They really are coming for your guns. They really do think you are stupid. And if they get their way, all they will have to do to disarm you is have a bureaucrat put your name on a secret government list. Even while importing huge numbers of Islamic immigrants from countries illegally bombed and destroyed by the Obama administration and its allies, Obama’s secretary of homeland security now claims Americans must submit to much more gun control — this time, for “national security” reasons. One of the key demands being pushed is that Americans be deprived of their constitutionally protected gun rights based on a bureaucrat’s secret “suspicion,” without even a semblance of due process of law. Supporters of actual national security and the Constitution, though, are speaking out against the Obama administration’s dangerous attacks on fundamental liberties.
In an soft-ball interview with CBS, a leading media apologist for the Obama administration and its attacks on liberty, Homeland Security boss Jeh Johnson (shown) leveled a full-blown attack at the U.S. Constitution and the God-given rights enshrined in it. “We have to face the fact that meaningful, responsible gun control has to be part of homeland security as well, given the prospect of homegrown, home-born violent extremism in this country,” Johnson claimed on the “CBS This Morning” program after the terror attack in Orlando, presumably with his armed taxpayer-funded security nearby. “We need to do something to minimize the opportunity for terrorists to get a gun in this country, and this is now something that is critical to homeland security as well as public safety.” That something includes open attacks on fundamental rights.
However, it was unclear why a person willing to violate terrorism and murder laws would be expected by the administration to obey gun-control regulations. Also not made clear was why or how gun control would stop terrorists from acquiring guns any better than it has in the past, here or in other nations. As illustrated horrifically late last year, in fact, gun control does not prevent terrorists from getting guns; it just leaves victims disarmed. The deadly Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris, France, for example, which resulted in more than 500 casualties, were conducted with banned AK-47s. Defenseless citizens, meanwhile, disarmed by some of the most draconian gun control in the world and unable to defend themselves from the gun-wielding attackers, were left to cower and beg for mercy.
The precise scope of the gun control sought by Johnson and the administration was not made clear in the interview. However, among other demands, the “Homeland Security” boss called for Americans to be stripped of their constitutionally protected rights without even a semblance of due process of law. The traditional method of revoking somebody’s rights in America has always been criminal charges, followed by either a guilty plea or a jury trial and conviction in a court of law. Johnson, however, suggested it was time for that to change. Under his vision, if a government bureaucrat claims to be suspicious of somebody and puts them on a secret “watch list,” that person would be automatically stripped of their constitutionally protected rights. Ironically, some U.S. lawmakers, including the late anti-gun extremist Senator Ted Kennedy who was stopped from boarding a plane, have faced problems due to the infamous secret “watch” lists.
Certain lawmakers were also pushing for such a scheme. U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy, a far-left Democrat from Connecticut, spent 15 hours blabbering about the need for more infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, due process rights, and more. Apparently it was an effort, potentially stage-managed for public consumption with liberal Republicans, to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to defy his previous pledges and the wishes of his constituents to allow a vote on more gun control. In particular, they seek to forcibly disarm people that bureaucrats secretly identify as suspicious in some way, in a closed process that nobody understands. “Amazing that U.S. senators would filibuster in favor of using secret lists, like some authoritarian regime, to deny rights without due process,” commented Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich,), a leading defender of the Constitution and liberty in Congress.
In a message posted on Twitter about the issue, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump did not state a position about denying gun rights to people on secret government lists compiled by out-of-control bureaucracies. “I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns,” Trump said, sparking outrage both among followers who suspected the candidate was considering the scheme, and opponents who viewed the candidate as pro-Second Amendment. Clinton, by contrast, has become a full-blown supporter of denying rights without due process, despite criticism even from some of her allies on the left. Establishment talking heads such as pseudo-conservative Bill O’Reilly joined Clinton on the bandwagon.
