(RightWing.org) – As Christmas Day approaches, many on the Right might think that the Grinch has moved to Washington D.C., via the state of Maine. Senator Angus King (I-ME) — who caucuses with the Democrats — introduced a bill that, like so many do these days, used nearly the entire dictionary so that they can call it by a cute acronym, called the “‘Gas-Operated Semi-Automatic Firearms Exclusion (GOSAFE) Act.” It is the Left’s latest ploy to circumvent the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
Looks Don’t Matter
Perhaps the only sensible thing that comes from King’s press release about the act is his claim that “for years I have said that rather than using the appearance of these guns,” a reference to the panic and swooning by Liberals at the mere photograph of an AR-15 style rifle. “Gas-operated” is one way that allows a new bullet to feed from the attached magazine into the firing chamber; the other method is the recoil or inertia style, which uses the power of the gunpowder explosion in the casing to accomplish the same thing.
Joining in with King “Grinch” are Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Michael Bennett of Colorado, all Democrats. Heinrich’s announcement provided a flowchart trying to explain what would fall under the new regulation (basically the sale, manufacture, and transfer) and what would not.
What is left unregulated reads like something one might have seen in Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone, weapons like single shot, breach loading, smoothbore, or muzzleloading. All of those involved have made statements similar to what King did claiming that they are “safeguarding law-abiding Americans’ constitutional right to own a firearm for legitimate self-defense, hunting and sportsmen purposes.”
In replies that should surprise absolutely no one, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) are vehemently opposed to this legislation. In a statement to Fox News, Randy Kozuch, the former NRA executive director of the Institute for Legislative Action, said it “blatantly violates the U.S. Constitution… while doing nothing to take guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.”
The Opposition
In a press release from the NSSF, they also challenged the constitutionality of the measure pointing to the 2008 SCOTUS decision in the District of Columbia v. Keller. Taking a look at the Second Amendment, which reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” the court decided there are two elements.
In the 5-4 opinion, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause.” That means that the section about the “well regulated Militia” is only meant as one reason that Americans may own firearms and that serving in the military is not a prerequisite.
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