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Op-Ed: Project Exile
Project Exile

Larry Pratt
Apr 2000

Project Exile has been heralded as the way to do something about crime without succumbing to demands for more gun control.

Project Exile legislation recently swept through the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 358 to 60.

I believe that 358 Representatives voted wrong.

Project Exile is not going to decrease the demand for gun control. It is a call for zero tolerance and five year prison terms in the enforcement of existing gun control laws.

Here are some existing gun laws:

* attaching a 2 or more round extension to a post-ban Glock pistol magazine.
* attaching a flash suppresser, folding stock, or bayonet lug to certain household firearms.
* accidentally carrying or possessing a weapon (with or without a state license) into a federally prohibited area, such as near a school.
* driving to another state to give a family member a handgun without going through the instant check registration scheme.
* possessing a gun while subject to a restraining order, regardless of the absence of violence, and without a trial or any legal adversarial process having taken place.
* committing any minor infraction of any unconstitutional federal gun law.

Two very well known cases of the zero tolerance-type approach embodied in Project Exile are Ruby Ridge and Waco. At Ruby Ridge federal agents killed a boy and a mom holding a baby. They came down on the Weaver family because Randy had sawed off a shotgun 1/4 inch under the federal limit. And the jury found that Weaver sawed it off because a federal agent persuaded him to do so, and thus was not guilty.

At Waco 85 church members were killed over the possibility of a non-registered machine gun on premises. All that carnage based on federal records that the head of the records department admits are wrong 50 % of the time.

Project Exile also represents a transfer of street crime jurisdiction to the federal government even though the founders very clearly intended for it to be excluded from federal control. The Project Exile bill gives money to states which agree to meet federal standards or turn their jurisdiction over to the federal government.

Rather than Project Exile, how about a zero-tolerance for all Second Amendment infringements? Let's have Project Repeal of ALL federal gun control.

This document was donated to our archives by Gun Owners of America -- the NO COMPROMISE defenders of liberty on Capitol Hill.