Wyoming Adopts 'Constitutional Carry' of Firearms

An important step was taken yesterday in Wyoming toward restoring the constitutionally protected right of Americans to keep and bear arms, as that state became the second in less than a year to enact legislation affirming the right of its citizens to carry a concealed firearm without a special government-issued license. Following adoption in the state Senate, the vote of the House in the Wyoming legislature approved the bill by a vote of 48–8 several weeks ago, and Gov. Matt Mead (photo, left) signed it into law on March 3.

The right to carry a concealed firearm without a special license issued by the state is often referred to as “constitutional carry.” Wyoming is now the fourth state in the Union that recognizes constitutional carry, joining Alaska, Arizona, and Vermont. Prior to Wyoming’s action, Arizona was the most recent state to adopt constitutional carry; Governor Jan Brewer signed the legislation in April of last year, and it went into effect a few months later, on July 29.

It appears that the trend toward “constitutional carry” is likely to continue, with several states weighing adoption of measures similar to that which became law today in Wyoming. An article from the Associate Press declares that “Similar bills are pending in states including Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Utah. A bill has been introduced in Kentucky but hasn’t advanced while another was introduced for discussion in Idaho.”

In the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy, organizations opposed to Second Amendment-defined rights attempted to exploit the deaths and injuries that occurred when Jared Loughner allegedly attempted to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) However, the fumbling efforts of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik to politicize the tragedy appears to have backfired on the gun control lobby: rather than scaring the populace into surrendering more of their rights for the illusion of security, January 2011 gun sales surged 9.7 percent over the same month the previous year—an increase which builds on a trend in gun purchases since November 2008.

Undoubtedly, there are several factors are behind the movement at this time to restore more of the constitutionally recognized right to keep and bear arms to the people of the United States. Economics and a greater perceived need to be responsible for one’s own defense are among those factors. In the words of the AP article:

The push to expand permit-free carry of concealed guns is coming from people demanding the freedom to protect themselves in tough economic times without the requirement to pay for state permits, National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

“It’s an organic movement,” Arulanandam said. “I think certainly we are leading the charge — I’m not hiding behind it. A lot of this is organic in the sense that it comes from people realizing that when something bad happens, it’s up to them to defend themselves and their loved ones. And when something bad happens, instant responders are better than ‘first responders.’”

Another factor in the push to expand the right of self-defense in the direction of the liberty enumerated in the Bill of Rights is the sense that many Americans have that their liberties have been steadily eroded for many years. The same concerns that animated Tea Party activists and other constitutional conservatives are active in the movement for constitutional carry. People who neglect the exercise of their constitutional rights may soon find those rights have been usurped by the State. First in Arizona and now in Wyoming, the people are pushing back.

WRITTEN BY JAMES HEISER

Feds sneaking around Congress to regulate firearms - Updated

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Originally Posted: December 23, 2010 -  9:15 pm Eastern  © 2010

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, has a long history of excess and overreaching … and they're at it again.

Using exaggerated reports of gun smuggling from the U.S. into Mexico as their justification, the agency has filed for an emergency regulation requiring gun dealers to keep track of their customers and file special reports to ATF whenever a customer purchases more than one semi-automatic rifle within any 5-day period. Such special reporting is already required for multiple sales of handguns and has proven to be thoroughly useless as a law enforcement tool.

ATF's requested regulation – which is unconstitutional, violates a statutory prohibition against firearms registration schemes and was obviously filed as an "emergency" simply as a means of bypassing Congress – would be "temporary," meaning that it would have to be renewed in four or five months, and is said to only apply to gun dealers in states bordering Mexico, though the regulation, as submitted, seems to be missing that specific limitation.

At this point the proposed regulation is awaiting approval from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Political observers will recall that OIRA is headed by President Obama's old friend Cass Sunstein, who famously advocated for the abolition of all hunting and for the extension of legal rights – including the right to have a court-appointed attorney – to animals.

While Mr. Sunstein is an attorney and college professor specializing, in part, in constitutional law, his record shows that his Constitution does not include the Second Amendment. It is expected that Sunstein's office will approve ATF's Emergency Regulation by the first week of January unless there is immediate and vehement objection from members of Congress and the public.

