by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

A coalition of various interest groups including the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has kicked off an effort aimed at convincing Congress to review certain sections of the Patriot Act.
Calling itself the Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB), the group, led by former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, gathered in Washington, DC, Mar. 22 to detail their plans.

“There is no doubt the Patriot Act is necessary to provide law enforcement with the tools it needs to defeat terrorism,” Barr said. “But, some of its powers just go too far, such as allowing federal agents to search your home and examine your possessions secretly and not inform you they’ve done so for an unlimited amount of time. Some parts of the law give the federal government far too much power, and the Constitution’s checks and balances are needed.”

Other organizations joining the coalition include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), American Conservative Union (ACU), American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, American Policy Center, the Eagle Forum and Brad Jansen, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The chief targets of concern are tenets of the Act that allow broad search authority to federal officers, including so-called sneak-and-peek warrants that allow agents to go inside someone’s home or business without telling the person about it. Another provision allows federal agents to demand private information from “third party” sources, including doctors and attorneys. Barr and others believe this clearly violates the Fourth Amendment.

“If the Constitution stands for anything, it’s that the government does not have the right to peer into our lives without evidence of any wrongdoing,” said the ACLU’s outgoing DC office director Laura Murphy.

In a letter to President George Bush, the group noted, “When Congress passed the Patriot Act, just 45 days following the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001, a majority in Congress voted to make certain that the most extraordinary provisions of the act would be subject to Congressional review and would expire in December 2005. Now is the time for Congress to review and consider amending these provisions to protect Americans’ most fundamental freedoms, and bring the law in line with the checks and balances demanded by the Constitution.”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, who was not present for the press conference, issued a statement in which he noted, “As it stands, the Patriot Act . . . permits the government to seize certain personal records from third parties, whether they are doctors, attorneys or even the neighborhood librarian, and they could not even tell you about it. Whatever happened to the concept of attorney-client privilege or doctor-patient privacy? Many people are concerned that such authority might threaten our Fourth Amendment rights.

“Because another section of the Patriot Act could also ultimately be abused to stifle legitimate protest by various organizations, there are definitely First Amendment issues that should be addressed,” Gottlieb added. “While these issues do not directly relate to the right of individual citizens under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, a threat to any civil right is a threat to all of them. While there can be little doubt that the authors of the Patriot Act had the best of intentions, sometimes it is true that good intentions are the stuff from which the road to Hell has been paved.”

Surprisingly, there are three members of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) board of directors involved in the PRCB effort—Barr, ACU Chairman David Keene and ATR President Grover Norquist—but the NRA was not part of the coalition.

Keene told the press conference that, “There is no issue on the Congressional agenda in 2005 that is more important than the Patriot Act. What is at stake is Americans’ Fourth Amendment freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. All Americans, particularly those in Congress and the administration, must recognize the need to preserve checks and balances and bring the law in line with the Constitution.”

Norquist said that when the Patriot Act was being debated, he spoke with members of Congress who had not even read it, yet they voted for it. He concurred that it is time for the act to be revisited, at the least because of the potential that exists for later abuse.
“Sometimes when you give the government too much power,” Norquist observed, “even if it isn’t abused in the first year, somebody down the road figures out how they can abuse it five, 10, 20 years later.”

CCRKBA Public Affairs Director John Snyder noted, “The provisions in the Patriot Act which we question and the support for the extension of which we seek presidential reconsideration easily could be used by some executive branch governmental authority against the legitimate interests of America’s scores of millions of law-abiding gun-owning citizens. . . . When push comes to shove, an ultimate protection against terrorist activity well could be an armed citizenry.”

“Our goal is not to gut the Patriot Act,” Barr insisted. “Our goal is to ensure that Congress reviews the act, as members intended when they voted for the bill with the sunset provisions three years ago. PRCB is seeking modest changes to only a few extreme sections of the law. These changes will secure the important powers of the law while placing reasonable limits on their use.”