With the assistance of 14 Republicans in the House and 15 Republicans in the Senate, the present occupant of the White House signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law on Friday.
The Senate passed the bill, S. 2938, by a vote of 65-33 on Thursday, with 15 Republicans voting aye to break the 60-vote filibuster threshold that otherwise would have kept the bill from moving forward. Later that day the House rubber-stamped the bill, 234-193, supported by 14 Republicans, before sending it to the Oval Office.
Biden read this from his teleprompter:
From Columbine to Sandy Hook, to Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, Atlanta, Buffalo, Uvalde, and for the shootings that happen every day in the streets … how many times have we heard that, “just do something, for God’s sake just do something”?
Today, we did.
What he did was something that wouldn’t have happened if those Republicans had kept their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution. Instead, they looked the other way and voted aye.
The fourteen House Republicans who voted for the bill include: Steve Chabot (Ohio), Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Tony Gonzales (Texas), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), Christopher Jacobs (N.Y.), David Joyce (Ohio), John Katko (N.Y.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Peter Meijer (Mich.), Tom Rice (S.C.), Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Michael Turner (Ohio), and Fred Upton (Mich.).
Of those 14, five are retiring at the end of their terms, and Congressman Rice just lost his primary.
The fifteen Senate Republicans who voted for the bill included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), along with Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Texas), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Pat Toomey (Pa.), and Todd Young (Ind.).
Four of them are leaving office this year (Portman, Blunt, Burr, and Toomey), while all but two (Murkowski and Young) aren’t up for reelection until 2026 (except Romney, whose election is in 2024).
The law now allows the U.S. Treasury, with the assistance of the Federal Reserve, to create billions in new digital currency in order to fund it. The law contains many onerous and unconstitutional programs, including funding for state mental-health services and school security.
It targets the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which allows those convicted of domestic abuse to have guns unless they have been married to, lived with, or had a child with the victim.
But the most egregious is the camel’s nose into the tent: $750 million to bribe states without red flag laws to pass them.
The attempt to appease so-called Republican gun rights supporters to go along with the travesty included this hat tip to the Constitution in the bill:
[State red flag laws must include] pre-deprivation and post deprivation due process rights that prevent any violation or infringement of the Constitution of the United States, including but not limited to the Bill of Rights, and the substantive or procedural due process rights guaranteed under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as applied to the States, and as interpreted by State courts and United States courts (including the Supreme Court of the United States).
Such programs must include, at the appropriate phase to prevent any violation of constitutional rights, at minimum, notice, the right to an in-person hearing, an unbiased adjudicator, the right to know opposing evidence, the right to present evidence, and the right to confront adverse witnesses.
First, there is no assurance that states accepting the bribe and creating red flag laws will include such niceties as respecting the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Second, as a practical matter, judges presented with a demand that they issue immediately an “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO) or else a potential killer might run loose will issue one first and worry about following the law afterwards.
Thirdly, nothing in the law requires states already able to flag their citizens with ERPOs to reinstate the Fourth Amendment’s demand that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” in place of the much lower “reasonable suspicion” presently enacted.
Fourth, there is no assurance that red flag laws will have any impact on gun violence. New York has a red flag law in place and it failed to prevent the Buffalo shooter from wreaking havoc. Texas doesn’t have such a law in place, but it has similar laws available to law enforcement that failed to prevent the massacre in Uvalde.
As this writer declared last week:
The “bipartisan” act is an indirect but effective attack on the Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with stemming gun violence. It has everything to do with confiscating, under the color of law, every firearm from every gun owner in the country, thus paving the way for the imposition of a communist dictatorship on the once-free United States of America.
Related article:
Ten Senate RINOs Poised to Sell Out Fourth, Fifth Amendments to Get to the Second
