by Joseph P. Tartaro, Executive Editor
The attorney’s general of 13 states, led by Massachusetts AG Maura Healey delivered a joint letter to Congressional leaders on May 24 seeking to restore fu
nding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the clear intention of promoting research into gun violence that would support their gun control agenda.
That funding had been withdrawn from the CDC some 20 years ago precisely because the CDC research was far from impartial, promoting only the anti-gun agenda.
Meanwhile, at a Washington, DC, conference on the same subject, the White House waved the white flag on federal gun control efforts for the remainder of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Speaking at a forum which included most of the state and local officials promoting new CDC research funding, Vice President Joseph R. Biden urged them to pursue gun regulations in their own jurisdictions because “we’re probably not going to get much more done in the next nine months” on gun control.
Biden blamed inaction at the federal level on Congress, saying dysfunction on Capitol Hill has reached unprecedented levels “in modern history, short of the Civil War.”
Pursuing gun regulations at the state and local level, Biden said, according to the Washington Times, “has a cumulative impact.”
“It’s a long way of saying, ‘Don’t quit on this,’” he said.
Obama took executive action in January to promote more gun violence research funding for the CDC, expanding background checks in more transactions, adding some Social Security recipients to the Instinct Check Systems and calling for a federal budget that would allow hiring of more federal agents to enforce gun laws.
Even as the state attorneys general were in Washington promoting the CDC gun research funding, the US House Appropriations Committee passed the Fiscal Year 2017 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations bill, which would provide $1.3 billion to fund ATF, and increase of $18 million over the FY 2016 level.
According to a report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the legislation also makes permanent four legislative provisions that protect citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Those provisions cover import applications on shotguns for sporting purposes, the importation of “curios and relics” firearms, the export of firearms to Canada and a prohibition on so called “gun-walking” as occurred in the administration’s ill-conceived and disastrous “Fast and Furious” operation. Also included is a prohibition on forcing unauthorized reporting and registration requirements on consumers purchasing multiple rifles or shotguns, such as those previously imposed on FFLs located in four southwestern states.