In the late '70s, shortly after my late father, Neal Knox, took over the NRA's lobbying efforts, ATF leaders attempted to expand their power by implementing a regulatory scheme requiring that gun manufacturers add a government-defined 13-digit serial number to every gun and that dealers report detailed information, including that new serial number, to ATF for every sale. Records of those sales, guns, and purchasers were to be stored in ATF computers. It was gun registration, pure and simple. The scheme might have slipped through had it not been for the heightened visibility of ATF due to Dad's efforts and his immediate sounding of the alarm when the proposal was introduced.

Congress had upon numerous occasions debated the idea of a federal gun registration law and had rejected the idea on each occasion. For ATF to decide to bypass Congress and implement such a registration scheme via regulation was rightly perceived as an affront by many members of Congress, and their indignant response was to remove some four million dollars from the agency's operating budget (the amount ATF said they expected to spend on the scheme.)

That overreach, along with egregious abuses of honest gun dealers by the ATF led to the introduction of the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act to repeal some of the more onerous and confusing sections of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

It is to be hoped that current members of Congress will have a similarly indignant response to ATF's overreaching in this instance, as here again the agency is trying to implement by regulation something which the Congress has considered and rejected in the past.

Rights opponents will argue that rights activists like me are overly sensitive and unyielding in our positions and that we reactively oppose any firearms regulations regardless of how benign or effective they may be. There will be an inclination to accept ideas like this and then place the burden of proof upon rights advocates to explain why it's a bad idea.

Really, the burden of proof belongs to those who wish to interfere with our rights. It is up to ATF to show the legal authority to institute this proposed regulation and that it does not violate the spirit or intent of any existing law. It is also up to the ATF to show that their proposed regulation will be effective and productive as a means of fighting illegal gun trafficking.

The fact is that ATF can present no such evidence in support of their idea, just the suggestion that the proposal sounds reasonable and might be of use. That's not good enough.

It is overreaching for an agency to follow after Congress and enact regulations where Congress has refused to enact laws, especially where Congress considered and discarded those exact actions.

It is extra-legal for an agency to ignore statutory limitations barring the collection or archiving of information about gun purchasers, not to mention limitations under the Paperwork Reduction Act forbidding unnecessary increases in paperwork burdens.

The multiple-sales reporting scheme claims to be aimed at keeping guns out of Mexico, but it fails on that point as well.

First, it will have little effect on gun smuggling in Mexico, for smugglers familiarize themselves with the laws they are breaking. They will easily avoid ensnaring themselves in such an obvious trap.

Second, while the actual number of guns that arrive in Mexico from the USA is impossible to determine, we know that the number being reported is inflated since the ATF only traces those guns selected by the Mexican authorities. There is strong evidence that American civilian gun shops are only one of many sources of guns in Mexico, and a minor one at that. Pictures of confiscated arms in the Mexican press routinely include grenades, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, arms that aren't in the U.S. civilian inventory.

Finally, the proposed multiple-sale scheme places a significant burden on dealers and puts them at increased risk of prosecution for clerical errors if they fail to detect a repeat buyer in a timely fashion.

You can tell the ATF and Congress that you oppose the ATF's overreach through any − or all − of the following ways:

1. Call the Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and Regulation Affairs, Department of Justice, desk officer at (202) 395-6466
2. E-mail Barbara A. Terrell, ATF, Firearms Industry Programs Branch at Barbara.Terrell@atf.gov
3. Call your senators and representative through the United States Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

There is no such thing as reasonable infringement on liberty.

---

Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His writing can regularly be seen in Shotgun News and Front Sight magazines as well as here on WorldNetDaily.

Is there anyone else out there that just finds the timing on this and the shooting in Arizona by a left-wing nut job, just little too convenient??

· Something very, very, very strange!!  -  Sunday, January 09, 2011 6:04:14 PM · by djf · 49 replies

Here is Gabrielle Giffords YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/giffords2 Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and look on the left under Subscriptions (2) See Classitup10??? Guess who that is!!! As I said on another thread, this whole deal reeks of weird mind control MK-Ultra black-ops stuff... Are the hairs on the back of anybody’s necks standing up yet???

