Examiner – by David CodreaLegislation currently being finessed by Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats poses threats to privacy rights as well as a danger of creating unintentional criminals, American Civil Liberties Union “top lobbyist” Chris Calabrese told The Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese in an exclusive article posted early this morning.
“[T]he group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties,” the report explains. “The inclusion ofuniversal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — raises two significant concerns.”
One includes creating records that could be used to create a national registration database, something anti-gunners scoff at as “The NRA’s absurd argument,” and that the records could be used by the government for other purposes.
“Calabrese says that Reid’s legislation fails to include those ‘privacy best practices,’” Coglianese reports.
“We think that that kind of record-keeping requirement could result in keeping long-term detailed records of purchases and creation of a new government database,” the ACLU spokesman added.
These are powerful arguments that can be used as counters to those who would scoff if the source were simply the NRA. And as for the hollow protest that current law prevents the establishment of a database, does anyone doubt the same people who are pushing for background checks, and who would push for total citizen disarmament if they thought they could, wouldn’t end such a prohibition in a heartbeat if they could get the votes?
The other expressed concern is the way legislation under consideration “too broadly defines the term ‘transfer,’ creating complicated criminal law that law-abiding Americans may unwittingly break.”
How these will be reconciled, along with other real dangers to liberty, such as Barbara Boxer’s “school tiplines,” will tell gun owners much about how far “true champion of the Second Amendment” Reid has strayed from that description as he also tries to accommodate his benefactors on the other side, like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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My latest GUNS Magazine “Rights Watch” column is now online. Click here to read “A Right Delayed,” discussing yet another dangerous drawback of so-called “universal background checks.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/universal-background-check-opponents-get-unexpected-boost-from-aclu
The day I see Harry, the treasonous old, senile Reid hang from a hemp rope, will be another day I will be celebrating another traitor gone from this world.