NEW BULL'S-EYE ON OBAMA'S 'UNCONSTITUTIONAL' GUN GRAB
Court told actions 'exceed powers of president'
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The lawyer who brought the first legal challenge to the brand-new gun limits announced by President Obama last month now is asking a judge for a quick ruling, insisting there’s really nothing to argue over.
The new motion for summary judgment was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Palm Beach Division, by civil rights activist attorney Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch.
His recent lawsuit reasoned that there is “nothing in the U.S. Constitution which offers any authority or role of the executive branch with regard to legislating to change the rights under the Second Amendment.”
Now he’s arguing that the new gun rules, additional background check requirements, changed dealer licensing requirements and a move to abrogate privacy laws to require doctors to report on patient’s “mental health” issues did not follow the Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act.
Besides, he argues, the executive branch admitted it was making the changes “purely because [Obama] does not like the legislative decisions of Congress.”
However, the motion argues, decisions “abridging the fundamental rights of the plaintiff and other U.S. citizens under the Second Amendment” are plainly unconstitutional.
“These actions are unconstitutional abuses of the president’s and the executive branch’s role in our nation’s constitutional architecture and exceed the powers of the president as set for in the U.S. Constitution,” he said.
He cites federal court rules that say a court “shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
“Defendants openly and voluntarily admit to having changed the law regulating the purchase and sale, transfer, gift, or conveyance, of firearms, and the licensing requirements for those designated as ‘dealers,'” he explains.
That leaves Americans, “including plaintiff,” subject to “potential criminal prosecution … for conduct that was legal prior to Jan. 4, 2016.”
That was when the Obama administration announced numerous new interpretations of rules.
For example, the Obama administration warned that even individuals who sell a single firearm may, under the new interpretation, be considered a dealer and be required to obtain a federal firearms dealer’s license or be criminally prosecuted.
Klayman also notes Obama ordered federal agencies to strip citizens of Second Amendment rights sometimes even if they “have not been formally adjudicated as mentally incompetent by a court of law.”
And, he says, doctors are being encouraged to violate their patients’ privacy and “report their patients who exhibit any poorly defined mental health ‘issues.'”
“Even … those who disagree with the defendants are being labeled as mentally ill for disagreeing with politically correct opinions,” Klayman says.
That should be done, the White House said, by doing away with legal impediments to unrestricted reporting of claims of “mental health issues.”
One of Obama’s specific goals was to “remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing states from reporting relevant information to the background check system.”
“Defendants are clearly legislating, by their own admission, which violates the U.S. Constitution,” Klayman argues.
He says the case is “about the need for this court to order and to create judicial precedent for all presidents to obey the U.S. Constitution and the APA.”
WND reported when the case was filed that Klayman, a terrorist-suing lawyer who depends on his personal firearms for self-defense, was challenging orders Obama gave the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and other agencies.
The lawsuit names as defendants Obama, AFT Deputy Director Thomas Brandon and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Klayman’s case alleged: “Defendants Barack Obama and Thomas Brandon have announced and initiated actions under the purported inherent authority of the president of the United States to rewrite statutes enacted by Congress by executive order or executive action. The president states that he is doing so purely because he does not like the legislative decisions of Congress.”
He said that since the agency assigned by Congress to enforce the law “has already previously interpreted and applied the relevant legislation differently, it is clearly arbitrary and capricious for the defendants … to now suddenly adopt and implement a new and different interpretation for no other reason than the political preferences of temporary occupants of elected office.”
Klayman contends that even if the White House wanted to impose new rules, Obama’s pronouncements this month violated the Administrative Procedures Act.
“The president cannot simply announce sweeping new rules and implement them by giving a speech or issuing an executive memorandum.”
Klayman, a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, also is the founder of the Washington watchdog group Judicial Watch.
In a recent WND commentary, Klayman explained: “Obama taught constitutional law as an instructor (not a professor). What we don’t know is which nation’s constitution Obama was actually teaching at the University of Chicago law school. It does not appear that it was the United States Constitution he has ever read. Perhaps it was the so-called constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where guns are banned under its vicious anti-Christian and anti-Semitic dictatorship.”
WND reported after the new enforcement was announced by Obama that Lynch followed up by admitting that one of her top priorities is to make sure Obama’s policies live on long after she and her boss leave power.
Lynch is quoted in the latest issue of New York Magazine saying: “My goal is to position the [Department of Justice] where it will carry on in all of these issues long after myself and my team have moved on.”
She was speaking about Obama’s executive orders on gun control.
Lynch made the comment in response to a question about how she planned to prosecute gun sellers under the new executive actions.
Copyright 2016 WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/new-bulls-eye-on-obamas-unconstitutional-gun-grab/#AXGO0opcg3SGoc1e.99
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