BELLEVUE, WA – This week’s announcement by the Obama administration that new citizens can recite the Oath of Allegiance without declaring they will bear arms on behalf of the United States is another subtle swipe at the right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that a candidate for naturalized citizenship may be eligible to exclude both the vow to bear arms, and to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces, based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.
“By excluding the ‘bearing arms’ part of the oath, the administration is subliminally eroding the Second Amendment,” said SAF Outreach and Development Director Andrew Gottlieb. “You could have new citizens who are signing away their right to keep and bear arms.
“This is one more small effort by this administration to phase out the Second Amendment,” he said.
Gottlieb noted that this is alarming in the wake of other recent administration jabs that include last week’s report about the effort to expand firearms disqualifications to people on Social Security who require assistance with handling their finances. There was also the controversial attempt to re-classify popular green tip ammunition as armor piercing so it could be banned for civilian use.
“Everything President Obama does regarding the Second Amendment is secretive, subtle and backdoor,” Gottlieb observed. “What seems innocent is really just part of a broader scheme to whittle away at the right to keep and bear arms, which is a cornerstone of American citizenship.
“We hope somebody on Capitol Hill takes notice of this and starts asking some hard questions about why the administration wants to change the oath,” he said. “The president has rejected real common sense immigration reform, and now his administration wants to gut the Oath of Allegiance by omitting any reference to bearing arms. This anti-Second Amendment tinkering has to stop.”