By Dan Freedman
WASHINGTON — House Republicans, accusing President Barack Obama
of waging a war on gun owners, plan to cut off funding for an
administration rule requiring firearms dealers in border states to
report multiple sales of certain rifles.
The matter has become a hot issue on both sides of the national gun
control divide, elevating the debate over the Second Amendment in an
election year in which the president is struggling to win again in
pro-gun swing states such as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Virginia.
Obama has vowed to veto the House's plan to prohibit the government
from enforcing the border-state reporting requirement, which is
contained in a larger $51 billion spending package.
House floor debate on the package began Tuesday and could continue into next week.
“The Obama administration fundamentally dislikes guns, and more importantly it distrusts gun owners,” said Rep. Denny Rehberg,
R-Mont., author of the de-funding provision. “They also know that a
frontal assault on the Second Amendment would be political suicide, so
instead they've sought to undermine gun rights more subtly.”
At issue is an Obama administration rule that requires about 8,500
firearms dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to notify
the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives every time they sell two or more high-powered rifles to the same customer within five days.
The White House said the mandate, implemented last August, was
designed to curb gun sales to agents of violent Mexican drug cartels.
The rule prompted protests and lawsuits from gun rights advocates who
argued the president overstepped his legal authority to regulate
firearms transactions.
“We're being treated more or less like criminals,” said Alex Hamilton, a San Antonio gunsmith and dealer who specializes in remodeling antique weaponry. “It's very discriminatory.”
Gun control advocates such as Dennis Henigan, vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, say the move by House Republicans is “anti-law-enforcement.”
The administration's action “is allowing ATF to make cases against
straw buyers and gun traffickers that ATF could not make before the rule
went into effect,” Henigan said.
ATF officials insist the requirement already has yielded information
agents are using to break up Mexican cartel gun-trafficking rings. Since
August, ATF has received over 3,000 reports involving more than
7,300 rifles.
Texas gun dealers have submitted 1,900 reports involving over 4,600 rifles — the highest of the four states.
The reports have sparked the opening of 120 criminal investigations,
ATF officials say. Those in turn have led to 25 prosecutions of more
than 100 defendants.
Officials point to a Texas case in which a gun dealer's
multiple-sales reports helped pinpoint an arms trafficker who purchased
28 weapons from a dealer in McAllen. Agents have arrested nine
individuals in the trafficker's ring.
Since the 1970s, ATF has required all gun dealers nationwide to
report multiple sales of handguns. That requirement was written into the
landmark 1968 Gun Control Act, enacted after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.
But gun-rights advocates argue the Obama administration must seek
congressional approval if it wants to extend the handgun requirement to
rifles — something that's not likely to happen as long as gun-friendly
Republicans control the House.
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