Watch the Other Hand – Chaos Being Pushed on the Left and the Right – Part l

Watch the Other Hand – part ii:  Dems, Media Blame Tea Party, Palin for Shooting; Yet Shooter Linked to Left-Wing Politics

· Unbelievable: Democrat Group Using Gifford’s Shooting For Fundraiser!

An extreme, left-wing Democrat group calling itself 21st Century Democrats has had the gall to send out an email blast using as a fundraising tool Saturday’s criminal shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. Judge John Roll and four others were killed in the incident, one of them a 9-year-old girl, but these Democrats are ignorant enough to be using this incident to try and squeeze donations from its supporters. Some might think the action of 21st Century Democrats is itself a crime — a crime against decency.The email blast sent out Sunday morning to its supporters tells members...

Feds sneaking around Congress to regulate firearms

---

Posted: December 23, 2010 -  9:15 pm Eastern  © 2010

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, has a long history of excess and overreaching … and they're at it again.

Using exaggerated reports of gun smuggling from the U.S. into Mexico as their justification, the agency has filed for an emergency regulation requiring gun dealers to keep track of their customers and file special reports to ATF whenever a customer purchases more than one semi-automatic rifle within any 5-day period. Such special reporting is already required for multiple sales of handguns and has proven to be thoroughly useless as a law enforcement tool.

ATF's requested regulation – which is unconstitutional, violates a statutory prohibition against firearms registration schemes and was obviously filed as an "emergency" simply as a means of bypassing Congress – would be "temporary," meaning that it would have to be renewed in four or five months, and is said to only apply to gun dealers in states bordering Mexico, though the regulation, as submitted, seems to be missing that specific limitation.

At this point the proposed regulation is awaiting approval from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Political observers will recall that OIRA is headed by President Obama's old friend Cass Sunstein, who famously advocated for the abolition of all hunting and for the extension of legal rights – including the right to have a court-appointed attorney – to animals.

While Mr. Sunstein is an attorney and college professor specializing, in part, in constitutional law, his record shows that his Constitution does not include the Second Amendment. It is expected that Sunstein's office will approve ATF's Emergency Regulation by the first week of January unless there is immediate and vehement objection from members of Congress and the public.

In the late '70s, shortly after my late father, Neal Knox, took over the NRA's lobbying efforts, ATF leaders attempted to expand their power by implementing a regulatory scheme requiring that gun manufacturers add a government-defined 13-digit serial number to every gun and that dealers report detailed information, including that new serial number, to ATF for every sale. Records of those sales, guns, and purchasers were to be stored in ATF computers. It was gun registration, pure and simple. The scheme might have slipped through had it not been for the heightened visibility of ATF due to Dad's efforts and his immediate sounding of the alarm when the proposal was introduced.

Congress had upon numerous occasions debated the idea of a federal gun registration law and had rejected the idea on each occasion. For ATF to decide to bypass Congress and implement such a registration scheme via regulation was rightly perceived as an affront by many members of Congress, and their indignant response was to remove some four million dollars from the agency's operating budget (the amount ATF said they expected to spend on the scheme.)

That overreach, along with egregious abuses of honest gun dealers by the ATF led to the introduction of the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act to repeal some of the more onerous and confusing sections of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

It is to be hoped that current members of Congress will have a similarly indignant response to ATF's overreaching in this instance, as here again the agency is trying to implement by regulation something which the Congress has considered and rejected in the past.

Rights opponents will argue that rights activists like me are overly sensitive and unyielding in our positions and that we reactively oppose any firearms regulations regardless of how benign or effective they may be. There will be an inclination to accept ideas like this and then place the burden of proof upon rights advocates to explain why it's a bad idea.

Really, the burden of proof belongs to those who wish to interfere with our rights. It is up to ATF to show the legal authority to institute this proposed regulation and that it does not violate the spirit or intent of any existing law. It is also up to the ATF to show that their proposed regulation will be effective and productive as a means of fighting illegal gun trafficking.

The fact is that ATF can present no such evidence in support of their idea, just the suggestion that the proposal sounds reasonable and might be of use. That's not good enough.

It is overreaching for an agency to follow after Congress and enact regulations where Congress has refused to enact laws, especially where Congress considered and discarded those exact actions.

It is extra-legal for an agency to ignore statutory limitations barring the collection or archiving of information about gun purchasers, not to mention limitations under the Paperwork Reduction Act forbidding unnecessary increases in paperwork burdens.

