
ARE YOU AN AMERICAN OR ARE YOU A TERRORIST?
by James O.E. Norell,
Contributing Editor
by James O.E. Norell,
Contributing Editor
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Under Lautenberg, if you officially object to being turned down for a gun sale or a license application or revocation, the feds would only be required to inform you of your "determined" terrorist status.
"An action challenging the determination may be brought against the United States. The petition shall be filed not later than 60 days after the petitioner has received actual notice of the attorney general's determination." (Emphasis added.)
"[R]eceived actual notice of the attorney general's determination" is the automatic disqualifier from owning guns. It's a trap—heads they win, tails you lose.
You'd have 60 days to garner proof that you are not a terrorist. How on earth does an ordinary person prove such a thing? First, you would need to find out exactly what allegations have been secretly filed to have the feds add you to their "terrorist" list.
Forget it.
S. 1317 would totally shield the government from ever being forced to produce in open court the complete and raw information it possessed to "determine" that you are a terrorist. To "determine" away your Second Amendment rights. To "determine" you are a felon.
Lautenberg's legislation decrees, "The court shall sustain the attorney general's determination upon a showing by the United States by a preponderance of evidence." The standard measure of proof of guilt in criminal prosecutions—"beyond a reasonable doubt"—has vanished entirely in this process.
Also vanished is the right to confront the evidence against you. Lautenberg would throw out all federal rules of evidence and, in their place, create a set of police-state rules worthy of Iran, Cuba or North Korea.
"To make this showing, the United States may submit, and the court may rely upon, summaries or redacted versions of documents containing information the disclosure of which the attorney general has determined would likely compromise national security." (Emphasis added.)
By definition, terrorism is equated with national security.
So, a citizen of the United States—in trying to restore rights taken by bureaucrats in secret—would not be entitled to be confronted with either an accuser or actual evidence.
And there is more.
"Upon request of the petitioner or the court's own motion, the court may review the full, undisclosed documents ex-parte and in camera." (Read, "in the backroom.")
But most astoundingly, considering the separation of powers, Lautenberg orders, "The court shall not consider the full, undisclosed documents in deciding." (Emphasis added.)
Here, the bill is dictating that full, accurate and actual evidence against a citizen must be excluded from a court proceeding.
What about the presumption of innocence—the constitutional backbone of American law? Gone!
This is also a story about connecting the dots between the Lautenberg legislation and massive media manipulation designed to demonize gun owners, the NRA and people who staunchly disagree with their government—but only those who the so-called "mainstream" media hate and label as "right-wingers."
The centerpiece of this coordinated attack on the constitutional rights of gun owners is Lautenberg's s. 1317. The opening salvo came in the spring with government reports maligning third party voters, returning veterans and gun owners as potential domestic terrorists. That was followed by a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report falsely puffed as proof positive of a "terror gap." On the heels of all of this has been a series of increasingly malicious attacks on NRA by the Brady Campaign and big media.
This is a big-lie carpet-bombing of the American public that will only get worse in the coming months.
Take the GAO report first. Ordered by anti-gun House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., the report covered nics background reviews over a five-year period. It came up with a total of 865 people on the FBI's "terror watch list" who were cleared to purchase firearms.
A June press release by Lautenberg—expanded and trumpeted by the Brady Campaign and a gang of other gun-ban outlets and politicians—seethed:
"This new report is proof positive that known and suspected terrorists are exploiting a major loophole in our law, threatening our families and communities. This ‘terror gap' has been open too long and our national security demands that we shut it down."
Among the total of individuals covered by the gao report's five-year scan, 90 were turned down for reasons prescribed under the law, i.e. felons, fugitives, known drug addicts—all 922(g) prohibited person categories.
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