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Inhofe: Obama administration trying to ‘dry up’ ammo supply
On Aaron Klein’s weekend show on New York City’s WABC radio, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe accused the Obama administration of buying up ammunition at an unprecedented level to bypass the Second Amendment so gun-owners “can’t even buy ammunition because government is purchasing so much.”
“Let’s make sure that your audience out there is aware, Aaron, that our president, Obama, has been doing everything he could to stop the private ownership of guns in America,” Inhofe said. “You know that, everyone knows that. And yet he’s been voted down in a big way by a large majority. And so my feeling is that he’s doing this to buy up [ammunition] so that we can’t buy: Honest, law-abiding citizens here in the United States, like my son, can’t even buy ammunition because government is purchasing so much.”
Inhofe explained to Klein he is working to introduce the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability (AMMO) bill that will limit “non-defense, armed federal agencies to pre-Obama levels of ammunition.”
“It’s designed to have the GAO (that’s the Government Accounting Office) inventory — not the Defense Department, but all other departments that use weaponry — as to what they’re doing in terms of the amount of ammunition that they have bought to dry up the market for honest, law-abiding citizens,” Inhofe said.
The Oklahoma Republican called the buy-ups intentional and referred to testimony last month from Nick Nayak, the Department of Homeland Security’s chief procurement officer, who said DHS has the right to buy up the ammunition.
“I believe it’s intentional,” Inhofe said. “Now we had someone testify the other day the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, has the ‘right’ — this is a bureaucrat that said this — they have the ‘right’ to buy as much as they want, and they’re planning to buy 750 million rounds. Well, that is more than three times the amount that our soldiers are using for training to defend our nation. So, it’s just another effort to restrict gun activity and ownership. We have in this country the Second Amendment, that preserves the right to keep and bear arms, and the president doesn’t believe in that.”
Inhofe was skeptical of theory that the ammo buy-up was an effort by DHS to seize power from the state, as some have suggested, but did say it was unprecedented and shouldn’t be allowed.
“This has never happened in this country before,” he added. “We’ve never had government trying to take that much control at the expense of the law-abiding citizens. And we’re not going to let it happen.”
GAO Now Investigating DHS Ammo Purchases
Officials at DHS have denied to both Whispers and lawmakers that it is stockpiling ammunition. The Associated Press reported in February that DHS wanted to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, but DHS officials testified last week it was only planning to buy up to 750 million.
The Government Accountability Office tells Whispers it is now investigating large ammunition purchases made by the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Young, a spokesman for GAO, says the investigation of the purchases is “just getting underway.”
[MORE: DHS Denies Ammo Purchases Aimed at Civilians]
The congressional investigative agency is jumping into the fray just as legislation was introduced in both the Senate and the House to restrict the purchase of ammo by some government agencies (except the Department of Defense). The AMMO Act, introduced Friday, would prevent agencies from buying more ammunition if “stockpiles” are greater than what they were in previous administrations.
Donelle Harder, a spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who introduced the legislation in the Senate, tells Whispers the bill would also require GAO to share the findings of its report on DHS purchases with Congress.
Presidential Gun Ban: Executive Power or Unconstitutional Power Grab?
via breitbart
Over the last few years there has been a growing concern about the President’s questionable expansion of executive powers. As a nation of laws, public officials are sworn to uphold the law . . . even laws you may not like. The way to deal with laws you do not like is to get Congress or whatever body passed it to change it. Real simple.
President Obama has, by executive order, circumvented national immigration law by ordering a halt to deportations of certain unlawful aliens, without getting the law changed. In July of 2012, President Obama changed long standing welfare policy to allow states to change mandated work requirements. Earlier he ordered the DOJ not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. None of these orders were submitted to Congress for review, which the Government Accountability Office concluded he should have done in part. I have co-sponsored bills to reverse these unconstitutional power grabs and will continue to fight them.
The President, touted by some as knowledgeable about our Constitution, acts as if he never heard of it sometimes. Now, the President and Vice-President are talking about enacting gun bans by executive order.
“The president is going go act,” Biden is quoted as saying. “There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet, but we’re compiling it all.”
For the moment put aside the fact that the Second Amendment protects the right of each person to own and posses firearms and the ammunition that goes with it. Our Supreme Court resolved that issue in Heller. Obviously neither the President nor Congress can enact laws that violate the Second Amendment, anymore than they can enact laws that violate the First Amendment or the Fifth Amendment.
Let’s focus on the supposed authority of the President to simply enact laws by the stroke of his pen. Article I Section I of the Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. All. None are given to the President or the Courts. All government acts need to be evaluated on whether they are consistent with our Constitution.
The executive branch has the Constitutional responsibility to execute the laws passed by Congress. It is well accepted that an executive order is not legislation nor can it be. An executive order is a directive that implements laws passed by Congress. The Constitution provides that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Article II, Section 3, Clause 5. Thus, executive orders can only be used to carry out the will of Congress. If we in Congress have not established the policy or authorization by law, the President can’t do it unilaterally.
MORE . . .
Related articles
- Bring.It.On. (rivrdog.typepad.com)
- Executive Order a Law to be obeyed?…..lets see how that relates to any “gun control”……Pound Sand Obama! (therightofway.net)
- Is An Executive Order a Law that Must be Obeyed? (12160.info)
- Gun Confiscation By Presidential Decree? (frontpagemag.com)
- American Firearms Owners: Your Rights Are Perpetually Protected!! (thedailysheeple.com)
- Assault on the Second Amendment (papundits.wordpress.com)
- Wyoming to Preserve the Second Amendment? (tenthamendmentcenter.com)
- Krauthammer: ‘Unconstitutional’ gun confiscation ‘would cause insurrection in the country’ [VIDEO] (dailycaller.com)
- Use of executive action to change gun laws not unprecedented – Fox News (video.foxnews.com)
