Secret Gun Ban Plan (Brady)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
1/10/06 — full contact info at end

New Brady Anti-Gun Strategy Revealed
New Brady Anti-Gun Strategy Revealed
New Brady Anti-Gun Strategy Revealed

“Decommissioned” Guns Nearly As Good As Confiscations

by Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America

The Brady group and its congressional supporters are proceeding, and making headway,
with a below-radar effort to ban operating firearms from the general public, without
having to actually disarm America’s 80 million gun owners.

The plan is now evolving around an innocent-sounding new legal term. It was tucked
deep in a 400,000-word spending bill under president Clinton (law # P.L. 105-277),
and it is now spreading throughout federal gun laws. Its latest use, the eighth,
is in the frivolous-lawsuit ban just enacted (The Protection of Lawful Commerce
in Arms Act, law # P.L. 109-92; S.397). Described at the end of this report, it
accents a liability all Americans — not just gun owners — are increasingly under,
a tightening legal noose few people realize is around their necks.

The phrase is “secure gun storage or safety device.” It includes almost
anything that will keep a gun from working. At its simplest, it’s gun locks.

This and closely related tactics are sometimes called “decommissioning schemes.”
Gun-control advocates — the mainstream ones who seek to disarm the public — will
essentially win their cause if they can require guns to be disabled, disassembled,
locked up or turned off by remote control.

This approach is already working in National Parks where possession of a working
gun subjects you to immediate federal arrest, confiscation of your property, and
endless aggravation. No criminal act of any kind is required, just legal possession
of personal property — any firearm. However, a gun in pieces so it cannot be fired,
locked in your car trunk is allowed. Interestingly, no statutory authority for this
denial of civil rights can be found. And of course, statutory denial of civil rights
would be unconstitutional on its face.

Washington, D.C., is currently under a similar “decommissioning model”
too, though its registration system gets more attention. In addition to a full ban
on handgun registration since 1976, firearms that were owned before that date cannot
be assembled, or even carried — at home. It’s almost as good as taking the guns
away, from a gun-ban perspective. Any gun use, including legitimate self defense,
implies assembly and carriage, and is banned.

Even the widely hailed federal “Firearm Transportation Guarantee” (law
# 18 USC 926A) relies on decommissioned guns. It was enacted as part of the Firearm
Owners Protection Act in 1986, to help counteract high levels of federal abuse under
the 1968 Gun Control Act. It guarantees a person the right to transport a firearm
from any legal place to any other, anywhere in the country. However, the firearm
must be unloaded and locked in the trunk, rendering it useless. If you bear it in
any manner while you travel, the protection does not apply.

Under Brady-supported decommissioning schemes, you can keep your guns, but if they’re
ever workable, or available, you become a criminal and subject to arrest. It’s pretty
clever actually. And it has been working, even though forced decommissioning is
infringement of the right to keep arms and the right to bear arms.

The Byrne Grant program (law # 42 USC 3760) provides federal money for law-enforcement
firearm training and other purposes. Changed under president Clinton, it now authorizes
federal funding to train the public in the use of… gun locks. Under a gun-unfriendly
administration (anti-rights advocates believe they will have this one day), little
prevents this funding from going into large-scale campaigns to convince people to
only possess decommissioned guns, “for safety.”

While on one hand, who could rationally argue against making guns safe, gun guru
Col. Jeff Cooper has succinctly pointed out that, “A gun that’s safe isn’t
worth anything.”

And that turns out to be the very heart of this gun-ban plan — a gun that’s safe
isn’t worth anything. But gun-rights advocates know guns are dangerous, they are
supposed to be dangerous, and they’re not any good if they’re not dangerous. Anything
requiring guns to be “safe” is the true danger, and the secure storage
device has now become “incentivized.”

The Republican party, in control for half a decade, hasn’t used Byrne Grants for
their other authorized purpose: training the public in “the lawful and safe
ownership, storage, carriage or use of firearms.” Will Republican failure to
use this law (for gun-safety training) also deter Democrats from using it (to promote
gun locks)? Nah. And now, with gun locks slipped into the gun-industry protection
bill…

As the subtle tactic of decommissioned guns continues, the right to keep and bear
arms is at risk. The next time the anti-rights factions slip in the phrase “secure
gun storage or safety device,” you had better look very closely. All it will
take is one use, with the word “required,” to wipe out our cherished Second
Amendment rights. And they won’t have to take your guns away to do it.

OCCURRENCES of “secure gun storage or safety device” (SGSSD)

18 USC 921(34). The “secure gun storage or safety device” is defined.

18 USC 923(d). Dealers are required to carry SGSSDs, unless they are unavailable
due to supply-chain problems outside the dealer’s control.

18 USC 923(e). Dealer’s license can be revoked for failing to carry SGSSDs, unless
they were unavailable due to supply-chain problems.

42 USC 3760. The Byrne Grant law is amended to allow training the public in use
of SGSSDs, and use of firearms.

18 USC 922(z)(1). Dealers now required to provide SGSSDs with every firearm sold.

18 USC 924(p)(1)(A). Stiff fines and license suspension added to penalties for dealers
who fail to provide SGSSDs.

18 USC 922(z)(2). Proper authorities at every level of federal, state and local
government are exempt from the SGSSD laws. Someone should write a paper just on
that.

18 USC 922(z)(3)(A). This was inserted by Brady-backed anti-gun-rights legislators.
It went into the gun-industry-protection, frivolous-lawsuit ban (Oct. 2005): A person
who uses an SGSSD on a gun has liability protection if a criminal steals the gun
and then uses it in criminal activity.

Providing an “incentive” to decommission your firearms, as this law does,
is sinisterly clever. In the name of safety, you are threatened with legal nightmares
that are little more than corrupt abuses of the justice system. These are the actions
of a resolute and unprincipled enemy of the human and civil right to keep and bear
arms.

———-

Note: When a criminal steals your property, and then uses it to harm someone or
violate the law, the criminal — not you — should be liable to the victims. Because
the court system is broken (I’m being nice), such cases often proceed, even if they
have no legal footing to come after you, or grounds to win. Their main purposes
are the huge costs they inflict, the aggravation factor and the chance for a settlement,
all shameful abuses of the court system. Protection from such abuse is the very
thing the gun industry just got under the lawsuit bill (the public was not included
in the protection). All Americans, not just gun owners, are increasingly under this
abominable legal corruption. A man sued Ford because his daughter had a flat. He
lost of course, but frivolous cases used to get their attorneys disbarred. They
no longer do.

Contact:
Alan Korwin
BLOOMFIELD PRESS
“We publish the gun laws.”
4718 E. Cactus #440
Phoenix, AZ 85032
602-996-4020 Phone
602-494-0679 FAX
1-800-707-4020 Orders
http://www.gunlaws.com
[email protected]

We gots ‘em! –

2006 Traveler’s Guide to the Firearm Laws of the 50 States
New 22nd edition of The Arizona Gun Owner’s Guide
New Tenth Anniversary edition of Gun Laws of America

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