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Show VJiffhciSraw euri control Following last Tuesday's, June 27, overwhelming Senate vote sustaining apro-hibition apro-hibition against any funding for the Carter Car-ter Administration's proposed firearms regulations, Neal Knox, the National Rifle Association's top lobbyist, called for a "total withdrawal of the Treasury Department Depart-ment gun control-by -rule-maklngscheme." Knox, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action warned that the Senate vote "should send a very decisive de-cisive message to the White House and Treasury Department not only on the clear issue of gun control but the credibility credi-bility of the Administration, and on the mandate that Congress will not allow the bureaucracy to create new law by publishing pub-lishing regulations in the 'Federal Register.' Reg-ister.' " Immediately following an earlier 314 to 80 vote in the House which banned any spending by Treasury to implement its proposed gun regulations and to cut the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms budget by $4.2 million, Treasury Department Depart-ment officials announced they would not withdraw the regulations, and would press ahead with their plans. That Treasury action ac-tion udoubtedly triggered the 61 -32 Senate vote affirming the House budget cut of the agency. "If the Treasury Department now carries car-ries out that threat to implement the regulations reg-ulations and keep them in a dormant state until funding is released in a future Congress then this battle is far from over," Knox said. "By margins of 4-1 and 2-1, Congress Con-gress has made it very clear that they believe be-lieve these regulations are Illegal and beyond be-yond any authority granted by Congress, and that the regulations are indeed the framework for a national firearms registration regis-tration system. Repeatedly in this debate de-bate over Congressional authority," Knox said, ' 'both proponents and opponents of gun control emphatically said the Congress had voted down the principle of gun registration 16 times including legislative leg-islative proposals which were virtually identical to these regulations." Knox said among the- key elements of the regulations were submission and computerization com-puterization of 688,000 quarterly reports each year on all firearms transactions made through any of the 172,000 Federal Firearms Fire-arms Licensees, including Information on '" transactions between dea'ers and private' individuals. The central record keeping would total over 30-million separate firearms fire-arms transactions per year at a horrendous cost to the taxpayer a cost in excess of a $100 million startup suggested by Treasury in 1977. Further, Treasury officials announced at both public and Congressional briefings that they claimed authority under the regulations reg-ulations to computerize names and addresses address-es of individual firearms purchasers, but they did not plan to centralize such information in-formation until after their proposed system was in place. Treasury, however, in what was described to Congress as a "massive project underway," is now computerizing the names and addresses of private citizens citi-zens who purchased firearms from any of the 23,000 dealers who go out of business yearly, Knox said. The regulations would also mandate a new federal 14-digit "unique serial number", num-ber", an idea which outgoing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Director Direc-tor Rex Davis described as being of "little "lit-tle benefit," since all guns imported or manufactured in the US must carry a distinct dis-tinct and individual identification serial number along with name and manufacturer. (That has been the requirement of the law since 1938 for handguns and centerfire rifles and for all guns since 1968.) "Those existing exist-ing requirements," Davis said in a Dec. 9, 1977 memo, "have posed no substantial substan-tial problems to BATF in tracing or identification iden-tification of firearms." The regulatons also would create mandatory man-datory theft reporting to BATF for all licensees. "Inadvertent failure for a dealer to report a theft of a firearm would extract ex-tract a felony penalty, five years in jail and a $5,000 fine, a considerably harsher penalty pen-alty than that levied against the gun thief." Knox said. "Further, by the BATF's own admission, they have no statutory authority auth-ority to follow a theft further than the dealer." Knox added that "the lack of credibility credi-bility over this issue on the part of Administration Ad-ministration added considerably totheCon-gressional totheCon-gressional prohibition votes. On every aspect as-pect of these regulations, BATF and Treasury Trea-sury officials attempted to deceive the public, pub-lic, the media and the Congress. The evidence evi-dence of that deceit was detailed in the Senate and House debates, and in Congressional Congress-ional hearings," he said. |
