"Sensible" gun control ?

An Op Ed "Letter to the Editor" style opinion article in The ADVOCATE (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) offers an ... interesting ... mix of Gun Control suggestions.   Some of which are reasonable (which means I don't necessarily disagree with them), some of them are a not-so-subtle support of registration of guns and gun-owners, and a few of them are outrageous. 

(NOTE: Reader Op Eds links are not necessarily permanent; I've added a copy of the original text "under the fold".)

Letters: Some ideas for sensible gun control | Letters | theadvocate.com:

 1) Guns purchased legally, according to laws in effect at time of purchase, and not used illegally since, are private property and cannot be arbitrarily confiscated by federal, state or local authorities. 

<ME: concur ... it's in the Constitution?>

2) The Second Amendment does not need reinterpretation or revision. Private gun ownership and possession is a constitutional right.

<ME: Sneaky, since he's just about to "infringe" on that right?>

 3) All gun sales need to be accompanied by an efficient background check of the purchaser. This includes gun show, private and online purchases.
<;ME: Disagree ... always includes both buyer and seller identification, as well as description of the firearm; which is tantamount to  registration of the gun and identification of both buyer and seller as firearms owners.  And yes, this is an increasingly common practice and I'm still against it because the firearm serial number is invariably included!  Protests that the records of such a transaction are permanently deleted after a certain period of time are not convincing; nobody has said that the identity of buyer and seller, and firearm, are deleted; just the transaction record itself.>

 4) Carry, both concealed and open, should be prohibited with exceptions for hunters and recreational shooters. If you are going hunting, going recreational shooting, carry the gun. If you are going to church, the store, a demonstration and gun-free-zones: Leave the gun at home. 

<ME: Disagree ... and so does the Supreme Court.  re: HELLER> and MACDONALD>

 5) Gun manufacturers must be regulated to include the requirement to imprint permanent, non-erasable serial numbers on multiple parts of any gun. This regulation would also require a serial number or code imprint on all bullets sold. Reloaders, who don’t sell, are exempt. Letters: Congress should strengthen gun control I hope my U.S. senators, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, along with my U.S. representative, C… 

 

Disagree, with bells and whistles.   You see what the author has done, lulling you to sleep with the first couple of paragraphs and then he trots out his unrealistic Liberal philosophy.   Reasons: inadequate definition of terms such as "bullets" (one assumes he means "loaded cartridges" rather than components), but the idea of serialized ammunition has long been debunked as unrealistic, impractical, and ultimately without redeeming value.  See: "Connecticut">
6) Manufacturers of so-called “smart guns” would be encouraged with substantial tax breaks and/or other federal/local financial incentive to create guns that cannot be randomly fired.

<ME: Disagree, if only because the idjit author introduces terminology ("randomly fired") without context or definition.   If nothing else, this 'minor error' demonstrates the  basic incompetence/inexperience of the author.>

 7) Conventional gun purchases would accrue extra taxes, added to both gun and ammunition, with the proceeds dedicated to implement gun control. 

<ME: Disagree, not only because this "extra taxes" clause is undefined (though an increasingly "common practice", but if Gun Control is everybody's problem, then everybody should chip in.   Asking law-abiding gun owners to bear the burden is like a Fascist state executing dissidents, and then requiring the surviving family members to pay for the bullet.>

 8) Weapons classified as “assault” guns (as commonly understood) and all rapid-fire guns or guns capable of automatic fire are prohibited to private owners. They may be owned by clubs to be used by members and cannot be moved off site. Shooting clubs possessing these guns must carry liability insurance. Collectors (to be defined) and museums may also own these automatic weapons. These type of guns already in private hands are private property and cannot be arbitrarily confiscated. 

