Florida Urgent Alert -- Act Now !! Help Stop Gun Registration

A bill has been introduced by Rep. Lindsay Harrington to prohibit any form of gun registration in Florida. NRA and USF SUPPORT THIS BILL. This bill is scheduled to be heard by the House Judiciary Committee next Wednesday morning, November 19, 2003 at 8:00 A.M.

It is URGENT that you email members of the Judiciary Committee IMMEDIATELY and urge them to support HB-155 to stop gun registration by government agencies, local governments and law enforcement agencies.

In the subject line of your email put the following message:

SUPPORT HB-155 -- STOP GUN REGISTRATION

Email addresses of Committee members:

REPUBLICANS

DEMOCRATS

For additional contact information for your legislators use our "Write Your Representatives" feature.

BACKGROUND

Calling it a "law enforcement tool" a number of Florida Sheriff`s have been compiling databases that include guns and gun owner information. This information has nothing to do with criminal investigations or crime guns.

Among other sources, some of the gun records and gun owner data is coming from pawn records -- records of law abiding people who have done nothing wrong but have merely needed cash. Many have accused some of these agencies of using the data for unlawful profiling of gun owners and pawn customers. The records are kept beyond any redeeming of such firearms. You will recall that we have fought for years to stop these law enforcement agencies from building computerized databases of guns and gun owners using pawn records. They continue to do it anyhow.

Owning a gun or pawning a gun is NOT A CRIME. It is your right under the Constitution.

This bill is about protecting your Constitutional rights, your firearms, your privacy and your Freedom.

HB-155 by Rep. Harrington is a bill to stop local governments and state agencies, law enforcement agencies, etc. from compiling lists, records and databases of firearms and law-abiding firearms owners which constitute gun registration.

Federal law, 18 U.S. Code section 926 - Firearms Owner`s Protection Act prohibits the establishment of "any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions."

Federal law, 18 U.S. Code section 926 - Firearms Owner`s Protection Act prohibits any rule or regulation that may require that records required to be maintained by firearms dealers under federal law or any portion of the contents of such firearms records, from being recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof.

History has shown that the registration of firearms in Cuba enabled Fidel Castro to confiscate firearms and render the disarmed population helpless under Castro`s tyranny.

History has shown that the registration of firearms in Nazi Germany enabled Adolph Hitler to confiscate firearms and render the disarmed population helpless in the face of Nazi atrocities.

Registration lists have led to gun confiscation in Australia, Bermuda, Cuba, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Jamaica, Soviet Georgia and other countries.

History has shown that registration of firearms in California, New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C. has led to the banning and confiscation of firearms.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that since felons are prohibited from owning firearms, compelling them to register their firearms would violate their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination (Haynes v. U.S. [309 U.S. 85 (1968)]). Consequently criminals cannot be forced to register firearms and cannot be prosecuted for failure to register firearms.

Repeated attempts to accumulate firearms data into computerized data bases by some of Florida`s law enforcement agencies and political subdivisions have placed the privacy rights of law-abiding firearms owners at risk and make legislative protection necessary.

A prohibition against any form of registration is necessary to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms as guaranteed under both the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Florida Constitution.

Further, it is needed to protect the privacy rights of law-abiding firearms owners.

We must provide an absolute, unequivocal, prohibition of any form of registration of law-abiding firearms owners or their firearms.

GUN REGISTRATION IS THE VERY WORST FORM OF GUN CONTROL. IT DESTROYS FREEDOM

PLEASE ACT NOW! URGE SUPPORT FOR HB-155 by Rep. Lindsay Harrington