Nov. 23 Daily News editorial
If you can't get in through the front door you can always try the back. That's what the Obama administration appears to be doing with American gun laws.
Rather than propose gun control measures that would almost certainly flounder in Congress, the Obama administration is trying to ban "shooters" from public land. According to a story published by U.S. News & World Report, the Interior Department is drafting new rules for use of public lands that could end up with shooting and/or hunting being banned on literally hundreds of millions of acres of government property.
Since gun owners vote and since both conservatives and liberals own and enjoy guns and shooting, this initiative could cost Obama support and it's likely not to be well-publicized. Gun control issues, when clearly labeled as such, tend to be hotly contested and difficult to pass.
Obama's Interior Department, however, wants to use its powers over public lands to institute changes that would greatly restrict the use of firearms without the necessity of Congressional approval.
For those of us who treasure the memories and traditions of hunting and the shooting sports this type of "end run" is worthy of opposition, even in the formative stage. Our specific concern is the following paragraph excepted from Interior's proposed new rules for the use of public lands. It very clearly seeks the power to close any acreage controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hunting and shooting of any kind:
"When the authorized officer determines that a site or area on BLM-managed lands used on a regular basis for recreational shooting is creating public disturbance, or is creating risk to other persons on public lands; is contributing to the defacement, removal or destruction of natural features, native plants, cultural resources, historic structures or government and/or private property; is facilitating or creating a condition of littering, refuse accumulation and abandoned personal property is violating existing use restrictions, closure and restriction orders, or supplementary rules notices, and reasonable attempts to reduce or eliminate the violations by the BLM have been unsuccessful, the authorized officer will close the affected area to recreational shooting."
We think a shorter translation might be: "The government can close this land to shooting sports of any kind whenever it wants to."
Interior's rationale, by the way, has very little to do with safety. Frank Jenks, a department spokesman, admits "It's not so much a safety issue. It's a social conflict issue."
A social conflict?
The implication is that shooters, hunters and sportsmen are somehow to blame for other folks not being able to enjoy public lands. It also implies that the sensibilities of non-shooters take some sort of precedence over those of gun owners.
We disagree on both counts.
The Daily News supports the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. Rather than wait for the established gun lobbies to mobilize against this proposal, we're registering our opposition immediately and encourage others who agree with us to do the same.
It would be fine with us if this measure never advanced beyond "draft" status
Read more:
http://tdn.com/news/opinion/halt-obama-s-end-run-on-gun-rights/article_58f4efa2-1573-11e1-b716-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1eXlip1nw