<ME: Disagree, because (A) the term "assault" is not commonly understood or defined, (B) "rapid fire" and "automatic fire" not defined , (C) under the broadest terms, constitutes over 50% of firearms in America, (D) under only slightly narrower terms, protected by the Constitution in most cases.   Note also that true "Assault Rifles" are rifle-caliber, capable of 'selective fire', and are already closely regulated since the 1930's.>

 9) Who is barred from gun ownership? Violent felons, those accused of domestic violence until the accusation is dismissed, anyone deemed by psychiatric experts to be mentally unstable and anyone refusing to take a gun safety course and/or refusing to demonstrate safe handling procedures. This is not an all-inclusive list.

<ME: Convicted violent felons and convicted domestic abusers are already denied their Second Amendment Rights (and some other civil rights as well).   "Accused" persons cannot be permanently denied their civil rights under the Constitution.  Refusal to "take a course" or "demonstrate safe handling procedures" is not grounds to deny a legal American his Constitutional rights, nor should it be.    The author might consider whether his right to vote should be obviated because he refuses to, or is unable to, define the Bill of Rights.    The comment "not an all-inclusive list" smacks of tyranny; if you're not prepared to define all the things you don't like about the Second Amendment, Bucky, then you're no better than a petty third-world dictator.>

10) Controversial gun accessories prohibited: high-capacity magazines. This accessory is not for private ownership, but for shooting clubs only. Current owners of high-capacity magazines have property rights to them. Bump stocks — no private ownership. Current owners have property rights. This is not a complete list of controversial gun accessories.

<ME: It doesn't matter whether you provide a 'complete list', it's sufficient that you are of the mind set of Dictators through-out history:    "IF it is not specifically permitted, it is prohibited.":

This is America; we don't work that way any more.  A bunch of guys in Concord and Lexington laid down their lives to start the ball rolling.  Are you sure you're not British?

ME: And by the way, "shooting clubs" have no absolute need for "high-capacity" magazines.  During the shameful era when magazines of greater than 10 rounds were outlawed, shooting competitions which previously allowed "high-capacity magazines" (here, >10 rounds) adjusted their rules.   Those of us who competed with guns were disgruntled, but obeyed the law.   The "high-capacity magazine" was not designed for competition ... I've been shooting competitively for sixty years, and I've dealt with all the rules. 

"High-capacity magazines" were designed for non-competitive purposes.  Are they used in competition?  Sure .. some varieties of competition.   But if you have to do a reload in competition, it's because the rules require it.  Everybody abides by the same rules, so it merely adds an interesting complexity to the shooting problem.

But when you're alone in a dark parking lot and you're waylaid by a gang of thugs, you don't get a 'time penalty' when you have to reload; you get hurt.  Badly.


 11) Finally, manufacturers, research institutes and universities must be encouraged with grants and favorable laws to design safer, less-lethal guns intended for use by the general public. 

<ME: There is no way to design "less-lethal guns", because a gun is, by definition, a "lethal weapon".  (Look it up, it's in the book.)   We do have "less-lethal" alternatives to guns, such as pepper-spray, whistles, cell phones.  You strike me as a man who has never been attacked by someone who is bigger, stronger, more aggressive ... more violent than you.>

 Gun control in the U.S. is far too complex and emotional an issue to be settled quickly. Compromise is essential. Fanatics and extremists on both sides must not be allowed to commandeer the debate. We must plan for the future and accept the idea that it will take more than a generation to reach consensus.

<ME: That's the funny thing about "Gun Grabbers" (and you are one); they always talk about "COMPROMISE".In Lib-Talk, "COMPROMISE" means: "Gun Owners Give Up Something Important To Them, And We Move On And Ask Them To Compromise On The Next Reasonable Gun Control Safety Item On Our To-Do List".>

 What's the compromise here?  What are "people like you", who always know what I should do to undermine my Constitutional Rights, willing to give up in return to my sacrifice?
Never mind, I already know that this is a one-way street, and for you it's "my way or the highway".>

[NOTE: the original article was submitted by "Greig Olivier retired fabricator".   Because links to opinion editorials are not necessarily "permanent", I've included the full text below the fold]

More Guns Linked to More Mass Shootings? NO redeeming factors? Hah!

