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Trump’s Unconstitutional Gun Confiscation Plans

President Trump’s response to Nikolas Cruz’s crimes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida demonstrates, once again, the limits of his transactional approach to governing.

The President wants a “deal” to make schools safer (who doesn’t?) but his approach, while it includes some Flake Gunsuseful elements, lacks any grounding in the constitution or conservative principles.

The principle defect of Trump’s proposal is its “prohibit first, due process second, if at all” approach to gun ownership and the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

As our friends at Gun Owners of America pointed out after Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s conference call on the issue of school safety, there are serious due process concerns with the “Fix NICS” bill that has been embraced by the President.

For instance, the VA takes all veterans who have a fiduciary appointed and sweeps those names monthly into the gun prohibition list.  Obama tried to do the same with Social Security Disability recipients, but Congress overturned that order.

The issue ultimately boils down to should the federal and state governments dump every conceivable name into NICS based on a determination of competence by an administrative court, board, commission, or other lawful authority?

This will add millions of names to a system that already has a false-positive rate of around 95% says GOA.

GOA asked Sen. Cornyn to add due process protections of a COURT before a person loses his gun rights forever, however, Cornyn refused and instead drafted a gun control bill that has the support of Democratic Senators Schumer, Feinstein, Blumenthal, Murphy and Durbin.

If there are no due process safeguards, then anyone who seeks treatment or counseling for any mental health issue, people on certain prescriptions, etc. could lose their right to keep and bear arms forever – with no recourse.

Even worse is the proposal that persons on the “no fly list” should have their names added to the NICS “no buy” list.

“No fly no buy” is a Far Left idea promoted by such Democrat-aligned media as Salon and the New York Times, and embraced by RINOs, such as Maine’s Senator Susan Collins and Arizona’s Senator Jeff Flake, who have bills supported by Second Amendment luminaries like Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Angus King (I-Maine), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

As our friend David Harsanyi wrote for the Federalist:

This is what a real attack on American values looks like.

One day Sen. Jeff Flake is warning America about rising Stalinism and the next he’s supporting a bill that strips the rights of citizens who’ve been arbitrarily placed on secret government lists without any probable cause or due process. Make no mistake, that’s exactly what the legislation a group of senators plan to re-introduce this week does.

Harsanyi goes on to suggest:

Hey, forget the guns! Why aren’t Flake and the Democrats introducing legislation to immediately detain all these “terrorists?” If the watch lists are enough to convict a man, then it’s safe to assume that there are over a million violent extremists walking our streets with impunity. Because surely — surely — Flake, sainted martyr of real conservatism, a man who took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution,” isn’t arguing that we should circumvent the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments for those placed on extrajudicial lists by bureaucrats? Surely he’s not arguing that simply being suspected of potentially engaging in criminal activity is now enough to preemptively deprive people of their rights? That would be downright authoritarian.

What Flake’s bill, and Trump’s similar proposal, does is violate the Fifth Amendment to make it easier to violate the Second Amendment – a demonstration of just how far afield from the Constitution Republicans will stray when not securely moored to constitutional conservative principles.

We urge CHQ readers to call the toll-free Capitol Switchboard (1-866-220-0044) to ask for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Tell Rep. McCarthy conservatives demand that Republicans follow all of the Constitution and the God-given right to self-defense protected by the Second Amendment is not negotiable.


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