10/13/2011
In a recent column appearing on InfoWars.com, Kurt Nimmo succinctly and correctly pointed out that the federal governmentâs usurpation of State sovereignty, jurisdiction, and authority is worsening. The current case in point is the recent open letter to all firearms dealers by the ATF. Nimmo begins,
âIn its continuing effort to pare down the number of Americans who can exercise their rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has sent a letter to firearms dealers informing them that medical patients âaddictedâ to legally dispensed medical marijuana have no right to own and possess firearms.
âAccording to Arthur Herbert, Assistant Director of Enforcement Programs and Services at the ATF, âany person who uses or is addicted to marijuana, regardless of whether his or her State has passed legislation authorizing marijuana use of medicinal purposes, is an unlawful user or addicted to a controlled substance, and is prohibited by Federal law from possessing firearms or ammunitionâ and will be compelled to admit the prescribed use of medical marijuana on ATF forms at the point of purchase.â
Nimmo goes on to point out, âMore significantly, the ATFâs move to deny cancer and other patients medical marijuana is part of a larger attempt to roll back the Second Amendment by color of law and also attack statesâ rights as guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment.â
And itâs not just medical marijuana and cancer patients that the ATFâand its water boys in Congressâwants to deny Second Amendment rights to. As has been previously reported, many of our nationâs veterans are also on the âhit listâ as not eligible to keep and bear arms.
See the report here.
Beyond that, any person who has been diagnosed with a âmental disorderâ is also in the cross hairs for having their Second Amendment rights expunged. And, of course, âmental disorderâ could include anyone from a returning combat veteran who suffers from âpost-traumatic stress disorder,â or âcombat fatigue,â to someone who was prescribed medication for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) as a child, to someone who was diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder. In other words, the federal government wants the power to classify just about anyone it wants to as having a âmental disorderâ and, therefore, be denied their right to keep and bear arms.
But there is even more. Nimmo writes,
âIn 2009, Democrat and notorious gun-grabber Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced The No Fly, No Buy Act (H.R. 2401), a bill that would have merged the TSAâs no-fly list with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a point-of-sale system for determining eligibility to purchase a firearm.
âThe current mayor of Chicagoâthe largest anti-Second Amendment city in the country after New York Cityâand former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel proposed that anybody on the fedâs no-fly list (numbering in the tens of thousands) should have their Second Amendment stripped.â
Of course, if having oneâs name on the no-fly list makes one a terrorist, why wasnât former senator Ted Kennedy so identified? It is a matter of public record that he was detained several times by TSA agents, because his name kept showing up on the no-fly list.
Nimmo concludes his column by saying, âThe feds are determined to whittle away at the Second Amendment and this under-handed effort to make gun dealers responsible for determining if their customers are marijuana âaddictsââunder penalty of losing their licensesâis part of the long term plan to disarm the American people.â
See Nimmoâs column here.
This draconian decision by the ATF hits people in my home State of Montana especially hard. Under the laws of the State of Montana, a person is lawfully allowed to receive prescribed amounts of medical marijuana for legitimate health reasons (I know many of these people personally). And contrary to what anyone inside the Beltway says, marijuana in medicinal amounts has been proven to greatly assist people who suffer from a variety of maladies. Furthermore, the misuse of alcoholâwhich is also known to help treat a variety of illnesses in medicinal amounts, which even the Holy Scripture collaborates in I Timothy 5:23âinflicts far greater havoc upon both the individual user and society in general than marijuana has or could ever inflict.
It is also true that the so-called âwar on drugsâ by the federal government is not only an abject failure, it has become a tool by which power-hungry despot-wannabes strip hundreds of thousands of harmless, peaceful Americans of their freedoms and liberties. There are tens of thousands of people languishing behind prison walls that have never harmed a single person, have never stolen, have never committed an act of violence, or have never even shown the slightest aggression toward a fellow human being. They languish for decades and even for a lifetime in harsh prison conditions because of this never-ending, always escalating âwar on drugs.â
Talk about a financial cost to taxpayers: the cost of incarcerating tens and hundreds of thousands of harmless, nonviolent drug usersânot to mention the cost of investigating, arresting, arraigning, and trying themâliterally dwarfs whatever the cost would be to let them live peacefully in society, or even to allow churches and special-needs ministries and hospitals to treat them.
But a few things the âwar on drugsâ does accomplish is it serves as a major reason to increase federal funding for all kinds of Gestapo-like tactics at every level of government; it provides justification for governmental restrictions of civil liberties; and it is a major excuse for the exponential growth of the emerging police state. And dare I even mention the fact that it is now absolutely certain that persons (at the highest levels) and agencies within the federal government have been (and are) reaping gargantuan profits via illegal drug trafficking. As one retired federal agent (thatâs right, federal agent) who was personally involved in the fedsâ âwar on drugsâ for decades personally told me, âChuck, the federal government hates competition.â (Iâm not making it up; thatâs what he said.) Oh yes! It also allows the ATF to deny Second Amendment rights to more and more people!
America desperately needs State governors to draw a line in the sand against this federal leviathan for the protection of the liberties and freedoms of the citizens within his or her State! Let me say it bluntly: we desperately need a State governors to tell the feds to go to Hades! If State leaders would stop cooperating with and submitting to these would-be tyrants, I am convinced the people of the states would rally behind them in record numbers and speed! I am absolutely convinced that this would be the case in the Mountain States anyway. And when the feds attempt to withhold federal tax dollars from these courageous, albeit recalcitrant states, it needs to be remembered that the states can do likewise. They can withhold tax revenues from the feds: two can play that game! All it would take would be a plucky governor with enough backbone to do it!
In the meantime, combat veterans, people who have taken certain prescription drugs, people who have shown up on no-fly lists, and now people who have been lawfully issued a particular medical card can be denied their right to keep and bear arms by the US government. When will the American people ever have enough?
Dr. Chuck Baldwin left the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida to move to Montana in 2010. He hosts a weekly radio show. His website is here.