Study: More Guns Linked to More Mass Shootings | RealClearScience:
(February 02, 2016)

After peaking in the 1980s and early 1990s, crime has plummeted in the United States. The rates of forcible rape, murder, violent crime, property crime, and aggravated assault are currently as low as they were in the 1960s.

Some studies have suggested strongly that this reduction in crime can be directly tied to the increase in the number of states which allow concealed carry (and often "open carry" ... where firearms are NOT concealed but in open view ... predominately in holsters) by private citizens.  

("Correlation does not imply causation", but the author of this article uses the word "relationship" in the discussion.   Based on that synchronicity,  it seems reasonable to suggest that some 'relationship' exists between the statistics on violent crime and the increased presence of 'carried' firearms.)

 While these statistics demonstrate that Americans are about as safe from crime as they have been in over a half-century, there is a particularly horrendous type of crime that has been alarmingly on the uptick: public mass shootings. In places like San Bernadino, California, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Roseburg, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina, and Newtown, Connecticut, innocents have been mercilessly gunned down in great numbers.

However, other studies , such as the Texas A&M study reported here dispute that assumption:

According to the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, crime, and specifically violent crime, has been decreasing nationally since 1993, with a similar decline in other Western nations. Some commentators claim the decline in the United States is attributed to the increase in concealed carry legislation. But criminologists point to a variety of factors that have lead to the drop in crime, including changes in policing, punishment, crime prevention technology and socio-economic factors.

The Texas Tribune article, quoting state Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House County Affairs Committee, which tackles criminal justice issues asserts that:

“People who commit crimes are less likely to go through that background check,” he said.  It’s also unlikely that a concealed handgun license holder would be in the right place at the right time to stop a crime, Coleman said.

That statement seems a little disingenuous.  The purpose of undergoing a background check to acquire a concealed carry permit is specifically to catch criminals ... who don't want to apply for a license to do the illegal actions for which they need guns.  ("Circular Reasoning" is a difficult concept to explain.)

As to the "unlikely" probability that a CHL holder "would 'be in the right place at the right time" is disproved daily in news reports.  For example, John Lott recently described four crimes stopped by civilian handgun carriers in one week in December, 2915.

And  in April of 2015, Lott (author of "More Guns, Less Crime") published an article titled: 

COMPILING CASES WHERE CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMIT HOLDERS HAVE STOPPED MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS

(Please follow the links from that starting point ... there is a lot of information, including links to published articles.)

This is all background, presented to establish the statistical evidence that firearms ownership DOES have a positive effect on crime prevention, and introducing another opinion on the question whether (civilian) concealed carry provides another approach to crime prevention.

Heller Resistance

In August of 2009, "[a]n appeals court in Chicago ... ruled that the federal, state or local government can require all citizens to register their firearms under penalty of law."

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of appeals decided that the Heller decision does not affect the 'right' of local (Cicero) officials to mandate firearms registration. "[T]he Second Amendment is no obstacle to mandatory gun registration."

"There is a critical distinction between the D.C. ordinance struck down in Heller and the Cicero ordinance," the court said in an opinion written by Judge Diane Wood, a Clinton appointee. "Cicero has not prohibited gun possession in the town. Instead, it has merely regulated gun possession under Section 62-260 of its ordinance."

Apparently, the 7th Court (in a 3-0 decision) feels that "regulated gun possession" falls well within that inconvenient "shall not be infringed" thingie.
_______________________________________________

And in October of 2009,

A New Jersey appeals court has concluded that Americans have no Second Amendment right to buy a handgun.

In a case decided last week, the superior court upheld a state law saying that nobody may possess "any handgun" without obtaining law enforcement approval and permission in advance.

And ...

... New Jersey Appellate Division Judge Stephen Skillman wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel that Heller "has no impact upon the constitutionality of" the state law.

