Executive Power OR Unconstitutional Power Grab?

Barack Obama, Eric Holder

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.

American FlagThe 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.

In order for the President to enact a gun ban by executive order, he would have to have such power given to him by Congress (we already established that the Constitution does not give him that power). Any unilateral action by the President must rely on either a constitutional authority or a statutory power from Congress. What laws exist for the President to enact gun bans by executive order? The Attorney General is authorized under the Gun Control Act (GCA) to regulate the import of firearms if it is “generally suitable” for or readily adaptable to sporting purpose. Thus, the Attorney General could use a “sporting purposes test” by which he can determine the types of firearms that can be imported into the United States. But this law does not authorize a gun ban or affect domestic manufacture and sales. So it provides no Congressional basis for Mr. Biden or the President to create a gun ban.

President Obama may point out that President Clinton issued an executive order (No. 12938) in 1994 where some Chinese firearms and ammunition were restricted from import. If that occurred, it would have been a serious consoverreach of the application of the authority set forth in that Executive Order, which President Clinton said at the time was being implemented under the International Economic Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act, and the Arms Export Control Act. As stated in the Order itself, “the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons (‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’) and of the means of delivering such weapons, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” President Clinton Executive Order 12938 (1994). How that justification, based on large scale weapons of mass destruction, could be interpreted to include Chinese hand guns is unclear and problematic. Indeed, any fair reading of those laws would conclude they could not support a domestic gun ban.

The bottom line is that there is no Congressional authority enacted that would allow the President to take unilateral action to make it unlawful for individuals to transfer or possess a rifle, handgun or other gun or a large capacity ammunition feeding device. Nor is there any Constitutional power under Article II (the power of being the “Commander in Chief”) that allows this. If the President wants a gun ban or ammunition ban he has to first revise the Second Amendment, which is not easy, but possible. I would, of course, oppose that, as would most Americans. But that is at least a lawful and Constitutional means to achieve this.

The Conservatives at Breitbart have the full article

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