Senate Votes Against Emergency Gun Confiscation

The Senate affirmed the Constitution's Second Amendment in a vote Thursday:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to prohibit the confiscation of legally owned guns during an emergency like last year's Hurricane Katrina, marking another victory for the gun lobby.

By a vote of 84-16, the Senate embraced an amendment by Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. He attached his measure to a domestic security spending bill for the fiscal year starting October 1 that the Senate is expected to pass soon.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed its version of the spending bill and negotiators will have to decide whether to keep the gun provision. The House is usually sympathetic to gun owners.

Citing the constitutional right to bear arms, Vitter said that during an emergency people should be allowed to hold onto "legally possessed firearms to defend your life, your property" at a time when telephone lines and cell phones probably are not operating and victims "can't reach out to law enforcement authorities."

The sixteen morons senators voting in favor of government restrictions on firearms in a time of crisis (sends chills up the spine) are the usual gang of idiots--

NAYs ---16
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)

Teddy "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy characterized the vote as "pay-back time by the National Rifle Association" while Dick Durbin fretted that "you send the National Guardsmen in ... and then snipers start shooting at them and the police make it known this is going to be a gun-free zone. We don't want any National Guardsmen killed because of this national emergency, this disaster. Is that an unreasonable thing?"

Vitter, the amendment's author, offered his Constitutional smackdown of Kennedy and Durbin's patronizing comments--"declaration or state of emergency in and of itself does not give anyone the right to confiscate guns" and local law enforcement officials should not "trump" the Constitution."All "Nays" were Democrats, including the "moderate" Clinton. Make another note of which party would prefer confiscating your legal firearms, should a crisis happen near you.