Sounds like just what we need. NOT! I see thousands of decent gun owners going to jail or fined, and worse, losing their right to own a firearm. I've already heard horror stories from VA's Project Exile. Now Bush wants to implement the same thing nation wide, and hire all these new prosocuters specifiaclly for gun crimes? This ain't good.
[url]www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/06-18-2001/insider/vo17no13_gun_control.htm[/url]
Vol. 17, No. 13
June 18, 2001
Table of Contents More on Gun Control
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Bush and Gun Control
On April 14th, President Bush unveiled his kinder, gentler, and blatantly unconstitutional gun control agenda. Captioned "Project Safe Neighborhoods" (PSN), it calls for an expansion of federal authority and spending under the guise of waging war on gun-related crime.
PSN is largely an expanded version of the 1997 Project Exile program that originated in Richmond, Virginia. Long favored by the National Rifle Association, Project Exile utilizes federal laws and resources to prosecute local gun-related crimes, and is predicated on the perilous assumption that existing gun control laws should be stringently enforced.
PSN calls for the expenditure of more than $550 million over two years, including (in fiscal 2001):
$15.3 million for 113 new Assistant United States Attorneys to serve as full-time gun prosecutors;
$75 million to fund approximately 600 new state and local gun prosecutors;
$44 million to upgrade state criminal record keeping;
$41.3 million to expand the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Integrated Violence Reduction Strategy;
$28.8 million to expand and integrate FBI and ATF computerized ballistics technology;
$19.1 million to expand ATF’s Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative;
and technical assistance and support to assist U.S. Attorneys in developing community outreach "toolkits."
The administration’s fiscal 2002 budget would add:
$20 million for new state prosecutors and community task forces to combat juvenile gun crime;
$9.0 million for 94 new Assistant U.S. Attorneys to focus on school gun violence and juvenile gun offenses.
$50 million in grants to enable states to hire new gun prosecutors and conduct community outreach and other gun violence reduction activities;
$75 million in matching grants to states for handgun trigger locks;
and $35 million in grants for improving state criminal record keeping.
The president also reaffirmed his support for a requirement that non-dealers conduct "instant" background checks for private sales at gun shows, and for a ban on the importation of ammunition clips capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
When announcing Project Safe Neighborhoods, Bush cited a litany of statistics dear to the hearts of gun control lobbyists, such as: "Nationally, there were 12,658 murders in 1999, two-thirds of which were shooting deaths"; and "In America today, a teenager is more likely to die from a gunshot than from all natural causes of death combined." In a revealing omission, he completely ignored the estimated 2.5 million incidents each year in which guns are utilized as self-defense rescue tools by peaceful Americans.