Buying and Selling the Second Amendment

Libertarians are ringing in the new millennium with a rousing chorus of cheers for Brass Roots -- a Michigan gun rights organization founded by 1994 LP candidate for U.S. Senate, Jon Coon.

The group has brought suit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Detroit Housing Commission and the Detroit Chief of Police to stop a federal "Gun Buyback" program from going forward in Detroit.

If implemented, the scheme would pay $50 to anyone in Detroit who surrenders a firearm to authorities -- cash on the spot, no questions asked.

Aside from the dubious public policy of setting the government up in the business of offering to fence stolen property (and, potentially, dispose of evidence of even more serious crimes), the plan would, of course, violate numerous state and federal laws.

Gun rights groups have long argued that various and sundry identifications, reporting requirements, waiting periods and other restrictions on firearms transfers are as unnecessarily burdensome on responsible gun owners as they are unlikely to deter criminals.

The bitter irony of this government scheme to deliberately circumvent these very laws was not lost on Brass Roots. Still, before filing the complaint in federal district court they attempted every other obvious route to express their concerns.

They contacted HUD Secretary, Andrew Cuomo, as soon Detroit's application to participate in the plan was announced and were told that there was no step in the approval process for participation by "third parties."

They wrote to Governor Engler asking how it was that the federal government could operate a program -- which no one even pretended would be limited to HUD properties -- that so clearly intruded upon state and local jurisdiction. There was no response at all from the governor's office.

They contacted Detroit Housing Commission Director, John Nelson, Jr., pointing out all the violations of state and federal laws that this "Gun Buyback" program would entail.

No response from Director Nelson, either.

Finally, with no remaining options open to them, the organization filed suit in federal district court. The complaint is similar to one brought last fall by Libertarian Party of Chicago chairman, Matt Beauchamp, to halt the program in Cook County, Illinois.

The Plaintiffs in both cases charge that none of the participants in the program is federally licensed to "engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms," that the stated intent of the plan is to purchase weapons from anonymous individuals, thus "knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the firearm...was stolen," and that the Chief of Police, charged with administering the program, will deliberately "fail to make appropriate entry in, or fail to properly maintain, [records] which he is required to keep" on firearms transfers.

All three are felonies under federal law.

Just to give a bit of perspective consider how authorities have dealt with even more obscure gun law "technicalities" in recent years.

In 1992 a reclusive man by the name of Randy Weaver living in a remote part of the Idaho panhandle was merely accused of selling a shotgun with a barrel that was one quarter of an inch below the minimum legal length (and, of course, without the paperwork authorities apparently now regard as inconsequential).

When Weaver failed to appear for trial on that charge, several agents went to the mountain top cabin where he lived with his wife and four children, ultimately shooting his 14-year-old son, Sammy, in the back and killing him on the spot. Then, during a week long siege of the property, a government sniper, using a high-powered assassin's rifle, and following "shoot on sight" rules of engagement, literally blew the head off of Weaver's wife, Vicky, while she stood in the doorway of the cabin clutching their infant child in her arms.

The next year nearly a hundred federal agents stormed a religious commune outside of Waco, Texas in a military style assault to serve a search warrant for illegal firearms parts and to arrest the group's leader on federal firearms charges. Ten people died in the initial attack. After a nearly two month long siege, eighty more people -- most of them women and children -- died in a fiery, final tank and tear gas assault.

Now, authorities would as a matter of policy cavalierly violate far more serious firearms laws than those that prompted the two deadly incidents in Idaho and Texas?

Not if Brass Roots has anything to say about it.

A request for a preliminary injunction will be heard later this month by District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman.

Unfortunately, their chances of success have been significantly reduced as the judge in the Illinois case recently dismissed the complaint saying: "Mr. Beauchamp alleges no other basis for his lawsuit than his interest in ensuring that public officials act in accordance with the law. That is an insufficient basis."

And that's a sad state of affairs for our republic.

Tim O'Brien is the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Michigan.