Fellow Conservative,
For weeks, we have been blowing the whistle on a new regulation making its way through the Obama administration that has drastic First and Second Amendment implications.
The regulation is being added to what is known as ITAR, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. This is the system of regulations that stop Americans from sending weapons or ammunition to foreign terrorists like Al Qaeda or ISIS.
This is supposed to be limited to tangible weapons. Now, the Obama administration wants to apply the same regulations to ideas and speech.
If you talk about the technical details of firearms or ammunition online, and it is even remotely possible that foreigners would be able to read it, then you would be a FELON. The Obama administration would throw you in jail for up to 20 years and charge you a $1 million fine. How’s that for freedom of speech?
This regulation has already been added to the Federal Register. The State Department is aiming to “address the electronic transmission and storage of unclassified ‘technical data’ via foreign communications infrastructure.” In layman’s terms: if you talk about firearms online, and foreigners could possibly learn from it, you’d be a felon.
This is unacceptable!
At face value, this is incredibly dangerous. It would outlaw gun speech on the Internet. No more how-to videos and no more reviews. It would outlaw pretty much every type of speech related to guns.
We racked our brains for a long time over this. Why would the Obama administration be so interested in controlling speech? Then it hit us. This is about so much more than speech.
The Obama administration wants to stop the American people from building their own firearms.
Last year, the Left failed to pass legislation to ban 3D printed and homemade firearms. Right now, it is completely legal federally to build your own firearm for personal use.
The Left wants to put a stop to that. They want to force Americans to buy registered and serialed firearms. That has always been the end-game: to create a registry of American gun owners.
The first step towards confiscation has always been registration.
The one gap in the Left’s plan is the fact that Americans have the freedom to build their own firearms. There’s nothing nefarious about this at all. It isn’t criminal to want to build your own firearm. It is a constitutional right.
That’s the end goal of this regulation. Not only does Obama want to make it a felony to create or consume gun content on the internet, but he wants to make it illegal to share gun designs across the internet. This is completely unconstitutional!
Here’s the bad news: the State Department just closed the comment period on this regulation. They are no longer accepting comments from the public or Congress. That means that this regulation could become permanent literally at any moment.
No warning… No notice… That is what makes this so dangerous and that is why we fight against EVERY gun control executive action!
It’s easy to become complacent now that gun control has faded from the headlines. But you can’t let your guard down.
Thomas Jefferson famously said that “eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.” This isn’t a fight we want, but it is a fight we must wage.
Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
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