United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- Sometimes, legislation is kept under the radar because if the legislation is passed, it might actually solve the problem. Anti-Second Amendment extremists and their allies in the media really don’t want Americans to know that certain provisions already exist in the law. After all, if the American people did know, they’d probably be much less receptive to infringements on our Second Amendment rights.
One such provision is the Armed Career Criminal Act. Enacted in the 1980s, it has a very simple premise: If you’ve been convicted of either three violent crimes or serious drug offenses, you get a mandatory minimum 15-year prison sentence. Or at least, that was the case until the Johnson v. United States ruling. The statute was gutted, and as a result, a lot of very bad criminals were released.
A pair of Second Amendment champions, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Representative David Kustoff (R-TN), have introduced legislation called the Restoring The Armed Career Criminal Act, known as HR 2837 and S 1541 to address that ruling.
According to releases from Senator Cotton’s and Representative Kustoff’s offices, they do this by dispensing with the old definitions of “violent felony” and “serious drug offense” and going with a single “serious felony” that is defined as any offense that lands a person with a potential sentence of at least ten years in prison.
The need for this bill should be obvious, given the constant releases of prisoners we are seeing, and not just from the pandemic. In New York, before the coronavirus was even in the news, they were releasing violent criminals back on the streets. The price that can be paid for letting them out isn’t just in more people being victimized by those who should be locked up.
For decades, the misuse of firearms by criminals has been the preferred pretense to truncate or completely deny our Second Amendment rights. All too often, we see the victims, or family members of the victims of such misuse, wielded as propaganda weapons against our freedoms, We have rightly pointed out the failures to enforce past laws on many occasions, but the failure to fix the Armed Career Criminal Act looms large as a failure of our own making.
We know that enforcing certain laws works. Just look at the results from Project Exile 20 years ago. As a bonus, Project Exile was part of a successful strategy that resulted in a pro-Second Amendment president who put two of the five justices that struck down the D.C. and Chicago handgun bans on the Supreme Court. By pressing for Project Exile, we can reduce the number of propaganda weapons available to those who seek to take our rights away.
Second Amendment supporters should waste no time in contacting their Senators and Representative and politely urge them to support the Restore The Armed Career Criminal Act. It’s time that criminals pay for the crimes they committed with guns, not the law-abiding citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
Holy shit that is scary. If I’m understanding this, if you’ve got three guns with stuck firing pins, like is common with any old SKS – this bill would stick you with a mandatory minimum 15 year sentence on top of the potential 30 for three NFA violations. Next thing we know, they will redefine a full-auto BCG to be a machine gun making most ARs qualify as such. Don’t forget the “loophole” of pistol braces which so many grabbers want to close. Well actually they just want to make any AR pistol, brace or bare buffer tube, qualify as… Read more »
For reasons similar to those noted by Finnky and USA, I find this law scary. Congress and state legislatures have gone absolutely apesh*t in classifying crimes and even non-crimes as felonies. The demonstrators at a bar in Ector County, Texas who were arrested Monday were charged with having their weapons on premesis of a bar, which ridiculously enough, in Texas, is a felony. They didn’t shoot anyone, didn’t rob anyone, didn’t even threaten anyone, but now face life labeled as felons thanks to idiot legislators in that state. Occasionally, I read an article about people busted on drug charges who,… Read more »
Harold finally wrote something that I find no fault with. What am I missing?
I hate to say it, but it looks as though Harold is up to his old tricks, again.
🙁
Mandatory sentencing is not a good thing. Judges, being human beings, although many would argue that, make mistakes, but a few are also capable of reason and compassion. Mandatory sentencing ties judges hands removing the ability to consider mitigating circumstances of a case. Sometimes, a crime is not a crime, but a necessary act brought about by extenuating circumstances and if a judge can only consider the “letter of the law” and not be allowed to use discretion in adjudicating a case, then justice cannot be served.
There is something they can easily do…..if the executive and judicial branches of government would work together. I am pretty sure we all feel background checks on gun purchasers are a good thing. Currently, only felony (convictions) or domestic assault convictions, will keep a person from legally buying a firearm. Yet. a person can be charged with felonies multiple times, only to have the charges reduced to misdemeanors, which will still allow this person to legally buy a firearm. So….let’s change the system. Do NOT allow felony charges to be plea bargained and be reduced to misdemeanors. Yet….allow the plea… Read more »