That's because, Skillman said, the Supreme Court did not strike down the District of Columbia's de facto handgun ban but instead simply ordered the city to issue a permit. In other words, while Americans may have the right in general to possess arms, the exact contours of that right have not been mapped, especially as the Second Amendment applies to state laws. (The court's majority opinion last year said: "We therefore assume that petitioners' issuance of a license will satisfy respondent's prayer for relief and do not address the licensing requirement.")

______________________________________________

Now, in November, 2009;

... a Maryland appeals court has followed suit. A three-judge panel ruled last Thursday that the Second Amendment does not interfere with a Maryland law that generally restricts state residents from carrying handguns.

That's not much of a surprise. What is remarkable is that Judge Albert Matricciani went out of his way to write that even if the Second Amendment applied to state laws, Maryland's statute would be perfectly constitutional in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court D.C. v. Heller decision last year to invalidate the District of Columbia's handgun ban.

[Emphasis in the original CBS report]

If you're confused, it's probably about whether the involved judges are taking the narrow view to preserve States Rights, or they're deliberately interpreting Heller narrowly because they are loath to give up pre-existing personal bias in favor of Gun Control.

It would be nice to believe the former.

The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Most of us are for States Rights even when they may walk a fine line between various Constitutional issues.

The American Constitution is unique among all nations in all history in that it recognizes the pre-eminent rights of "the people".

[Delete digressions pertaining to "rights of the people" and purported predations upon these rights by various presidents and branches of The Legislature.]

The Judiciary has been especially active in the past few years.

For example, in Roe v Wade the Supreme Court interpreted the constitution to allow for abortion ... although it is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The argument was that

"The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling."

(One wonders where in the American Constitution they found a citation to "the 2nd and 3rd trimesters" of a pregnancy.)

Moving quickly to 2nd Amendment interpretations, U.S. v Miller established the basis for disallowing 2nd Amendment protections, specifically in that a court case which was not even contested results in the prohibition of short-barrelled shotguns (and thus other 'special case' firearms restrictions; it's a 'slippery slope'.)

Essentially the decision was based upon the violation of a tax law., which required payment of a tax and acquisition of a 'tax stamp' on certain firearms. This has not changed in law.

Roe V Wade established the ability of the Supreme Court to interpret the constitutions however they wished. Perhaps more importantly, U.S. V Miller established the ability of a District Court to establish a precedence, under less than optimum conditions ("No appearance for appellees "), which attenuates the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Now we see a new movement by local and District courts to undermine a finding of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

Your personal opinion is probably a reflection of your personal bias. Yes, you are biased. Me too.

I like the Heller decision, although I don't think it went far enough.

I don't like the recent court decisions pertaining to Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. (I note in passing that these are among the states which, a year or two ago, proposed bills in favor of Microstamping Ammunition.)

Today, we have local and district courts passing decisions which seem to modify the 'original intent' of the Heller Decision. But do they? These courts don't think so. They think that the Heller Decision was itself a 'narrow definition' of a fine part of the law; in this case, a Constitutional Interpretation.

The points they make are:

1. The Heller Decision only applies to Federal Districts;
2. It does not apply to registration ("regulation"), but only to absolute refusal to allow ownership of a firearm; or
3. Heller permits ownership, but does not address 'possession' under all circumstances (carry outside one's own property).
   

Those are the three main points of the issues raised by these points, and should come as no surprise. When the Heller Decision was published, there was much discussion about the issues which were deliberately not addressed by the Supreme Court.

In effect, the Right to Bear Arms folks then, and do now, consider this our own 'slippery slope'.

• If DC can't prohibit possession, can any other locality or state?
• If a locality or state can't prohibit possession, can it 'regulate' possession by requiring registration and/or issue of a 'permit' to possess a firearm?
• Does the interpretation applies to 'firearms', are the laws equally applicable to 'handguns'?
• Does the 2nd Amendment then allow 'carry' or 'concealed carry' of firearms? And if so, to what extent and under what conditions?
  
