Gun Club

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed that it be given emergency authority for six months, beginning January 5, to require about 8,500 firearms dealers along the border with Mexico “to alert authorities when they sell within five consecutive business days two or more semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber with detachable magazines.” A Washington Post story reporting on the BATFE proposal described that definition as being applicable to “so-called assault weapons,” but it would also apply to many rifles that have never been labeled with that term.

The reporting requirement will apparently be imposed under the “authority” the BATFE has used in the past to demand reporting of other types of transactions from certain limited groups of dealers over the past 10 years, but the new proposal is far broader than any previous use of this authority. Of course, there’s no law today that prevents dealers from reporting suspicious transactions (or attempted transactions) to the BATFE, and dealers often do so. The BATFE is also free to inspect dealers’ sales records–either for annual compliance inspections or during a criminal investigation.

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Please urge your Representative and Senators to oppose this abuse of federal power.

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The Ohio Supreme Court upheld a law prohibiting cities and other local governments from enforcing ordinances that are more restrictive than state gun laws.

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The White House is finally stepping up the fight against the movement of illegal guns across the United States’ border with Mexico.

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History gives no cause to think James Madison opposed gun regulation.

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Congress, enthralled with the gun lobby, has done nothing about a loophole increasingly at the heart of the Mexican drug wars.

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The N.R.A.’s argument that people 18 to 20 years old have a constitutional right to buy weapons and carry them in public is breathtakingly irresponsible.

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Lawmakers who oblige the gun lobby need to ask themselves: Is this really why I was elected?

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Two advocates said a firearm would serve as a deterrent, and a city councilman said he wanted to require proprietors to install security cameras.

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a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04guns.html?partner=rssnytemc=rss”img src=”http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/10/04/us/GUNS1_span/JP-GUNS-2-thumbStandard.jpg” border=”0″ height=”75″ width=”75″ hspace=”4″ align=”left”/aGun rights advocates applauded four states that recently enacted laws allowing loaded guns in bars.

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