With the appointment of John Podesta as President Barack Obama’s enforcer, the nation’s gun owners can expect poisonous efforts—outside the rule of law—to create harsh back-door gun controls through widespread abuse of executive power.
In reporting on the December 2013 appointment of Podesta as “presidential counselor,” the online Examiner headline said it all: “Naming Podesta ‘executive power’ czar signals Obama’s intent to rule by fiat.”
The Washington Post proclaimed that “Dealing with Congress is a dead end. … How then does he [Obama] accomplish … his goals? By executive order and working through the various agencies within the administration to go around Congress. Enter Podesta.”
As the chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP)—the radical-left think-tank created and bankrolled by globalist billionaire gun-banner George Soros expressly for Podesta in 2003—Podesta has been a major player, churning out “progressive” policy for a rogue administration. Podesta headed the Obama transition team and CAP—joined at the hip with the White House—shares a highly questionable revolving-door arrangement with staff shifting seamlessly between CAP and executive political positions.
Especially for the Second Amendment, none of this bodes well.
A January 2013 Washington Post headline described a key Podesta CAP initiative: “Sweeping new gun laws proposed by influential liberal think-tank.” A key element in the Podesta manifesto were edicts described by the Post as “executive actions that would not require the approval of Congress—in what amounts to the progressive community’s wish list.”
Included in the CAP agenda were high-cap magazine bans, backdoor gun owner registration and banning “military-grade assault weapons” (apparently the term “assault weapon” is no longer considered sinister enough and requires yet further embellishment). Among the semi-auto schemes CAP supported was a bill requiring a long list of semi-automatic firearms to be covered under the same classification as legal “machine guns”—possession of which requires registration and FBI background clearance, the blessing of a local chief law enforcement officer and photographing and fingerprinting, along with restrictions on movement across state lines. Ownership of those registered guns would have been frozen in place with a prohibition on any further transfer, even as part of an estate.
Tie all that in with a 2010 CAP proclamation on presidential power and you get a good picture of what’s in store for us in the coming months. In a white paper on expanding presidential power to circumvent Congress, Podesta referred to the complexities of democracy inherent in the workings of Congress as “the unappetizing process of making legislative sausage.”
For the Obamanistas, among the most “unappetizing” elements in their rotten sausage recipe in this last session of Congress was Obama’s gun owner registration scheme under the guise of “universal background checks.” They lost because of NRA members’ massive participation in the democratic process. And that’s what the Podesta/Soros axis finds so “unappetizing”—the right of the people to petition the politically accountable branches of government which is central and essential in our democracy.
To understand a Podesta White House in our future, you need to look at his past.
As the chief of staff in the Clinton administration, a key Podesta initiative was a scheme to extort “voluntary” gun control from every element of federally-regulated firearm commerce through threats of a barrage of potentially bankrupting federal lawsuits. For the firearm industry, the choice presented was to bleed or submit.
With nearly 30 punitive big city lawsuits hanging over the firearm industry in 2000, the Clinton White House added this crushing new threat to unleash hundreds more lawsuits on behalf of some 3,200 federal public housing projects across the nation. The bogus idea was to claim millions in damages against the firearm industry—blaming legal gun commerce for the epidemic of criminal violence in federally-run urban public housing. This crippling legal assault was to be filed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It was intended by the Podesta crowd as the final straw breaking the industry’s back. Submit or else was the message.
The “submit” part was a “settlement” whereby firearm manufacturers and dealers would be forced to agree to a “code of conduct,” that created a “voluntary” ban on most semi-auto handguns. Furthermore, the “agreement” would have created an “Oversight Commission”—stacked with government gun-ban bureaucrats—with unlimited power to dictate every aspect of the normal course of business, including censoring advertising and vetoing new firearm designs.
It was such an evil concept—outside any rule of law—that former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said the Podesta-inspired scheme “sacrifices democracy to the discretion of administration officials operating in utter secrecy.”
The New York Times succinctly described the mafia-style offer that couldn’t be refused:
“If a federal settlement does produce significant new gun controls, the executive branch would accomplish through legal pressure what the legislative branch could not accomplish through politics.”
It never happened because a majority of the firearm industry stood up to this tyranny. They did it because of you—their consumers.
Extortion. Vintage John Podesta in the year 2000. So now, with Podesta calling the shots in the Obama imperial White House, gun owners face Podesta Poison, Part Two.
We can expect more lawless, unconstitutional tactics. As protectors of the Second Amendment, NRA members must garner all of the political power of our families, friends, neighbors, colleagues and co-workers to short-circuit this truly dangerous shift in the nation’s political dynamic. With the 2014 elections just around the corner, electing an overwhelmingly pro-Second Amendment U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate is the only way we can trump the raw, radical power grab now in the works by the Podesta/Obama/Soros axis now at the helm in the White House.
Wayne LaPierre is the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association. His column appears in American Rifleman and American Hunter. Join the NRA and receive a $10 discount on your annual membership and American Rifleman or American Hunter delivered to your door – click here.