Gun Advocates Warn That New Safety Measures Could Foment ‘The Next American Revolution’

As Vice President Joe Biden prepares to offer legislative recommendations to reduce and prevent gun violence on Tuesday, gun advocates across the country fear that the administration may succeed in expanding background checks for all gun purchases or limiting the sale of high capacity magazines and assault weapons.

State-based gun advocacy organizations are vowing to oppose any additional gun safety measures, NBC News reports, and have formed the National Coalition to Stop the Gun Ban to act as a counterweight to the National Rifle Association (NRA), which, the Coalition claims, is too eager to compromise with gun control advocates.

In an open letter to members of Congress, the Coalition argues that assault weapons are “functionally identical to hunting rifles” and that banning high capacity magazines would be “moot” since “nearly all mass murderers who use guns carry multiple firearms.” “Like the misnomer ‘assault weapon,’ the ‘high capacity’ designation of more than ten rounds for magazines represents nothing more than an arbitrary limit set on devices which have been in common possession since the early Twentieth Century.” The group also claims that attempts to expand background checks for all gun purchases is “nothing less than a stepping stone to national gun registration.”

A separate letter to President Obama from Grass Roots North Carolina (a member of the Coalition), warned the administration against issuing executive orders regulating guns, calling such action an “usurpation of power” and predicting that gun owners will resist any additional safety measures:

And what happens when, inevitably, some resist? Do you honestly believe people will go peacefully into bondage? How many will die as the direct result of your actions?

There is no need to send the Secret Service to my door, Mr. President (although I suspect you might anyway). I am not advocating violence; I am merely saying what others are afraid to.

The real question, Mr. President, is whether you so hunger for power that you are willing to foment what might be the next American Revolution. Will that be your enduring legacy?

The New York Times reported on Friday that while Obama “pledged to crack down on access to what he called ‘weapons of war’ in the aftermath of last month’s schoolhouse massacre, the White House has calculated that a ban on military-style assault weapons will be exceedingly difficult to pass through Congress and is focusing on other measures it deems more politically achievable” like background checks and “more federal research on gun violence.”