Friday, January 25, 2013

ABA Ignores Constitution, Goes Decisively Anti-Gun Democrat

In a sadly unsurprising demonstration that the American Bar Association is run by Democrat hacks and is not representative of America's lawyers, we get this:

ABA supports assault weapons bill introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein

ABA President Laurel Bellows says the association is endorsing a bill that would regulate military assault-type weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced the legislation in the Senate today, USA Today and CNN report. At a news conference, Feinstein displayed weapons that could not be sold under the proposed ban, including a Bushmaster automatic rifle.

Bellows wrote to Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy to thank them for introducing the bill, according to an ABA press release. Feinstein was author of a previous assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

Now, as a Lawyer, I've been trained to not rely on pretty words or press releases about a proposed law but to actually read the bill to see what it really does.

One would have thought the ABA would both consider the diversity of its members and wait for the text of the actual bill and analyze it -- like a lawyer -- before jumping in with both feet to give a blessing to an unconstitutional bill based on a press release. Instead, the ABA, in its breathless push to support this unconstitutional measure, not so much.

Instead of actually reading what the bill does or waiting for an actual draft of the bill and analyzing it, the ABA simply goes by the press releases on Feinsteins's webpage.

The Assault Weapons Regulatory Act of 2013 would ban the sale, transfer and importation of 120 specially named firearms, according to a summary at Feinstein’s website. The bill also bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.

Had they even read all the summaries released by Feinstein and understood the implications (note the bill is not available to be read yet) they would know that for the lie it is. Heck, even the more recent summaries by Feinstein raise the number of "specifically named" firearms to 157.

The list is even including some like the Tavor that are not even available for sale in the USA yet. If the ABA had any integrity they might have pointed out that this ban would ban far more than the named 157 models based on the features test, including many very common firearms and pistols that the average member of the the public doesn't even consider to be "assault weapons".

The ABA fails to mention the bill will result in slow-moving confiscation of existing "named" and "featured" firearms and magazines as under the bill current owners would be unable to sell or transfer them and they would be confiscated at the death of the current owner.

Watch as the ABA supports the trampling of the Fifth Amendment along with the Second, and ignores both the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court decisions regarding the right to bear arms.

If an average lawyer did that, we would call it malpractice.

I will be not be renewing my membership in the ABA and letting them know why.

3 comments:

Murphy's Law said...

I've never belonged, mainly because of their liberal bent on most every other issue. Spend the dues money on more gun stuff and let them know what you bought with it.

Expatriate Owl said...

I got my first year free after passing my first bar exam. But my enthusiasm waned more and more with each piece of dreque they sent me (this was before the days of universal internet access as we know it, when everything was snail mail), and by the time the freebie year ended and the re-up notice came, I decided that it wasn't worth the 10 cent charge for cutting the check for membership dues.

I had slightly more patience with the New York State Bar Association; after the freebie year I re-upped for one year on my own dime, but they, too, got a bit too political in the wrong way for me.

As for local county bar association, I stayed for about 10 years. After all, I was getting clients through their Lawyer Referral Service, and there were a number of group discounts which, at the time, saved me a few bucks. But they, too, eventually exceeded my threshold.

A few years ago, at the LegalTech show in New York City (which I end up attending at least every other year), the NYSBA had a table out front. The woman politely asked me if I was a NYSBA member. I politely replied in the negative. She asked me if I wished to join. I told her to go solicit her friends, the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, for whom the NYSBA had recently advocated, quite vocally, trials in civilian courts.

She was clueless as to what I was referring to, so I told her that if the NYSBA has its way and the terrorists at Gitmo were transferred out for civilian trials, the venue of the trials for many if not most of them would be in the Southern District of New York, a few blocks from the hole in the ground that had been the World Trade Center tower.

She seemed indifferent, until I asked her if she had any suggestions for security arrangements during the conduct of the trials.

Of course, she could not denigrate her employer, but she did understand why her prospects of (re)recruiting me were diddly-squat.

Aaron said...

ML: Yes indeed, that or join a legal association that respects the 2nd amendment, a further donation to SAF comes to mind...

EO: Some of the ABA's publications are rather useful but so much of it now is just leftist dreck that its more of a waste of trees than useful information.

Michigan State Bar Assoc is a mandatory membership requirement to practice law in Michigan, but they've stayed out of the latest idiocy....so far.