The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE, but more commonly known as the BATF) has experienced a bit of turf being taken back in a constitutional legislative move by the state of Tennessee. But now the controversial federal ageny seems poised to fight back.

The move to defend the right to keep and bear arms came in Tennessee. The “Volunteer” state was the first to pass a Firearms Freedom Act that invoked both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to protect citizens’ right to keep and bear arms, and within that, to keep the federal government’s nose out of the gun business inside of the state. With this move, Tennessee has become target number one for the BATFE’s arrogant posturing  for now.

The Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act is a beautiful piece of constitutionalism that passed in June and went into effect without the governor’s signature; it passed in the state senate 22-7 and in the house 87-1. Here are the most inspiring sections:

(1)  The tenth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees to
the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government
elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Tennessee
certain powers as they were understood at the time that Tennessee was
admitted to statehood.  The guarantee of those powers is a matter of contract
between the state and people of Tennessee and the United States as of the time
that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by
Tennessee and the United States; 
 
(2)  The ninth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees to
the people rights not granted in the Constitution and reserves to the people of
Tennessee certain rights as they were understood at the time that Tennessee
was admitted to statehood.  The guarantee of those rights is a matter of contract
between the state and people of Tennessee and the United States as of the time
that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by
Tennessee and the United States.
 
(3)  The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under
the ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if
not expressly preempted by federal law.  Congress has not expressly preempted
state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an
intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition;
 
(4)  The second amendment to the United States Constitution reserves to
the people the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the
time that Tennessee was admitted to statehood, and the guarantee of the right is
a matter of contract between the state and people of Tennessee and the United
States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon
and adopted by Tennessee and the United States; and
 
(5)  The Tennessee Constitution clearly secures to Tennessee citizens,
and prohibits government interference with, the right of individual Tennessee
citizens to keep and bear arms.

The rest of the TFFA enumerates the details of the gun trade within state borders and proclaims, rightly, “The authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce in basic materials does not include authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition made in Tennessee from those materials,” while it clearly states its goal of regulating its own gun trade as it sees fit.

It’s really hard to argue with the clearly specified rights laid out by the Tennessee legislators, so harmonically in tune with the Constitution. So, the BATFE is trying a different variation on a theme; a theme of subtle contempt for the Constitution combined with a touch of officiousness.

The BATFE is now engaged in a letter-writing campaign of sorts, aimed at Tennessee gun dealers, proclaiming their final and supreme authority in the matter. One Tennessee gun dealer posted a letter allegedly from the BATFE with this following excerpt criticizing the TFFA:

The Act purports to exempt personal firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition manufactured in the State, and which remain in the State, from most Federal firearms laws and regulations. However, because the Act conflicts with Federal firearms laws and regulations, Federal law supersedes the Act, and all provisions of the gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act, and their corresponding regulations, continue to apply.

While the case could be made that the BATFE itself is unconstitutional from its inception, its claim that Tennessee’s state rights are in conflict with federal gun laws, and therefore superseded by the federal laws, are spurious at best, and based on years of judicial precedent from incorrect and wrongful interpretation of the Supremacy Clause and the whole notion of interstate commerce regulation by the courts.

One question is, will the state of Tennessee defend its own rights and the rights of its citizens from the inflated egos of the officials of one of the most notorious bureaus in America? If Tennessee chooses not to defend its rights and its citizens, then the Act is so many meaningless words, and not even symbolic in nature.
 

When Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed by New York Governor Dave Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, reports surfaced that the Kennedy family was outraged, due to Gillibrand’s supposed anti-stimulus bill stand, pro-gun rhetoric, and dim view of same sex marriage. The ruling elitist family felt they were being betrayed. That was in January.

My how things change.

This is mid-May, and Gillibrand, who was the National Rifle Association’s top New York state pick as a firm supporter of the Second Amendment, has moved so quickly in the other direction, that she has even surpassed anti-gun Congresswoman Caroline McCarthy (D-NY). She beat McCarthy to the punch in introducing legislation in the Senate to force dealers at gun shows to perform background checks before McCarthy got it into the House.

McCarthy, a one-issue representative — anti-guns, pro-gun control — at one time attacked Gillibrand’s pro-Second Amendment stance. But again, things have changed. "She actually has been signing things we have been sending over to her," McCarthy said. "And I am very happy about it. I just want to make sure she stays there."

Don’t think for a moment that any of these people “represent” the citizenry. (A response letter today from my senator says he votes according to his private preference, proving it.)

So, McCarthy says she will keep up the pressure on Gillibrand. But what that pressure specifically entails, common folks like myself probably have no idea. One supposes that peer pressure is what passes for debate in Congress these days. Intense it must be, to have someone change a decade of political philosophy in just three months. Or was it all just rhetoric to begin with?

Was Gillibrand chosen because of her willingness to play the game? The Village Voice had some interesting commentary on Gillibrand’s political history and ties, from her father, to her former employer, who just happened to give $25,000 to Paterson’s campaign chest, as did the employer’s son, at a critical time.

The real litmus test that will measure Gillibrand’s defense of the Bill of Right’s 2nd Amendment is about to be taken, as McCarthy will be introducing an assault weapons ban bill in the House, and wants Gillibrand to do the same in the Senate, sign on as a co-sponsor, or at the very least be counted on to vote according to the politics and pressure of the day.

As to date, Gillibrand refuses to comment on legislation not yet in the hopper.

Speaking to reporters while standing alongside Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon in Mexico City on April 16, President Barack Obama said he would push the U.S. Senate to ratify a treaty called the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials. The convention, known by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, has not been brought up for a vote in the Senate since it was adopted in 1997. Like all treaties, it would require a two-thirds majority (67 votes) in the upper house to secure ratification.

