United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- Sometimes, when legislation is targeting your Second Amendment rights, it doesn’t necessarily come in the form of a ban or licensing and registration. Sometimes, the worst infringements are those that literally make it impossible for people to exercise their Second Amendment rights in one way or another without risking arrest (and worse).
It could be anything from closing land used for hunting. It could be a noise ordinance that shutters the range you went to for years. It could even be something as simple as making it impossible to defend yourself without entering a state of legal jeopardy.
This last item is what HR 4080, the Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act, that is the third part of a three-bill package introduced by Sheila Jackson Lee (the others are HR 4081 and HR 4082), does to Americans who are exercising their Second Amendment rights. In a very real sense, it makes having your firearm ready for perhaps its most important role – personal protection in your home – a federal crime.
Loyal AmmoLand News readers can see for themselves in the text of the legislation. Literally the only safe harbor to avoid prosecution for having a firearm in your home be stolen and misused is to have your firearms and ammo “secured, unloaded, and separately, in a safe certified by the Attorney General” while the firearm itself is “locked with a trigger lock certified by the Attorney General.”
How viable is that firearm as an option for self-defense? The short answer is that the firearm is NOT viable. But if you don’t render the firearm non-viable as an option, you could face 20 years in prison. Felons in possession of firearms only face a maximum of ten years under 18 USC 922 and 18 USC 924. Jackson Lee’s proposal is worse. If you do get convicted, the Attorney General keeps the firearm and ammo at your expense.
There are no provisions for the return of the firearm and ammo. Eventually, the expenses will just mount until you decide to give it up. Which is part of the idea. The other nasty provision is that one self-defense scenario that has emerged at times can also lead to that 20-year sentence.
So, imagine if there is a situation where a 16-year-old grabs a firearm and used it to protect their family. During that moment, they fire shots and send the assailants fleeing. Under an anti-Second Amendment president, we could very well see an appointed U.S. Attorney order a prosecution.
Like HR 4081, the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act, this bill is named for a victim of the Santa Fe High School shooting. Again, Sheila Jackson Lee wants to try to deflect criticism from those with legitimate objections to this legislation.
The fact is that there are laws on the books punishing the theft of firearms. There are laws that handle those who willingly hand over firearms to felons and other prohibited persons. HR 4082 simply attacks the right to self-defense. Second Amendment supporters should contact their Representative and Senators and politely urge them to defeat this bill.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics, and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
Sheila Jackson Lee bears a close resemblance to that proverbial “turd in a punch bowl.”
Will, that’s an insult to gorillas. They don’t look THAT bad!
I was thinking the exact same thing when I read Will’s post!
I leave mine in a locked box at all times. My house is the locked box. Doesn’t that count?
They want to require DOJ approved lock box for ammo plus approved trigger lock on gun – doesn’t sound like safe provides an exception to that either.
Doesn’t take much ammo to require a larger safe either…
Even the most brain dead could not fail to recognize that without exception to on body possession, this “infringes” on “bear” even though one could (fallaciously) argue it doesn’t infringe upon “keep”.
One of the things Texas has to be embarrassed over…. Sheila Jackson Lee-and her voting base-are such that people with Down’s Syndrome look at her,and walk away mumbling” f@cking retarded”…
Many of her “constituents” are evacuees from New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit. They never left Houston and, viola, we have her voting bloc.
Another description for those would be “flotsam.”
@RoyD – Would prefer they were jetsam as they would have simply sunk, never to be seen again.
Why wouldn’t they try to pass everything that’s long been on their “wish list”?
“Never let a crisis go to waste” -Saul Alinsky, but repeated by virtually every politician since he wrote the damn book in 1971!
All one needs to know is that, if Silly Jackson Lee’s name is in any way attached to a piece of legislation, that legislation is garbage & needs to be spindled, mutilated, shredded, burned, and the ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven.
Just another attack on the Second Amendment. And that old liberal/socialist dumb hag of a frog faced large mouth bass, Sheila Jackson is behind it–of course, why not, gun is a three letter word, at least she can spell that!
1. That woman is a total disgrace to TX and the USA. Who the phukk votes for such a no-talent ass clown? Repeatedly? Really? Come on people!
2. The silver lining to this “pandemic”, besides better personal hygiene and proper sanitation, is many more people are realizing the importance of our 2A – even the libtards and dim-voting commies want guns now. To protect themselves. What a novel idea! Perhaps there is more hope for the Constitution again? Perhaps idiots like SJL, who push this commie crap legislation will finally witness the pushback they deserve?
She basically represents the 3rd Ward of Houston- a “safe” district that was created so that only a specific minority could be elected therefrom.
Yessir, yessir, either never got the memo for “what have they got to lose” by ejecting these DO NOTHING but self-enrich themselves dweebs or, have not yet reached a level of understanding to comprehend that they have ‘been used!’
The perpetual game of whack-a-mole continues, on and on and on and on and on…. Because they know all they need to do is wait just a little bit longer and they will have crapped out enough brain dead idiots from the “education” system to outnumber us all and to eagerly vote for (and viciously defend) this kind of garbage. At the rate of 4 to 5 million gun grabbing, Marx snuggling islammunists churned out of the indoctrination camps here each and every year, do you really need a tempest prognosticator to see where we’re all headed? Just the other… Read more »
In fact, let’s just make Harold’s new job as a “radar” columnist easy.
UNDER THE RADAR: Everything that will be proposed from now until coronavirus is just a memory. EVERYTHING, all 872,391 of them. It will all be using the corona virus as a distraction away from more important matters… like finding toilet paper.
All done. Beat you to it Harold!
DC v Heller held that it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL to require a gun in the home to be locked or disassembled. Why is anyone even giving this legislation two cents worth of attention? It is dead on arrival, and just a vanity bill for a vapid, narcissistic empty suit legislator.
Anybody considering ANYTHING proposed by this Jackson-Lee congressional barnacle is terminally late for their needed lobotomy! As noted, this piece of baloney is useful for one thing only, making sure you will have NO hope when that Zero Dark Thirty, No Knock, break-in through your door happens. These anti-American dweebs need to be visited by EVERY law-abiding gun owner in their districts to ‘instruct’ them on that their “God-Given Right” to self-defense of themselves and others, by ANY appropriate means ANYWHERE, is NOT theirs to infringe on!!
In other news, the hippie dippie weather man has retired after making his final prediction: “Off and on, the weather is going to keep changing for a long, long time…”
Under this law the Attorney General can effectively ban gun by no approving any gun safes or lock, or just prohibitively expensive ones. And is there any time you can take them out of storage? NAF was set up so only the rich could afford the $200 tax stamp, another 2 tier exercise of rights. and the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act to stop the supply of more full auto weapons. Personally I have not use for a full auto. They use a lot of ammo without a lot of hitting. I still believe I should have the option of… Read more »
This law is to effectively ban guns, by the Attorney General just not approving any gun safes or gun locks, or prohibitively expensive safes and locks.