. 
prn.)
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@intermind.net.
***
Vin Suprynowicz          vin@intermind.net
"Next year in Galt's Gulch!"
--- FMail 1.02
---------------