The multiple-sales reporting scheme claims to be aimed at keeping guns out of Mexico, but it fails on that point as well.

First, it will have little effect on gun smuggling in Mexico, for smugglers familiarize themselves with the laws they are breaking. They will easily avoid ensnaring themselves in such an obvious trap.

Second, while the actual number of guns that arrive in Mexico from the USA is impossible to determine, we know that the number being reported is inflated since the ATF only traces those guns selected by the Mexican authorities. There is strong evidence that American civilian gun shops are only one of many sources of guns in Mexico, and a minor one at that. Pictures of confiscated arms in the Mexican press routinely include grenades, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, arms that aren't in the U.S. civilian inventory.

Finally, the proposed multiple-sale scheme places a significant burden on dealers and puts them at increased risk of prosecution for clerical errors if they fail to detect a repeat buyer in a timely fashion.

You can tell the ATF and Congress that you oppose the ATF's overreach through any − or all − of the following ways:

1. Call the Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and Regulation Affairs, Department of Justice, desk officer at (202) 395-6466
2. E-mail Barbara A. Terrell, ATF, Firearms Industry Programs Branch at Barbara.Terrell@atf.gov
3. Call your senators and representative through the United States Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

There is no such thing as reasonable infringement on liberty.

---

Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His writing can regularly be seen in Shotgun News and Front Sight magazines as well as here on WorldNetDaily.

On Wednesday Obama took the first major step in a plan to BAN ‘ALL’ FIREARMS IN THE UNITED STATES!!!!!!!

Just got this...pass it far & wide.

From Perry Edinfield

On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms.

The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened. Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.

This is not a joke nor a false warning. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control.

Read the Article:

U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) 

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush's administration which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

View The Full Article Here: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E0Q920091015 - 14 Nov. 2009 

Please forward this message to others who may be concerned about the direction in which our country is headed. This is a very serious matter!

Silence will lead us to Socialism… or perhaps worse!!!

Steve "Devil Dawg" Semper Fi
USMC, Patriot, Dong Ha Combat Base,Viet Nam Vet 68/69
Not As Lean, Just As Mean, But Still A Marine !
We Will Never Forget Our Fallen.....
God Bless Our Country and All Who Defends Her.
I Will Stand By My Oath To My Death.
Don't Tread On Me, You Will Live To Regret

Posted AAM by Lee Johnson

The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson

It Is Not About Duck Hunting... It is About All of Our Rights to Protect Ourselves From All of You (Talking to the Congressional Committee) Up There!! ... Suzanna Gretia-Hupp

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Australian Gun Law Update

Second Amendment Comments

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Columbine Remembered – What a Great Speech!

Australian Gun Law Update

From:   Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia

I thought you all would like to see the now available data from Down Under...

It has now been one year (12 months) since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia  taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

The first year results are now available:

Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent;
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent);
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent as compared with the last one year period when private ownership of a firearm was legal.
(NB: the law-abiding citizens did turn in their personal firearms, the criminal element did not and thus criminals in Australia still possess their guns.)

While data for the 25 years preceding the confiscation of privately owned guns showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months as criminals now are assured their victims will be unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.
Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in 'successfully ridding Australian society of guns.'

This story of well intentioned government intervention in the rights of lawful individuals to own and possess firearms won't be seen in the mainstream U.S. media or on the American evening news.  Senator Obama who advocates a similar confiscation in the U.S. will not be reporting any of this to you.
But, the Australian experience speaks for itself.  Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

The right to bear arms is part of (our) the Constitution of the United States of America… part of the Bill of Rights… and it has been proven to us over and over that our Founding Fathers knew what they were doing!! They knew and experienced firsthand what happens when the laws, government and climate changes…

 

Americans may want to take note before it's too late!

FORWARD THIS INFORMATION TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.
DON'T BE A MEMBER OF THE SILENT MAJORITY.
BE A PARTICIPANT IN THE VOCAL MINORITY WHO DOESN'T WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED IN AUSTRALIA HAPPEN IN THE US!

(Also remember… Neutral Switzerland, probably most peaceful nation in the world, arms and trains all its citizens as a militia and everyone has guns and ammo at home in case they are called.)