This page was last updated on April 16, 2012.
No attempts to change gun law; Mark Hogan; Beaver County Times; April 15, 2012.
Previous letters from Mr. Hogan I critiqued are here, here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. Hogan wrote at least four other letters I did not critique.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“I see a lot of misinformation presented on the Internet and it can often be traced to far right talking heads who seem to delight in distorting the truth.”
[RWC] Thank goodness we have Mr. Hogan and other truthful lefties to set us straight. <g>
“Much of it has to do with a fictitious increase in efforts for more stringent gun control. First, let me point out there are no current gun control efforts occurring. It is important to understand only Congress and the president can make federal law. And it requires both the House and Senate in Congress to first pass that law for the president to sign off on it. None of the three can do it on their own.”
[RWC] Mr. Hogan wrote, “there are no current gun control efforts occurring.” Consider the following excerpt from a Washington Post column: “President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, ‘to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,’ she said. ‘I just want you to know that we are working on it,’ Brady recalled the president telling them. ‘We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.’” That’s just at the federal level. Some cities have gun control laws so strict they effectively ban gun ownership. I mention two examples below.
Mr. Hogan wrote, “only Congress and the president can make federal law.” This is incorrect, unfortunately. Congress and the President routinely delegate their law-making responsibility to regulatory agencies like the EPA. Obamacare is another example. Congress (only Democrats voted for Obamacare) and President Obama gave most of the law-making (aka regulation/rule-making) power for Obamacare to departments like Health & Human Services and the Federal Drug Administration.
This behavior also exists at the state level. For example, beginning with the 2008 model year, new cars sold in Pennsylvania must meet the emissions requirements of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and this fairly huge policy change happened without the approval of the Pennsylvania General Assembly (GA). The natural question is “how?” This action was possible because in 1970 the GA and Governor gave the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (PEQB) the power to “Formulate, adopt and promulgate rules and regulations as necessary to accomplish the Department of Environmental Protection’s work.”
You can learn more about this from my paper entitled “Economics.”
“Judges and even the Supreme Court merely interpret that law. And they have confirmed our right to bear arms. They make sure any law those three agencies do pass is not in violation of our Constitution. Even the Attorney General Eric Holder can’t pass law as many seem to believe.”
[RWC] Mr. Hogan failed to mention “our right to bear arms” is not a slam-dunk before the Supreme Court. The two most recent Second Amendment cases I recall (District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago) “confirmed our right to bear arms” by only five-to-four votes. With only one more left-leaning justice, the rulings would have gone the wrong way. This is just one more reason why presidential elections are so important.
“And I promise you the United Nations has no authority to pass law in the U.S. When and if Congress ever does consider passing some odious gun control law, we’ll be on them faster than the press on a Romney gaffe.”
[RWC] As for “the United Nations has no authority to pass law in the U.S.,” it’s technically true. That said, at least a few Supreme Court justices over the years noted they look beyond U.S. law when deciding cases.
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.