BY Herschel Smith
11 years, 8 months ago
We have noted that the Manchin-Toomey gun bill has confusing language (a setup for abuses), and that it surreptitiously allows the construction of a national gun registry even though it claims to forbid it. Now we learn that the situation is even worse than we thought.
One begins to wonder if Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) didn’t just take whatever verbiage Attorney General Eric Holder’s staff handed to them and put it in their gun control legislation without even reading it. The Schumer-Toomey-Manchin (STM) bill facilitates undercover sting operations at gun shows to arrest people for conduct they have no reason to believe is against the law. The STM bill lets the Justice Department send people at gun shows to jail for up to five years for a crime they did not even know was a crime.
Here is the zinger buried in the bill:
Whoever makes or attempts to make a transfer of a firearm in violation of section 922(t) . . . to a law enforcement officer, or to a person acting at the direction of, or with the approval of, a law enforcement officer authorized to investigate or prosecute violations of section 922(t), shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
It is neither surprising nor inappropriate that, in accordance with applicable law enforcement guidelines, undercover FBI or ATF agents infiltrate, or send informants to infiltrate, a gun show to see if they can catch people breaking federal firearms laws. But this new law goes overboard, by eliminating any need for a federal prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that the individual who allegedly broke the law had any kind of criminal intent.
The concept of intent is well founded in English common law (and the Bible, both of which form the basis for much of American law), and enjoys rich history and respect in American jurisprudence. This law undercuts all of that, and thus it is evil. Do you need any more reasons to oppose this legislative abortion?