• Can private businesses (and shopping malls, churches, schools/universities, court houses, restaurants which serve alcoholic beverages, etc.) prevent patrons/visitors from carrying firearms on the premises? If so, under what circumstances?

These are just a few ... a very few ... of the questions which must be addressed before we really know what the 2nd Amendment means, and how it is applicable in all circumstances of American society.

Brother, we have a long way to go before we have defined exactly what the 2nd Amendment means in Modern Society.

We who espouse a 'loose' interpretation of the 2nd Amendment can expect to lose a few, some, perhaps many of these contests. Most of them will probably be contested in the courts for decades.

And at first we should expect to lose more than we win.

But today, because of the Heller decision, the shoe is on the other foot.

Before, we could not afford to lose a single court contest. Now, we may lose a few decisions, but as more decisions accede to our "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" philosophy, it may be possible to revisit the 'lost' issues and win new interpretations of our rights.

We cannot win until specific decisions --- which restrict our rights --- have been brought to the courtroom. Having local and District courts find against the Second Amendment (under various interpretations) only provides us with the opportunity to appeal, and appeal, and appeal.

The Gun Control folks find themselves on the other side of the battle now. Depending upon the political make-up of the Supreme Court (and one is reluctant to depend on a trend toward 'Originalism' in SCOTUS), it may be possible in this century to prevail against "miss-interpretations" from the last century.

The bottom line here seems to be that we need to elect an Executive who is predisposed to seat Federal Judges who are Original Constitutionalists, rather than those who view the Constitution as a "Living Document".

Obama?

Unless we can recover control of the Executive Branch, we are so screwed!

Sotomayor Ducks Questions About Gun Rights

Sotomayor Ducks Questions About Gun Rights - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor refused on Wednesday to elaborate on her views about firearms regulations and the Second Amendment, saying she would "make no prejudgments" about future firearms-related cases.

President Obama's first nominee to the high court did say that she believed Americans do not currently enjoy a fundamental right to bear arms, which echoes her two previous rulings on the topic as an appeals court judge.

I commented previously about Sotomayor's candidacy to SCOTUS, and I admit it was not supportive. In that article, I also focused on her responses to questions about her support for the Second Amendment as acknowledging an 'individual right', and perhaps suggested that her support was tepid at best, reminiscence of a Cracker asserting that "some of my best friends are N ... uh ... Black People".

Today, the news reports describe her absolute inability (or unwillingness) to comment on the Second Amendment as an Individual Right.

Because Sotomayor has not clarified her position on gun rights, and has declined repeated invitations to do so during this week's Senate hearing, advocacy groups have turned to her written opinions and the president's own record on firearm regulation. (This parallels the abortion question: While Sotomayor parried those questions on Wednesday, the White House had previously reassured liberal groups that she would be a staunch pro-choice vote on the court.)

I have nobly managed not to address her decision on the RICCI case, and in truth I'm not willing to initiate a barrage attack on Sotomeyer's candidacy. I don't like the Ricci decision, I don't agree with it, but here ... it is a digression.

What most concerns me is that a candidate for the Supreme Court of The United States, one who has previously and historicallyl based her decisions on "precedence", is unwilling or unable to cite "precedence" as recent as the past calendar year.

Speaking openly, I don't feel much inclined to argue that a SCOTUS candidate who offers "I don't know, it depends on the case" is ipso facto unqualified for acceptance. Our last two SCOTUS nominees, those who somehow made it past the Senate Selection Committee, often felt obliged to respond in much the same way.

Consider this:

Existing Supreme Court decisions indicate the Second Amendment only limits "the actions the federal government could take with respect to the possession of firearms" and can't be used to strike down broad state laws, Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

This is all well and good (it says here), but this is not a nebulous issue which decision must be finessed by reading between the lines, such as Roe v Wade.

This is an issue which has been very carefully defined by the recent Heller decision, and for a SCOTUS candidate who professes to take into account 'precedents', one wonders why an interpretation of the law, for which precedents exist, has so much trouble answering simple questions.

