When an organization consists of elected public officials, there must be complete transparency.

BELLEVUE, WA – In response to this week’s launch of a new gun control organization consisting of state legislators from all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today called on the American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention to immediately publish a roster of their members, and disclose their funding sources.

“Private lobbying organizations might expect to have some degree of privacy,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb, “but when an organization consists of elected public officials, there must be complete transparency. The public deserves to know who belongs to this organization, and who is providing financial support.”

He noted that the group’s mailing address is at a Post Office box in New York City’s Madison Square Station.

Reuters reported that the ASLGVP had not released information on its preliminary donors, acknowledging only that fundraising efforts are in progress. Another report said that the group had not yet published a list of members, said to number around 200 lawmakers, over concerns about “political backlash.” The group was launched by Democratic New York Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh.

“If these state lawmakers are worried about political backlash back home,” Gottlieb observed, “they must have good reason for that. Reports say Kavanagh founded this group because Congress has not adopted certain gun control measures. This has become the argument of the gun prohibition lobby. They failed to pressure Congress, so now the strategy is to attack gun rights at the state level, where presumably members of this new anti-gun lawmakers’ group will push their gun control agenda through the state legislatures. Read more

This from the NRA

As we reported last month, a coalition of congressional representatives led by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer  (R-Mo.) had requested internal investigators at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to conduct formal inquiries into Operation Choke Point, as well as any officials and staff involved in the program.  Rep. Luetkemeyer is now reporting that those requests have been granted.  According to his press release announcing the decisions, “The correspondence I received from the FDIC and DOJ is a great first step in ensuring that those responsible for Operation Choke Point are held accountable and that Congress and the American people receive details and answers they deserve.” Over the past year, we have reported at length on the abuses of Operation Choke Point, an enforcement program involving DOJ and FDIC (among other agencies) that claims to target financial fraud, but in reality is being used to choke off banking services to legitimate, although politically-disfavored, businesses.  These businesses include retailers of firearms and ammunition, a number of which have found their banking relationships abruptly severed with little or no explanation and without reference to anything the individual businesses did or did not do.  Earlier this year, a congressional report based on examination of nearly 900 internal DOJ documents found that the operation’s adverse effect on legitimate businesses was not merely an unintended side-effect but the outcome of a deliberate attempt to target entire business sectors that, while legal, were deemed objectionable by regulators. Many questions about the program remain, including who decided which business sectors should be targeted, the extent of coordination between the agencies involved, and who within the Obama administration knew of or encouraged the activity.  The forthcoming investigations should hopefully shed light on these and other important issues.  What is clear is that DOJ and FDIC have a lot of explaining to do. Read more