by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President
For our fragile republic, the emerging autocracy of President Barack Obama presents the gravest danger to our individual liberty in our lifetimes. A single word serves to define the rogue rule of the Obama regime: Lawless.
Obama—with his election battle cry of “We can’t wait!”—has created a constitutional crisis, subverting the power of Congress and the courts. For him, there is only one branch of government: Obama. Stung from the 2010 landslide defeat of his majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, President Obama says he doesn’t need congressional authority to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” His transformation means destroying our very foundation of liberty— including the Second Amendment.
Obama is creating a blizzard of executive orders and edicts throughout his bureaucracy. He is moving and spending tax dollars as if those funds authorized by Congress were his political slush fund. Obama’s edict creating gun-owner registration in the four border states— New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and California—is a case in point. He has no authority to register long gun sales at licensed dealers, but he is doing it anyway. And you can bet this is just the beginning.
NRA has filed suits in federal courts to stop the registration scheme. But will Obama obey a court order to stand down? Why should he obey a court when he won’t follow the explicit rule of law banning registration?
For their bigger plans for the destruction of the Second Amendment, “we can’t wait” morphs into “we’ll wait for the second term.” Obama routinely brags about circumventing Congress: “We can’t wait for a dysfunctional Congress to do its job. When they won’t act, I will. I’ve told my administration to keep looking every single day for actions we can take without Congress.”
“Dysfunctional?” In Obama’s lexicon, that word describes anyone or any institution that won’t do his arrogant bidding. For Obama, “dysfunctional” means the new Congress no longer acts as the president’s functional rubber-stamp.
For Obama, “dysfunctional” means attacking congressional oversight like the investigations by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, exposing “Operation Fast and Furious”—the Obama administration’s conspiracy to assist criminals in violating federal firearm laws which armed Mexican narco-terrorists. Let me tell you what is really “dysfunctional.”
Perhaps the most important tool citizens possess to reveal wrongdoing in government is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). With a few narrow exceptions, the government must provide documents demanded by citizens and organizations like NRA.
Remember Obama’s promise of the most transparent government in history? In January 2009 he proclaimed, “In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) … is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government.”
Given “Fast and Furious,” the Obama administration attempted to revise FOIA rules to give bureaucrats power to flat-out lie. It would have given agencies power to deny the very existence of documents requested.
In a scathing letter to Attorney Gerneral Eric Holder, Sen. Grassley wrote, “It’s hard to believe that the Justice Department thinks it’s appropriate to make false statements to the American people. ...” Grassley warned he would take “all necessary action” to block the proposed rule. Because of widespread outrage, the rule was temporarily withdrawn, but only because the Obama administration was called out. With this attempt to cut o_ access to government decisions, the Obama regime has shown its hand for a second term.
With his “We can’t wait,” Obama is following the direction of his former head of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orzag, who said:
“We need to jettison the Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy and instead begin to build a new set of rules and institutions ... relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”
Got that? “Automatic policies” and “commissions.” Imagine an Obama “gun-ban commission” replacing the Congress. Imagine him setting into place “automatic policies” that chip away the Second Amendment every time the gun-ban politicians and media declare a “gun violence crisis.” It would be gun control on autopilot.
As members of the most effective political force in America, we must enlist the support of friends, neighbors, family and co-workers to secure the future. And we must keep NRA strong and effective— so renew or upgrade your NRA membership and commitment to freedom today.
The Second Amendment and our national character as we know it are at stake in the coming elections. We must get out the vote as never before. The nation cannot survive another four years of Obama’s arrogant one-man rule.
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