Democrats' Attack on Civilian Marksmanship Expansion Plays on Fears with Lies

“During a debate on the House floor on Tuesday, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) spoke against an amendment which would authorize the military to give ‘additional’ surplus weapons to the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) defended,” Forbes summarized on a video of the exchange.

“This amendment would allocate additional surplus military weapons from the department of the Navy and the Department of the Air Force to the CMP to further their mission of educating youth on the importance of gun safety and marksmanship activities,” Rogers explained.

He’s been consistent in his support for the program. His latest efforts to use the National Defense Authorization Act to further the transfer and sale of U.S. military firearms, including M1911 pistols (in March, the Trump administration released 10,000 of them for CMP sales), add to leadership he showed in 2016 permitting the Army to transfer surplus vintage firearms, and in 2017, when his amendment made transferring surplus firearms mandatory.

It’s a "win-win for the taxpayers,” Rogers has stated, because it saves money on firearm storage costs and CMP reimburses for the cost of transferring them. That, and they’re made available to the public, and it supports programs for education, training, and safety. Who could be against that?

In a word, Democrats. In two words, Maxwell Frost, a former National Organizing Director at March for Our Lives, co-sponsor of the Prevent Illegal Gun Resales Act that would increase licensing fees and smear FFLs as “high risk dealers,” a purveyor of heightened “background check” prior restraints, due process-denying “red flag laws,” lock-up-your-safety mandates couched as “safe storage, and who essentially never saw a gun he didn’t want to ban, “ghost,” “assault,” or otherwise. Just to be clear who we’re dealing with, in July he asserted Republicans are pro-life “because they want the baby to be born, go to school and get shot in the school.”

“Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in opposition to this amendment which will put American lives at risk,” Frost dove right in, an indication that the rest of his for-the-cameras hyperbole and hysteria would drag any chance for reasoned debate downhill from there. “This amendment would make our country more dangerous by adding another responsibility and priority to the program to not just train people to but to essentially become an arms dealer, putting more weapons on the streets of this country.”

In all his ranting on the House floor, there was one thing conspicuously missing: Any proof at all that firearms obtained through the CMP were being used in crimes, disproportionately or otherwise. The truth is, if he had his druthers, gun suppliers to the people would be banned everywhere, in Everytown (referring to the anti-2A organization Everytown for Gun Safety). Making surplus firearms available to the public is and has been a major purpose behind the CMP, so that’s nothing new. Using Frost’s phony “rationale,” that’s what all “arms dealers” do, and that’s his point.

“To save lives, Democrats have now twice passed the bill that would expand background checks on every gun sale,” Frost continued, offering no evidence that they would (indeed, the National Institute of Justice’s 2013 “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies” concluded that “Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…”

“And here my Republican colleagues are wanting to make it even easier to dodge the rules that we do have,” Frost flat-out lied.

Here are all the “dodges” I went through back in 1995, when the program was run under the Army’s Director of Civilian Marksmanship. After undergoing training and demonstrating I could handle and shoot the thing, once I got notified of my approval, I had to submit:

• Cashier's check payable to U.S. Treasury
• Certificate for Purchase of Firearms
• Notarized attachment
• FBI Fingerprint Card
• Receipt from El Segundo CA Police Department
• DD Form 398-2, pages 2 through 5 inclusive (including authority for release of information and records)

Nine months later, I got my gun. (The mailman had never delivered one before, so he stayed to watch me open it and was excited to hold it and learn more about the program.)

What a citizen is required to go through today is also chock full of stringent prior restraints, delineated at the program’s website, TheCMP.org. Requirements for Purchase are:

• Proof of U.S. Citizenship
• Proof of Age
• Membership in CMP-Affiliated Organization
• Marksmanship or Other Firearms-Related Activity
• Legal Eligibility to Purchase a Firearm (Your signature on the Purchaser Certification portion of the purchase application authorizes the CMP to initiate the NICS check and authorizes the FBI to inform CMP of the result. A signed and notarized form 2A for each customer will need to [be] provided for any item purchased.)
• Important State or Locality Requirements (including certificates, licenses, permits, or cards, age requirements, and other applicable restrictions).

That’s what Frost says will “make it even easier to dodge the rules that we do have” and “put… more weapons on the streets of this country.” And that’s all Democrat constituents and other uninformed citizens will ever hear as the gun prohibitionists continue to swindle them out of their rights, aided and abetted by a mainstream media populated by useful idiot “journalists” who don’t know any better, and devious apparatchik publishers who do.

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About the Author

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

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