To illustrate, read the transcript at the end of the article which offers a dialogue between Sotomayor and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK):

COBURN: Do I have a right to personal self-defense?

SOTOMAYOR: I'm trying to think if I remember a case where the Supreme Court has addressed that particular question. Is there a constitutional right to self-defense? And I can't think of one. I could be wrong, but I can't think of one.

SOTOMAYOR: Generally, as I understand, most criminal law statutes are passed by states. And I'm also trying to think if there's any federal law that includes a self-defense provision or not. I just can't...

COBURN: But do you have an opinion, or can you give me your opinion, of whether or not in this country I personally, as an individual citizen, have a right to self-defense?

SOTOMAYOR: I -- as I said, I don't know.

COBURN: I'm talking about your...

SOTOMAYOR: I don't know if that legal question has been ever presented.

COBURN: I wasn't asking about the legal question. I'm asking about your personal opinion.

SOTOMAYOR: But that is sort of an abstract question with no particular meaning to me outside of...

COBURN: Well, I think that's what American people want to hear, Your Honor, is they want to know. Do they have a right to personal self-defense?...

Those are the kind of things people would like for us to answer and would like to know, not how you would rule or what you're going to rule, but -- and specifically what you think about, but just yes or no. Do we have that right?

SOTOMAYOR: I know it's difficult to deal with someone as a -- like a judge who's so sort of -- whose thinking is so cornered by law.

[Ed: emphasis added.]

There is more detail available in the original article, and you may be justified in thinking I have
"cherry-picked" the quotations. So go read the whole thing, and maybe it will help you to make up your own mind about Sotomayor's candidacy for the Supreme Court of The United States.

Personally, I don't have much faith in a SCOTUS candidate who professes to be "cornered by the law".

I never thought that Supreme Court judges could be 'cornored by the law'. I always though that they interpreted the law. If they feel 'cornored by the law', are they really the best candidates for the job?

Heller? Fugetaboudit!

The Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal by the National Rifle Association and in doing so has confirmed the legality of a Chicago, Illinois, ordnance banning handguns and "automatic weapons" within the Chicago city limits.

This is a curious ... and surprising ... decision for at least three reasons:

1. Because of the Heller decision, the Federal Government (in the persona of the Supreme Court) has determined that the Second Amendment refers to a "personal right" to possess a firearm.
2. The 14th Amendment is explicit in stating that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ...", which means that if a federal law (or, in this case, interpretation of the Costitution) exists, no state may abrogate that primcipal. In detail, this extends to municipalities, such as the City Of Chicago.
3. The 7th Circuit Court (west coast) recently ruled in favor of the individual right to possess firearms, which is particularly striking in that this is the most liberal court in the nation by dint of its record.
   
   

Not to put it too delicately, if the Feds say you (as a Private Citizen) can do a thing, you can do it in any state in the union. This may be considered by some folks a "Dangerous Thing", as it is the reaso n (for example) that Roe V Wade prevails over States Rights to declare abortion unlegal.

What's good for the Goose is good for the Gander, so the states can't prohibit abortion beyond the liits set by the Federal Government; by the same token, the states cann't prohibit private possession of firearms by the private citizen And yes, this does mean that the individual state or munincipality cannot restrict firearms ownership any more than it can restrict "Pro-Choice" issues.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Heller v DC: commentary from CATO

Cato Unbound : Blog Archive : If this Is Defeat, We’ll Take It

I found an interesting commentary on the Heller decision from last year.

This is, obviously, "dated". But it's still pertinent considering that the District of Columbia, smarting over the Heller Decision, immediately attempted (and is still attempting ) to weasel-word itself out of the Supreme Court decision which REQUIRES the municipality to recognize Second Amendment Rights.

