For the procedural skulduggery behind the passage of Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy's HR 2640, see this excerpt from a forum post on the WarRifles forum:
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...I just got off the phone with Congressman Paul's office in DC and according to Adam Dick, who is on Dr. Paul's staff, here are the answers:
1: No, Dr, Paul DID NOT AGREE to pass the McCarthy bill. In fact, he wasn't even in the House when it was passed at midnight on Tuesday. When H.R. 2640 was initially presented in the House, Dr. Paul stood up and spoke against it. Regarding H.R. 2640, Ron Paul's hands are clean - period.
2: How did McCarthy and her maggots get around his opposition? Here's how: The House had adjourned for the year. There were approximately ten House members in the house chamber - special order speeches were being given. Over in the Senate, Coburn finally caved and agreed to pass the McCarthy bill at a little before midnight, giving the Senate its unanimous consent.
At that point, McCarthy hauled a*s from the Senate to the House chamber, broke in on the special order speeches and put H.R. 2640 up for a vote. They had waited and watched until no opposing House members were present to do this.
This way, they would get a unanimous consent vote by voice - "unanimous consent" means unanimous consent of the members present at that instant, not unanimous consent of each and every one of the 435 members of the House.
On the Democrat side, McCarthy controlled their 5 minutes that are allowed for each special order speech. On the Republican side, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia controlled the 5 minutes allowed for their rebuttal. Price is a McCarthy bill supporter, so there was no rebuttal, no debate, no recorded vote. This is how McCarthy and Price circumvented debate on the bill and got a unanimous vote.
According to Adam Dick of Dr. Paul's staff, it was a done deal in a minute and a half. He said even if those who opposed the bill were in their offices monitoring the proceedings on closed circuit TV (which they do), thanks to the tag team of McCarthy and Price, an opposing Congressman would have never made it to the House chamber in time to oppose the vote and stop H.R. 2640's passage.
You want to know who stabbed us in the back? "Republican" Representative Price of Georgia - there's your traitor (along with the entire U.S. Senate, the Brady maggots, VPC scumbags, the NRA and the proverbial "cast of thousands" who helped out).
So there you go: The House was adjourned for the year, ten antigun bigots were present at midnight, no debate, no opposition, no recorded vote, H.R. 2640 is rammed through in ninety seconds. This is how the Political Class operates.
They will stop at nothing to destroy our right to arms.
Was it technically lawful and Constitutional? According to Adam Dick, it was. HOWEVER: He also said that a unanimous consent with no recorded vote is and has always been intended for use regarding bills where the House is in full agreement on passage BEFORE a vote is called for.
Using this procedure to pass a bill that has known opposition from other House members is a cheap shot. It is dirty pool. It is stabbing your peers in the back and McCarthy and Price know it and they don't care. They got what they wanted, and that's all that matters.
The problem with H.R. 2640 is that, in the words of Adam Dick, "It will establish a government-controlled national database of EVERYBODY." Not just gun owners - but EVERYBODY. This database will include criminal history records and ALL medical records that can and will be used by "The Government" for THEM to decide whether or not you are "fit" to purchase a gun.
The McCarthy bill is BAD news - period.
What's even worse though, is the doors it will open for the antigun bigots of the Political Class.
Think about the ramifications of this: Antidepressant medications are the number one most prescribed class of med in the United States. If you have ever been on any of these meds, "The Government" could look at its database and decide that as a result, you are not "fit" to purchase a gun. In one fell swoop, "The Government" can declare a vast segment - likely 100 million or so - of the American people "unfit" to purchase a gun.
Undoubtedly, the tens of millions of children who were forced to take Ritalin or similar psychotropic drugs for a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD would also be "unfit" to ever purchase a gun - all before they are even old enough to legally do so!!
The same applies to any form of care by a psychiatrist. The same applies to any counseling you may have undergone with a psychologist, marriage counselor, LCSW, or family counselor for any reason.
Did your father suddenly drop dead from a heart attack? Did it traumatize you, depress you and cause you grief for which you sought counseling? "The Government" could use that information from its database to declare you "unfit" to purchase a gun.
Of course, keeping as many people as possible from purchasing any new guns is just the first step. If a person is "unfit" to purchase a new gun, aren't they also "unfit" to possess the firearms they already own? That "loophole" (tm) will have to be closed. There's only one way to achieve that.
You can see where this is going. All it will take to make it a reality is to put someone like Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson in the White House in 2008 and get control of the Senate and the House in the hands of the antigun/antifreedom bigots.
Once that's accomplished, GUN CONFISCATIONS will follow - and soon.
We all can now see how the antigun Political Class operates. They completely and totally reject the restraints placed upon them by the Constitution. They don't give a rat's a*s about the rights of the people or the will of the people.
Their outlook is "We'll do whatever the "F" we want and you'll like it."
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JPFO's take is here.
Here's GOA's assessment of the situation.
My two cents?
It's the camel's nose under the tent, folks. Gradualism is the bad guys' MO, and they are good at it.
Next steps will be to
1) expand the disqualifying conditions
2) use data mining to link "public statements" (read "gun board posts") with particular gun owners
3) employ .gov pshrinks to "assess" those gun owners on a preliminary basis (think "psychological profiling" a la serial killers - the Feebs will love this stuff)
4) bring civil actions to require the gun owners to either relinquish their weapons or "permit" a full-scale psychological "assessment"
5) Upon completion of the assessment, bring or threaten to bring a "weapons decertification" proceeding, which will remove the gun owner's weapons and bar him from future acquisitions
6) Concurrently with steps 2-5 above, socialist states (Neu Jersey, Illinois, Neu York, Kalifornia, People's Republic of Massachusetts, etc.) will enact "firearm safety certification" requirements, which will feature a mental health evaluation by an "impartial" .gov pshrink. This certification will be required to purchase any firearm in that state, and must be renewed every two years.
"If it saves one life" and "it's for the children", indeed.....
Tempus fugit.
Howdy CB,
ReplyDeleteLong time no lookee at your blog. Vic forwarded it to me. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the gubmint is already declining to enlist future cannon fodder due to "medication" used for ADHD/ADD. Don't remember where I read it, but I do remember it distinctly. This could be used as a precedent for their future plans could it not? Just another fun thought. Re: Datamining, Oh boy am I in trouble then!
Wayne B.
I am still in shock and awe at this. I can only wonder who is benefiting so much that it required such a low down handed move like this.
ReplyDeleteI was told once that as times passes, more and more of our rights are being taken away. I see this more true every day.
I did want to ask if it would be okay for me to link you on my blog.
OT: Thanks for your comment. Feel free to pass our blog onto others, and to blogroll.
ReplyDeleteI'd strongly suggest spending some time in Keven Baker's archives at
The Smallest Minority
He's got some good stuff on who benefits and why we cannot count on anyone other thn ourselves to save us.
And consider Solzhenitsyn as well, starting with The Gulag Archipelago:
..."And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"