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July In a historic moment, NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox addressed the Republican National Convention about the grave threat to the Second Amendment posed by a Hillary Clinton presidency. The next day, Clinton’s attack dogs were out in force, desperately trying to discredit the case Mr. Cox methodically built against her.
Massachusetts attorney General Maura Healey unilaterally banned thousands of previously legal guns. She alleged that the ban’s definition of “copy” or “duplicate” “assault weapons” had been misinterpreted for the last 18 years and she was simply the first law enforcement official to discover this incorrect interpretation.
Hillary Clinton and establishment Democrats embraced gun control at the Philadelphia convention. In her speech, Clinton insisted, “I'm not here to take away your guns. I just don't want you to be shot by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place.” Again and again, the convention’s organizers made sure the issue of “gun violence” was front and center.
As members of his party were gathering in Philadelphia, the Obama Administration once again released a sweeping gun control measure by executive fiat. This was done through the U.S. State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). DDTC began labeling commercial gunsmiths as “manufacturers” for performing relatively simple work such as threading a barrel or fabricating a small custom part for an older firearm. Under the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), “manufacturers” are required to register with DDTC at significant expense or risk onerous criminal penalties.
August The California Rifle & Pistol Association and several individuals, with the support of the National Rifle Association, filed a lawsuit in federal court to vindicate the Second Amendment right of Californians to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. Flanagan v. Harris would broaden the scope of an earlier lawsuit by challenging California’s open carry laws, in addition to state and local restrictions that deny concealed carry licenses to law-abiding citizens.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane resigned after a jury found her guilty of perjury, criminal conspiracy, and several other criminal charges relating to the abuse of her position. Gun owners took particular interest in this conviction, as during her tenure as AG, Kane repeatedly demonstrated a marked hostility to the rights of Pennsylvanians, evidently while displaying a personal disregard for the laws she was tasked to uphold.
Amid social and economic strife that threatened to topple the regime of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan government employed a favorite tactic of tyrants the world over, further gun control. Reuters reported that Venezuela Interior Minister Nestor Reverol ramped up efforts to disarm the populace through a program of confiscation and gun turn-ins.
September In the summer, ATF had released an Explosives Industry Newsletter that changed the agency’s treatment of nitrocellulose, which had the potential to seriously disrupt ammunition supply in the United States. By September, they issued an addendum announcing that it “will conduct further industry outreach concerning wetted Nitrocellulose. In the interim, previously authorized industry practices concerning wetted Nitrocellulose will not be affected.”
Hillary Clinton labeled millions of Americans who supported Donald Trump as “Deplorable” and “Irredeemable.” She stated, “…you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” because of what she described as their “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views. “Now,” she continued, “some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg donated a cool $300 million for the School of Public Health that bears his name at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Demonstrating the ex-mayor’s typical hubris, “the Bloomberg American Health Initiative” seeks to increase life expectancy of people in the U.S. by tackling issues from a “public health” perspective, which includes pursuing restrictive gun control.
Democratic VP Candidate Tim Kaine on gun control: “I can't think of an issue I'd rather be aligned with than this” Among his many anti-gun efforts, as Mayor of Richmond, Kaine once used more than $6,000 in public funds to charter eight buses to support the “Million” Mom March in Washington, D.C...........
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