I posted this recently on another forum to demonstrate to another poster, who was whining about how "bad" Bush was for not "restoring" our gun rights. It seems to me that a lot of people are suffering from faulty memories. The Clinton crew WERE after your guns and it was a daily battle to not lose ground to their incessant schemes. I'm not saying Bush couldn't do better, but bashing him, as if Gore or Kerry would not have simply continued in the Clinton's vein, is a true non-starter. Anyway, here is a trip down memory lane:
There was no gun-grabbing scheme or proposal that wasn’t considered or attempted by the Clinton’s and their cronies. You might remember some of the following during the Clinton administration:
Lautenberg Act – An ex-post facto law that used past convictions (or even charges, since dismissed or dropped), regardless of how far back, to make thousands of citizens prohibited possessors. Ironically, take a look at the list of Clinton cronies that Clinton pardoned in his final hours in office.
Juvenile Justice Bill – remember “midnight basketball”?
Brady Bill (circa 1994) – The birth of waiting periods and ultimate evolution of the instant check with the potential for becoming a firearm registry.
Proposed National waiting period for all firearm purchases
Mandatory Trigger Locks
Gun “Buy-Back” schemes funded with Federal tax dollars
Banning firearm ownership in public housing projects
Reduction in the number of FFL dealers via harassment and increased fees
Coercion of firearm manufacturers using liability lawsuits (Smith and Wesson)
Gun-Show “Loophole” legislation “Gun-Shows are Tupperware parties for criminals”
Million Mom March – Spawned by a close associate (Donna Dees-Thomases) of none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton. Donna just happened to be more than just a casual acquaintance of none other than Dan Rather.
Demonizing “Sniper Rifles”
Shutting down gun ranges for environmental reasons (lead)
Resisting “Shall-Issue” with regard to Concealed Carry and concealed carry in general
Registration schemes
One-Gun-a-Month schemes
.50 caliber bans
Ordered a study of "armor piercing bullets" designed to redefine that term in a way that would outlaw all ammunition
Proposed “taggants” be placed in all gun powder
Center for Disease Control (CDC) fraudulent anti-gun studies funded by tax dollars
Mandatory child-safety locks on all guns sold
Extension of an existing ban on juvenile possession of handguns to include semiautomatic assault rifles; also, a ban on importation of all ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, an extension of current law banning imports of those made since 1994
Background checks on buyers for all gun-show sales
A lifetime ban on gun ownership for people who commit violent crimes as juveniles
A three-day waiting period for all handgun purchases, with an additional two days if law officers need them to complete their investigation
Mandatory prison sentences of three to 10 years and $10,000 fines for adults, including parents, who allow children access to guns.
Banning firearms within certain distances of schools (ultimately struck down by the courts)
And who could forget how AGS, HCI, VPC, the Million Mom March, and Bill Clinton’s continuing claim that guns kill 12 "children" per day.
Remember Clinton’s “100,000 new cops on the street” garbage? Well, it never was anything more than smoke and mirrors in reality. Clinton had no use for police officers, other than using them for his political ambitions and ends, especially when it came to gun control.
There was also his coercion of police groups:
Link Here
Other police groups such as the National Sheriffs Association and the Fraternal Order of Police which, previous to the Clinton era, tended to be neutral or leaning toward a pro-Second Amendment stance, were influenced into taking pro-gun control stands by the river of political money flowing from the Clinton Administration and its allies.
In one year during the Clinton Administration, the Police Executive Research Forum, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs Association and the Police Foundation collectively hauled in $4.4 million in Justice Department grants. Before then the Department of Justice dollars flowed just as freely. The International Association of Chiefs of Police raked in over $630,000. National Sheriffs Association cheerfully pocketed $516,943. The Police Executive Research Forum netted $447,343. The Police Foundation accepted a more modest $221,634.
Add up the totals ($1.8 million before, $4.4 million after) and you get a small peek at the economic and political clout the Clinton White House wielded in shaping public policy and buying national police groups into line. Every federal dollar dumped into law enforcement bank accounts is quite legal. Each has a perfectly "rational" explanation. It is merely coincidence that the police groups that scurried to do Clinton' bidding happen to be the same ones that were awarded the lucrative federal grants.
With “Bubba Trash”, the contempt for not just gunowners, but citizens in general never held much of a veneer:
President William J. Clinton:
"Assault weapons in the hands of civilians exist for no reason but to inspire fear and wreak deadly havoc on our streets"
Weekly Radio Address to the Nation, Saturday, November 15, 1997; As quoted in The Washington
Post, Nov. 16, 1997 on Page A12.
President William J. Clinton:
"It's not going to kill anybody to wait a couple of days to get a handgun while we do a background check on somebody that wants to buy a gun."
Army Times, September 22, 1997
President William J. Clinton:
"The fights I fought... cost a lot --the fight for the assault-weapons ban cost 20 members their seats in Congress. The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House."
Cleveland Plain-Dealer, January 14, 1995
President William J. Clinton:
"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities."
MTV's "Enough is Enough", March 22, 1994
President William J. Clinton:
"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say."
May 29, 1993
President William J. Clinton:
"The Constitution is a radical document... it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights."
on MTV - 1992
President William J. Clinton:
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles...that we are unable to think about reality."
USA Today, March 11, 1993
President William J. Clinton:
"It has come to my attention that certain answers my staff and I entered on your candidate questionnaire have been misinterpreted to suggest that I favor stricter gun controls than the status quo or that I differ with the NRA position on these issues. Neither is the case. I am against any legislation or regulation on gun control that goes beyond the current law, and am in support of the NRA position on gun control."
October 11, 1982 letter to NRA regarding governor's race in Arkansas
President William J. Clinton:
"Well, the Supreme Court says there's a constitutional right to travel," Clinton said. "But we license car owners, and we register cars, and we have speed limits, and we have child safety restraint laws, and we have seat belt laws ... When's the last time you heard somebody stand up and give a speech about the eminent evils of car control?"
Hillary Clinton at the Million Mom March:
“Mothers have a very simple Mother's Day message. We don't want flowers or jewelry. We don't want a nice card or a fancy meal as much as we want our Congress to do the right thing to protect our children."
There has been some speculation over just how "grassroots" the Million Mom March really was. In introducing the organizer of the MMM, CNN reported "the march is the brainchild of a New Jersey mother, Donna Dees-Thomases, who conceived of the idea as she watched footage of a shooting at an area day camp."
What none of the television media outlets told you and few of the newspapers asked, is who was Donna Dees-Thomases?. Ms. Dees-Thomases had served as the publicist for the CBS News anchor Dan Rather, and is also sister-in-law of Susan Thomases who was a close friend and the chief political adviser to Hillary Clinton.The media knew of this information but failed to inform its viewers or readers. In the end, it was that darn “alternative media via the internet” that exposed the MMM as yet another Clintonian brainchild, concocted with help of none other than the leftist mainstream media.
Ultimately, the MMM folded up after its finances as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization could not bear scrutiny and HCI took them over.
National debt out the roof, consumer goods prices at an altime high and rising, our military people getting killed daily, civil liberties being ground beneith the heal of a tyranical government, and every thing looking worse for the immediate future.