"Gun SAFETY" = "Gun ELIMINATION." Just Like "Gun CONTROL" Used to.

Via Acidman, I find this Washington Post Times piece on the latest proposed "Gun SAFETY" bill. Excerpts:

Gun violence folly

In the latest display of how far gun control advocates will go to devise new methods to limit law-abiding Americans' ability to purchase guns, Sen. Jon Corzine, New Jersey Democrat (and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Rhode Island Democrat, have come up with a bill giving federal bureaucrats far-reaching authority to regulate gun "safety." The recently introduced Corzine-Kennedy bill would give the Justice Department the authority "to set minimum safety standards for the manufacture, design and distribution of firearms, issue recalls and warnings, collect data on gun-related death and injury, and limit the sale of products when no other remedy is sufficient," Mr. Corzine's Web site says.

Minimum safety standards that, of course, will need to be endlessly "tightened" to eliminate "loopholes" and "save just one life." Recalls and warnings on guns that have been manufactured for decades, but are now found to be "unsafe" - because they're capable of hurling small metal projectiles at high velocity when someone operates the trigger. And "limit the sale of products" means "limit the sales to zero for the general populace, but let government officials have whatever they deem "necessary."

The legislation is backed by a coalition of gun control supporters and liberal groups, including the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, the NAACP, the American Bar Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Consumer Federation of America.

The usual suspects.

A careful reading of the Corzine-Kennedy bill, however, suggests that it would give sweeping powers to an attorney general (particularly if someone like Janet Reno were to assume that position) to make life miserable for anyone involved in the sale or manufacturing of firearms. Title I of the bill would give the attorney general the authority to put forward any regulation he or she deems "reasonably necessary to reduce or prevent unreasonable risk of injury" from a particular gun. Moreover, "any person" would be allowed to petition the attorney general to "require the recall, repair, or replacement of a firearm product, or issuance of refunds with respect to a firearm product." If there are any limits on such powers, they certainly aren't apparent from reading the bill.

It is one of my greatest fears that someone like Maryland AG J. Joseph Curran will get appointed to that post under some future Democratic administration.

Mr. Curran is the author of the anti-gun manifesto "A Farewell to Arms." (PDF)

Read what he advocates.

At least he's honest enough to say it.