Immigration agents scanning licence plates at gun shows
'Civil-rights outrage' prompts call for federal probe of ICE
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Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
The Second Amendment Foundation is calling on the House Oversight Committee to launch an investigation of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for gathering information on the participants in a Southern California gun show.
“Attending a gun show is not a criminal activity,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, the SAF founder and executive vice president.
“American citizens engaged in a perfectly legal activity should not have to worry about the government monitoring their exercise of various civil rights, including freedom of association and the right to keep and bear arms,” he said.
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The details came from government emails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal that show Immigration and Customs Enforcement developed a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers at gun shows in Southern California, including the event in Del Mar.
Fox News said agents “then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation.”
“The investigative tactic concerns privacy and guns-rights advocates, who call it an invasion of privacy. The law-enforcement officials say it is an important and legal tool for pursuing dangerous, hard-to-track illegal activity.”
Fox said bureaucrats would not rule out using such surveillance again.
Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union told Fox News the surveillance “highlights the problem with mass collection of data.”
Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America said his group also opposes such government observation.
“Information on law-abiding gun owners ends up getting recorded, stored, and registered, which is a violation of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act and of the Second Amendment,” he said.
Gottlieb called the idea a “civil rights outrage” and “one more gun control affront launched during the Obama administration.”
“Instead of worrying about people attending gun shows,” Gottlieb said, “maybe the same attention could have been paid to criminals walking guns across the border under the Fast and Furious fiasco. Oh, wait, that was a debacle created by government agents, also during the Obama administration.”
Gottlieb said if there’s evidence of criminal activity, that’s one thing.
Otherwise, he said, it is “none of the government’s business who comes and goes at a lawfully operated gun show.”
“This kind of snooping should require a court order, and unless some illegal activity was detected, all license plate information gathered during this effort should be destroyed, and Congress should determine how it may have been used, or misused.
“We think this revelation by the Wall Street Journal raises enough questions that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should launch an inquiry,” he said. “If this kind of monitoring dealt with any activity other than a gun show, you can bet the liberal media would be screaming. The Obama administration and its media cheerleaders should understand that gun owners have privacy rights, too.”
The biblical mandate for armed self-defense – especially in church! Get “Shooting Back” today!
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