Of course, the idea being pushed by exploiting the attack in Orlando is totalitarian to the core. It is also flatly unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment, for instance, declares that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Due process, obviously, includes the rights to a jury trial, to confront one’s accuser, to present evidence, and more. However, in the age of Obama, due process has been trampled like never before. In fact, today, the Obama administration makes the outlandish claim that it can even execute people around the world without so much as charging them with a crime — something that once would have been immediately identified and prosecuted as murder. Americans can be sure that, once gun rights can be denied based on secret lists, other rights will inevitably follow, as even far-left anti-gun commentators have pointed out.
While the public is being led to believe the “suspicious” people whose rights will be removed without due process are Islamic extremists, there is much more to the story. Consider the fact that the administration has already made abundantly clear, on numerous occasions, that it considers everyday Americans with mainstream political views — views shared by hundreds of millions of people — to be potential terrorists. Among those who have appeared in official government documents listed as extremists and possible terrorists are pro-life activists, returning veterans, opponents of illegal immigration, liberty lovers, Ron Paul supporters, gun-rights supporters, animal-rights activists, hardcore environmentalists, evangelical Christians, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and more.
And alleged “right-wing extremists,” with the terms largely undefined, are in the cross-hairs like never before, with top Obama officials arguing that they are apparently just as dangerous as ISIS. Earlier this year, speaking at a Homeland Security Advisory Council meeting, member and Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo “reminded the Council that the threat from right-wing extremists domestically is just as real as the threat from Islamic extremism,” according to the official meeting minutes, with another member adding that “online sites in right wing extremist communities” were important. “Secretary Johnson agreed and noted that CVE [the Subcommittee on Combating Violent Extremism], by definition, is not focused solely on one religion.” Indeed, the Obama administration appointed a prominent Muslim Brotherhood operative as a Homeland Security adviser. The administration also launched a domestic terror unit that will target Christians and conservatives.
And there is more to come. Homeland Security boss Johnson claimed in the CBS interview that Obama was “frustrated” by the resistance to his gun-control agenda, but was “determined” to keep pushing. “I thought frankly after Sandy Hook where you have schoolchildren murdered in a classroom that maybe finally this will be the tipping point and we were not able to move the needle in Congress, unfortunately,” Johnson said, sounding disappointed that the effort to exploit dead children for politcal gain had failed. Ironically, though, Obama’s divisive rhetoric threatening the Second Amendment has, as usual, sparked a surge in gun sales, with AR-15s and other weapons flying off the shelves. The trend is so serious that more than a few analysts have referred to Obama as the “world’s greatest gun salesman.” The dictator-dominated United Nations also called for “robust gun control” after the attack.
Ironically, perhaps, in light of Johnson’s comments, the Islamist accused of massacring people at a homosexual nightclub in Orlando was actually employed by a Homeland Security contractor. Known as G4S, the gigantic “security” company is deeply involved in the Obama department’s “illegal alien catch and release” program, in which illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico are caught at the southern border, then reportedly driven north and dropped off in the U.S. interior without so much as paperwork. The threat to national security posed by the DHS program, and others like it, including the release of tens or even hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens with criminal records, is hard to overstate. But as usual, the establishment media and the political class hope to exploit the dangers they have unleashed and the tragedies they enabled to attack your fundamental rights.
Traditionally, as stated clearly in the Second Amendment, a well-armed populace and militia were considered essential to the security of a free state. Under Obama, however, the tables have been flipped. Now, disarming Americans is proclaimed to be essential for national security, supposedly due to the unprecedented influx of Islamic immigrants brought in in recent years who might become radicalized. In truth, however, widespread gun ownership has been shown to reduce violent crime, stop mass shootings, prevent or minimize terror attacks, and more. It also makes the prospect of foreign invasion sound ludicrous — with many tens of millions of Americans armed with hundreds of millions of guns, no military or combination of militaries in the world could hope to subjugate the American people using ground forces. Plus, a mass shooting attack such as the one that occurred in Paris, leaving hundreds of casualties, would be inconceivable in America outside of gun-free zones such as the Orlando nightclub that was attacked.
The Second Amendment is national security. It is also the supreme law of the land. Anyone who says otherwise has no business pretending to serve the American people in government.
Photo: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].
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