The treaty, listed on the Senate website, as Treaty Number: 105-49, was signed by the United States and 28 other OAS Member States on November 14, 1997, at the OAS Headquarters in Washington and was transmitted to the Senate on June 09, 1998. It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations by unanimous consent the same day.

Answering a question during a press conference held in Mexico City on April 17, Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, said: “This is one of the priority treaties that we'd like to see the Senate’s advice and consent on.  And, you know, we are working very closely with Senator Reid and many others on a range of issues, to include this.” (Emphasis added.)

Ratifying the CIFTA treaty would be a major threat to our citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. Since none of the other nations that are party to the "Inter-American Convention" share the protections afforded by our Second Amendment, to make our own law subject to the multinational convention would only undermine those protections.

Examining the treaty, we find that its text is worded benignly enough, using such reassuring phrases as “REAFFIRMING the principles of sovereignty, nonintervention, and the juridical equality of states.” However, since the principles of firearms ownership embodied in our Second Amendment are unique in the world, any accommodation with nations that do not enjoy similar protections is bound to dilute our own government’s respect for the Second Amendment. Certain language in the treaty indicates that its authors viewed the right to keep and bear arms differently than Americans are accustomed to. For example, the treaty attempts to reassure its signatories that it “is not intended to discourage or diminish lawful leisure or recreational activities such as travel or tourism for sport shooting, hunting, and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties.”

But in the case of the United States, the right to keep and bear arms is not contingent upon our government’s definition of “lawful ownership” — it is a fundamental right. And that right is designed not merely to allow for “leisure or recreational activities” but for self defense and as the last recourse of the citizenry against a future government that may become totalitarian.

Also disturbing is the treaty’s references to international law and the United Nations. At one point it references “strengthening existing international law enforcement support mechanisms such as the International Weapons and Explosives Tracking System (IWETS) of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), to prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, [etc.]”

As to why international law is significant to us, an article in the Boston Globe for October 28, 2004 reported that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor — in a15-minute speech delivered at Georgetown law school the previous day — had “extolled the growing role of international law in US courts.” The newspaper quoted O’Connor as stating: “'International law is no longer a specialty. . . . It is vital if judges are to faithfully discharge their duties.”

The last thing the United States needs is to be a party to a treaty that creates a precedent in international law regulating the possession of arms, precedent that may later be cited by U.S. judges. Here is a video from Gun Owners of America that discusses the threat to our Second Amendment rights posed by the CIFTA treaty:

Furthermore, the subordination of the OAS to the UN is revealed by the provision of the treaty that provides that copies of it “shall be deposited with the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, which shall forward an authenticated copy of its text to the Secretariat of the United Nations for registration and publication, in accordance with Article 102 of the United Nations Charter.”

The UN has a long history of attempting to regulate arms in a manner incompatible with the U.S. view of the right to keep and bear arms, through bodies such as the UN Security Council Small Arms Ministerial. In his millennium report, We the Peoples, Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared: “Controlling the proliferation of illicit weapons is a necessary first step toward the non-proliferation of small arms. These weapons must be brought under the control of states, and states must be held responsible for their transfer.”

If our borders are secure, we can police the importation of weapons from criminal or terrorist sources all on our own, without becoming entangled in international treaties that may dilute our basic right to keep and bear arms without infringement.

Follow this link to an alert that allows you to email your senators now, urging them to oppose ratification of this dangerous treaty.

To read more about the danger to liberty posed by gun control, we recommend the materials found online at ShopJBS.org.

Wisconsin’s Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued an advisory memo to prosecutors and police departments across his state saying the mere act of having a gun (open carry) does not necessarily warrant a charge of disorderly conduct.

Van Hollen’s memo was the result of an earlier case that saw a backyard tree planter in a suburb of Milwaukee taken down and charged with disorderly conduct for the simple fact that he had a holstered gun strapped to his side.

The memo wasn’t very definitive, saying, “The Department of Justice believes that mere open carry of a firearm, absent additional facts and circumstances, should not result in a disorderly conduct charge,” and citing the state constitutional right to bear arms, Van Hollen still believes that a person who “brandishes a handgun in public” may lose “constitutional protection.” And he said in an interview that still, the act of carrying a gun in public is in itself causing disorder.

Oregon, Wisconsin Police Chief Doug Pettit said the memo didn’t really provide direction for police, “I don’t know if the memo clarifies anything, other than it’s not automatic disorderly conduct charge.” Pettit added that like everything else these days, he would have to use discretion. I recommend to Chief Pettit a good reading and understanding of the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

Van Hollen’s memo cited case precedent advising that the police can approach and question anyone open carrying, and as along as the person remains “free to walk away, there has been no intrusion on liberty.”

But Milwaukee Chief of Police Ed Flynn is refusing to abide by the recommendations of the memo with a rather arrogant and condescending tone:

My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away, and then decide whether you have a right to carry it. Maybe I’ll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I’ve got serious offenders with access to handguns. It’s irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them.

"My troops"? They're police officers.

"Decide whether you have a right to carry it"? Ever heard of due process?

For someone who is supposed to uphold the law, even have a dedication to the law, by totally disregarding that law and infringing on the rights of others to keep and bear arms under the fear of being taken down, Chief Flynn exhibits a certain tyrannical and totalitarian approach, out of line with the Constitution. By defying the law, that’s what Chief Flynn is doing, he breaks it. His advice if put into practice is unconstitutional. It is he who is operating outside the law, by imposing his own rule on others.

The matter of open carry should not be a contentious one. And indeed, in the history of this country it has only become so in modern times.

Objectively, someone carrying a gun is not causing a disorder; this would only be in the eyes of the beholder, the mindset of each individual or of society as a whole who have had their sensibilities manipulated. Usually this happens in societies where limitations and restrictions replace liberties and freedoms, toward a particular goal.