The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has written to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, requesting that the Department of Justice withhold funds from any local or state government that adopts policies that undermines the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.
“The liberal municipal governments of such cities as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, and states including New Jersey, Connecticut, California and Massachusetts should not be receiving taxpayer funds while violating the constitutional rights of those taxpayers,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “It is ironic that all of those places are willing to spend millions of dollars to attack the rights of gun owners, when they should be protecting civil and constitutional rights, including the Second Amendment.” Many of these same cities and states have very open door policies towards illegal immigrants, which has included some who would perpetrate violence against citizens in these areas.
In a letter to Sessions, Gottlieb stated that local or state laws that infringe upon or impair the Second Amendment rights of citizens have done nothing to reduce violent crime, but they have reduced the ability of honest citizens to defend themselves. In fact, cities like Chicago, which has the worst crime rate of any city in the United States, also have the toughest limits on gun rights. The connection between the abridgment of the right to protect oneself and violent crime is becoming evident.
According to the statement, “in addition, the Citizens Committee is launching a national petition drive to mobilize grass roots support for withholding Justice Department funds from the offending local and state governments that are thumbing their noses at two U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirming the individual right to keep and bear arms.”
“Why should American taxpayers see their hard-earned money used to erode their fundamental rights,” Gottlieb asked. “Those of us on the front lines of this civil rights battle see this as the ultimate abandonment of common sense. When government becomes the enemy of its constituents, it should be penalized, not rewarded.”
Gottlieb noted that anti-gun local governments harm their citizens in many ways. For example, when Chicago lost a federal lawsuit to the Second Amendment Foundation, the city paid SAF’s legal bills by taking money from police department funds.
“These stubborn anti-gun local governments will spitefully hurt their citizens any way they can,” Gottlieb observed. “The time has come to slap them down, and the best way to get their attention is to turn off the funding spigot.”
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