This is excerpted from my Libertarians of Greater Cincinnati email newsletter.
[i]HR 31 The Citizens Self-Defense Act is in Congress. It’s being pushed by GOA, Gun Owners of America. www.Thomas.gov finds its text. In the FINDINGS heading, Congress FINDS that the police cannot protect, and cannot be liable for failing to protect, individual citizens. . . Courts have decided that police assume a duty only to protect the public at large, not individual members of the community. (Exactly what does that mean?) It must mean something, because that’s what courts have decided.
Also, every year more than 2,400,000 people in the US use guns to defend themselves against criminals—more than 6500 a day. More than 192,000 of these are women defending themselves against sexual abuse.
And, law-abiding citizens are routinely prosecuted for brandishing or using a gun in self-defense.
So, HR31 would allow a citizen to possess and use a firearm to defend his life and property. HR 1455, the States’ Rights and Second and Tenth Amendment restoration act, would repeal the Lautenberg gun ban. This would end gun bans for domestic violence, which has no connection to interstate commerce, hence is no business of Congress.
HR 950 would extend the right to carry a concealed weapon from a person’s home state to any state in the nation.
Gun Owners of America is pushing for these changes. I don’t own a gun, but I (and Ron Paul) support them.
We used to have a Constitution, with its Second Amendment. Now nobody reads the constitution, so we need special legislation to restore the rights it contains—wrong. Not to restore any rights—to restrict government to the limitations therein.[/i]