Gun Owners of Vermont | Honorable Members of Congress:

After the latest terrorist aggression in Orlando, gun control advocates wasted little time to cynically exploit tragedy in pursuing their pre-ordained agenda to restrict or eliminate Americans’ rights under the Second Amendment.

President Barack Obama immediately renewed his calls for banning semi-automatic firearms, which are functionally identical to many common hunting rifles, knowing full well that bans on such firearms – indeed, some of the world’s most stringent gun laws – recently failed to stop two mass killings in Paris (November 13, 2015, 137 dead, 368 injured and January 7, 2015, 19 dead, 22 injured) and Brussels (35 dead, over 300 injured). Given the terrorists procured guns illegally, they did the only logical thing by using not the semi-automatic firearms used in Orlando and San Bernardino, but rather fully automatic machine guns.

Meanwhile, Senator Chris Murphy first filibustered for and then caused to be introduced S. Amdt. 4750 to H.R. 2758 for “universal background checks,” knowing full well that Orlando killer Omar Mateen underwent two such background checks on June 4 and 5.

But most disingenuous are claims by Obama and others that, “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous…to buy a gun.” Beyond the fact that such proposals aren’t really about barring guns to the 100,000 people on the Transportation Security Administration “No-Fly List,” but rather the (by extrapolating ACLU estimates) 2,000,000+ on the secret FBI “Terrorist Watch List,” former constitutional law professor Obama knows full well that unlike boarding an airplane, two Supreme Court decisions have affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental civil right and therefore subject to due process under the Fifth Amendment.

In late June, despite the fact that Omar Mateen wasn’t on the Terrorist Watch List and in clear contravention of the Second and Fifth Amendments, Sen. Diane Feinstein offered S. Amdt. 4720 to S. Amdt. 4685 of H.R. 2758, which would have allowed the Attorney General to indefinitely prohibit a person from buying a firearm, even in ex parte proceedings, forcing the person to spend untold sums of money to regain his or her rights.

But it isn’t the attacks from Sens. Feinstein, Charles Schumer or others who have spent decades working to restrict American freedom that should most alarm us, but rather reports of Republican plans to “compromise.” While the Coalition thanks Speaker Paul Ryan for his recent declaration that, “We’re not going to take away a citizen’s rights without due process”, a recent article in The Hill said: “A week after Democrats staged a nearly 26-hour sit-in demanding a vote on gun control measures, Speaker Paul Ryan…said the House will vote next week on legislation to block suspected terrorists from buying guns.” Some conjecture a House proposal might mirror Sen. John Cornyn’s S. Amdt. 4749, which amounted to little more than “Feinstein Lite.”

We will not ‘compromise’

“Compromise” in the gun debate generally denotes a process in which Second Amendment supporters lose slightly less than under an original proposal, but they still lose. Therefore, the members of the National Coalition to Stop the Gun Ban have agreed that we will not compromise on gun control proposals under debate:

We will not compromise on universal gun registration schemes being disguised as “universal background checks;”

We will not compromise on attempts to ban semi-automatic firearms or, for that matter, any other type of firearm lawfully possessed by Americans; and

In particular, we will not compromise on any attempt to restrict American civil rights, including Second Amendment rights, without due process of law.

Coalition members will not accept ‘secret lists’

Coalition members will not accept denial of fundamental civil rights to people placed on secret lists. America has travelled this road before, and the landscape wasn’t pretty. Widespread violations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties in the 1950s against “subversives” on secret blacklists compiled by the FBI were so shockingly un-American they earned their own moniker: McCarthyism. Neither will we accept proposals which require individuals never convicted of crimes to appeal denied purchases, forcing them to spend time, money and effort to regain lost liberties.

Politicians cannot hide behind the NRA

Politicians frequently introduce anti-gun legislation under the cover of an NRA endorsement. But the signatory organizations of the National Coalition to Stop the Gun Ban do not answer to the NRA and will, in fact, coordinate action to deliver political retribution to any legislator who supports, by any means, the gun control proposals listed above. To that end, we will track public statements, sponsorship, votes and procedural actions.

With respect to Terrorist Watch List proposals in particular, secret lists are the progeny of tyrants, dictators and fascists. Any individual or organization which assists in any way a bill, amendment or procedural tactic to curtail Second Amendment freedoms or due process under the Fifth Amendment will be equally subject to Coalition action.

Respectfully,

The National Coalition to Stop the Gun Ban

Coalition Signatories

National Organizations:

The Firearms Coalition

Jeff Knox, Managing Director

Chris Knox, Director of Communications

Gun Owners of America

Larry D. Pratt, Executive Director Emeritus

Rights Watch International

F. Paul Valone, Executive Director

USRKBA.org