What They Introduced: The Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign fizzled, and for that, Second Amendment supporters should be very grateful. As we noted when we covered her platform, her intention was to inflict massive injustices upon law-abiding gun owners in the form of restrictions on our Second Amendment rights for crimes and acts of madness they did not commit.

Worse, she vowed to sic the Internal Revenue Service on perhaps the most prominent organization defending those law-abiding owners from that injustice. Talk about a tin ear when it comes to constitutional rights – you don’t get much worse than using the IRS to punish people – or groups – for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Warren’s dirty political pool, not much different than the political targeting that will earn Andrew Cuomo a reaming from the courts based on recently discovered evidence, is not the major focus of this piece. Instead, we’re dealing with the legislation that she introduced recently, S 3254, the Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act. A companion bill, HR 5717, has been introduced by Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA).

As is the case with legislation introduced by Cory Booker and Eric Swalwell, we get a detailed look at just how our rights will be infringed over crimes and acts of madness that loyal Ammoland readers (not to mention any American seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights) did not commit. Booker, as an aside, has co-sponsored Warren’s legislation.

Warren’s bill is a sweeping assault on our rights. It has licensing, a semi-auto ban, “red flag” provisions, and “safe storage” requirements. The licensing scheme is not as onerous as what Sheila Jackson Lee is proposing (it lasts for ten years), but that isn’t saying much, given that it still turns our Second Amendment rights into a privilege that some bureaucrat can revoke.

That being said, the usual provisions aren’t the worst of this bill. The three real nasty surprises in this legislation will not be the usual attacks Second Amendment supporters are wary about, but which can be just as devastating to our rights.

In her bill, Warren hits Federal Firearms Licensees with massive red tape requirements.

More inspections, background checks for employees, record-keeping requirements, and lost and stolen reporting requirements. Lots of ways to trip up gun dealers, many of whom are small businesses for whom meeting her requirements would be very difficult.

Bad as that is, the next two are much worse – because Warren has set things up to bypass the grassroots efforts of Second Amendment supporters. This one-two punch represents a massive transfer of power away from the people to powerful special interests and bureaucrats.

The first “punch” is the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In other words, Warren will unleash the same unholy alliance of big-city mayors and trial lawyers that threatened to bankrupt the gun industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Second, and worst of all, she now places firearms under the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This, in essence, would allow government bureaucrats to inhibit not just innovation, but to ban guns via administrative edict. And what happens if they were to recall a gun, and you didn’t turn it in? We bet the license renewal might have problems.

Second Amendment supporters should contact their Senators and Representatives and politely urge them to oppose this bill. As a solution for the misuse of firearms, this bill is phonier than a three-dollar 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.