Publicola

Thanks to End the War on Freedom I've found this report (you have to scroll down to the bottom of the post) that the McCarthy-Conyers HB 2038 (The Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2003) has 100 co-sponsors.

For previous posts on HB 2038 look here & scroll down to the middle of here.

& from this post I offer you the following excerpt:

"Yes, I know we have a Republican controlled Congress. Yes I know there are more anti-gun Democrats than there are anti-gun Republicans. But there are more anti-gun Republicans than there are pro-gun Democrats & Republicans combined. Look here for the House of Representatives. Look here for the Senate. Anything less than a "B" rating means they are not oppossed to voting for gun control if it suits them. According to my calculations there's 18 pro-gun Senators & 176 pro-gun Representatives. That's counting the B minus among the pro-gun. !8 out of 100 & 176 out of 434.
There are 64 anti-gun senators & 201 anti-gun Representatives. That's counting D, F & Not Rated. 64 out of 100 & 201 out of 434.
In the Senate it would merely take the F,D & Not Rated Senators to vote for the McCarthy-Conyers assault weapons bill for it to pass. In the House it would take 17 C rated Representatives in addition to the F, D & Not Rated Representatives for it to pass. The Senate would have enough votes to negate a presidential veto, but it'd take 261 or so from the House, which would mean 60 C rated voters in addition to the F,D & Not Rated.
As for Bush? It could go either way, but considering his past record on gun rights I doubt he would veto it if it came across his desk.
So if we go by GOA's rating system, which I find to be much more honest than the NRA's recomendations we find there is a very clear anti-gun majority in both houses of Congress. & if the elected officials vote according to their GOA rating, then it is possible that the McCarthy-Conyers Assault Weapons Ban would become a reality."


Things are not looking good. Let em put it like this: 51 votes in the Senate & 218 votes in the House would pass this bill. Bush would not veto. The House has 100 cosponsors for this version of the Assault Weapons Ban. There are 205 anti-gun Representatives according to GOA's rating system. There are 56 Representatives who could go either way, & that's being optimistic as they tend to be anti-gun. So it'd merely be a question of whether enough of the 105 anti gun Representaives & 56 possibly anti-gun Representatives would vote for this bill. I'm assuming that the cosponsors would vote for it, so that's almost half the battle before the bill is even up for a vote in the House.

Note: for some reason blogger published this before i completed the post. I see the "improvements" they made are taking effect!

& what does the NRA have to say about it? Not a damned thing that I can find. Of course I could have missed something so if anyone has any info on the NRA making a recent statement on this please forward it to me.

What will likely happen is that either the McCarthy-Conyers assault weapons ban will pass without much of a fight from the NRA, or the most likely scenario is that they will fight the McCarthy-Conyers bill while giving the wink & nod to a less expanded Senate bill that just makes the current assault weapons ban permanent. The NRA will claim that in order to fight the more restrictive bill they had to let the current law be re-authorized. They'll claim a victory 'cause they'll alledge that their actions prevented a more restrictive law from being passed.

& as long as the NRA doesn't see a mass exodus of members they'll continue compromising away our Rights for their own gain. Same with the Republican Party: as long as people vote for the Republicans to prevent Democrats from getting elected then the Republican party has no incentive to change.

& if you look at the GOA ratings page I think you'll be suprised at just how many Republicans don't vote to protect your Right to Arms. Remember that every gun control law that was passed was not done so by a majority consisting solely of Democrats. If Republicans had fought some gun control laws would have passed at leats one of the Houses, but certainly not all gun control laws would have passed.

There has been much talk about the proper way to repeal these laws. Some advocate legisolation, saying that doing it through the courts would require activist judiciaries & that's undesirable. But I feel that the courts are the only way to solidly put down these gun control laws.

If the legislature repeals a law then while the law is no longer active, the theory that the legislature has the authority to enact or repeal these laws is intact. It merely reinforces the erroneous idea that the legislature giveth & the legislature taketh away.
Whereas if the courts strike down a law it is in effect saying that the legislature has exceeded its authority & has no cause to enact such laws.
One approach relies on the benevolence of the legislature, the other relies on the courts limiting legislative power.

I'll take the latter approach every time.

& I do not consider it judicial activism when the courts limit the authority of the legislature to make laws on a certain subject. According to Marbury vs. Madison that is the function of the courts - to ensure that Congress & the Executive branch as well as the courts themselves do not exceed their respective constitutional limitiations.

But it looks like the McCarthy-Conyers HB 2038 stands a good chance of passing if it ever comes up for a vote.