Andrew McCarthy: Government Could Strip Every Constitutional Right under "Emergency" Claim

Andrew McCarthy had a great article on National Review Online yesterday about Chuck Schumer's (D., N.Y.) claim at a Judiciary Committee hearing last week that many constitutional liberties are routinely restricted in "emergency" circumstances — in particular, Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless search and arrest, so we should do the same thing to the Second Amendment:

President Obama and his allies in Congress seek to deny the constitutional gun-ownership rights of Americans merely suspected of terror ties — even as the Left champions the non-existent immigration rights of aliens from regions notorious for terror ties. The backbone of the Democrats’ stratagem is a specious “constitutional” claim, one whose logic would empower the government to strip every civil right the Constitution is designed to protect against government encroachment.

As posited by Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) at a Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Democrats claim that many constitutional liberties are routinely restricted in emergency circumstances — in particular, Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless search and arrest. Hence, the argument goes, Second Amendment rights, too, may be stripped away if Democrats can concoct an emergency — such as the ongoing crisis in which guns, apparently with minds of their own, mow down infidels.

McCarthy continues:

It is black-letter law that a statute cannot limit a constitutional safeguard. Not only is the Constitution the higher-ranking source of law; the safeguard in the Second Amendment is a safeguard against government action. If government action could undo such a safeguard, the purpose of having the safeguard in the first place would be defeated. The Second Amendment, and indeed all constitutional guarantees against governmental abuses of power, would be null and void anytime government came up with an “emergency” pretext.

McCarthy, who as a U.S. Attorney prosecuted the "Blind Sheik" for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, takes a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting the U.S. from jihadists.  But he also understands the Constitution and explains in great detail why this theory being pushed by  the gun ban Democrats is dangerous to liberty.  Read the entire article.

VSSA Stands With NRA in Opposing Schumer/Manchin/Toomey Background Check Deal

While we have not seen the final language, we do know the framework of the agreement announced yesterday by Senator's Toomey and Manchin. And it's telling that Toomey's support was premised on him not having to appear with Chucky Schumer.  With that framework, the NRA made their position clear to senators yesterday:

"In addition, the NRA will oppose any amendments offered to S. 649 that restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms; including, but not limited to, proposals that would ban commonly and lawfully owned firearms and magazines or criminalize the private transfer of firearms through an expansion of background checks," Cox writes. "This includes the misguided 'compromise' proposal drafted by Senators Joe Manchin, Pat Toomey and Chuck Schumer."

VSSA stands with NRA in opposing S.649, including the Schumer/Manchin/Toomey background check amendment.  As Charles Cook noted on National Review Online yesterday, even if we take them at their word that the "compromise " includes supposed "exemptions" for in-person private transfers and that it “lets” family members lend or gift one of there their firearms without inviting felonious consequences, and that it doesn't make us felons for allowing our friends to shoot our guns on our private property, today's exemption is tomorrow's loophole:

Alas, there is peril ahead. Why? Because today’s “exemption” is tomorrow’s “loophole.” No sooner will the glorious presidential ink have dried on that abject page, than those provisions that were sold a few days earlier as commonsense exemptions — the product of “bipartisan compromise” and other media-tested platitudes — will become structural problems, ripe for “standardizing.” Sure, Congress wouldn’t be so gauche as to include A or B or C in their bill today. But have no doubt: Within a few weeks of the bill’s passage, the eerie progressive silence that has marked this tortured process will be broken, and when it is, legions of prominent gun controllers will take to their feet in order to argue that it makes “no sense” for there to be “exemptions” to the almost universal background-check system.

And Heritage had this to say:

Americans are tired of backroom deals.  Legislation drafted behind closed doors and rushed to the Senate floor has no place in our political system.  We expect this type of deal making from Joe Manchin and also from Chuck Schumer, who supports the “universal registration” of firearms.  However, we expect more from Pat Toomey and, more importantly, so do his constituents.

The debate begins today and may last for weeks.  Keep up the contact with Warner and Kaine, but especially Warner.  We will now see if he was truely with us, or if it was just a marriage of convenience on his part based on the fact that when he was Governor, the General Assembly never gave him an anti-rights bill that he could have signed, nor a pro-rights bill that was so pro-rights that he simply could not approve it.