Cloaking himself and the Brady Center in the mantle of "reasonableness,” Dennis Henigan disclaims the statement of Brady co-founder Pete Shields and asserts that it "has never been” and is not now the policy of his organization to "make possession of all handguns . . . totally illegal.” Perhaps so. Perhaps, as Henigan says, Brady supports even laws, like the D.C. gun ban, that the organization "does not favor as a policy matter,” because "legislators should not be constitutionally barred from enacting the gun control laws they think necessary.”

If that's the view of the Brady Center, I respectfully disagree. A principal purpose of our Constitution is to restrain the excesses of the political branches and secure key rights against temporal majorities. But let's not quibble. Let's accept Henigan's statement that, from a policy perspective, Brady opposes the D.C. gun ban. Is it too much to ask for a citation to one corroborating article, one radio or TV appearance, one web posting, or one quoted statement by any responsible Brady official that says, in essence, "We think D.C. should repeal its gun ban, even though it is constitutional, because it is bad public policy”?

Now that D.C. officials, trying to circumvent the Heller decision, have proposed new rules that still ban all handguns except revolvers, still require all weapons in the home to be kept in a dysfunctional state, and still make D.C. residents endure a months-long process to register a weapon, can we count on the Brady Center, in a show of reasonableness, to publicly oppose those rules on policy grounds? Will the Brady Center support a temporary suspension for D.C. residents of the federal ban on interstate handgun sales because, otherwise, until D.C. licenses dealerships, residents cannot obtain a handgun either in or out of the city — a situation that is self-evidently unreasonable.

I mention this only to emphasize that there are still governmental organizations (municipal, state, federal) who are determined to undermine our Second Amendment rights.

Our High-School Civics Classes taught us that we, as Citizens rather than as Subjects, have both the right and the obligation to protest laws which undermine our constitutional rights.

But what it didn't teach us was that our Governmental establishments will almost inevitably fight our protests, and spend our (taxpayer) dollars in the effort to deny us (taxpayers) the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.

In the current administration, we see citizens frightened into a panic mode because of our justifiable fear that our government has a private agenda divorced from the Constitution and from our expressed will.

We are fortunate that there are lone citizens who will act as proxy for us all by standing up for THEIR individual civic rights ... such as Mr. J. Heller.

What are YOU doing this week to speak out for your civil rights?

PLAXICO BURRESS: 2nd Amendment Hero, or Irresponsible Dolt?

PLAXICO BURRESS ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS SELF IN LEG - New York Post

The bottom line of the November 29, 2008 NY Post story is that a football player (and role model for millions of American Children, so to speak) decided to carry a gun into a NYC bar and in one way or another managed to shoot himself in the leg. Then his friends brought him to a hospital for treatment, where he identified himself with a made-up name and a made-up story (anecdotal, no reliable reference so far) and left after treatment and before the hospital remembered to notify the police of a gun-shot wound.

He was eventually identified, arrested, and will face charges of carrying a concealed firearm (among other charges, such as making false statements).

It's interesting to see the various interpretations on the gun-bloggers, and I look forward to following the news.

My short version of the story:

He broke the law in carrying a concealed weapon in NYC, he fumbled his gun while trying to clear it (or when it slipped from the waistband of his jogging pants and grabbing it ... depends on the new sources you believe), and undeniably manage in so doing to shoot himself in the leg. Then his friends took him out of the NYC nightclub where the incident occurred, drove him to a hospital for treatment, and eventually slipped out. The police eventually identified him and charged him with a various number of offenses, not least is violation of the NYC Sullivan Law (if that law is still so called.)

In reading the last week's gunblogger write-ups of this notorious case, I found two which seem to best illustrate the polarization of the gun commuity.

Xavier Thoughts describes Burress as a wanna-be gangbanger who carried a loaded (cocked and, maybe, locked) into a public drinking place and through negligence and inexperience managed to drop the gun and in so doing shot himself. As Xavier says in response that the Heller Decision may apply (in regards to NYC's draconian gun laws):

The landmark Heller decision does not apply. For once Bloomberg is right. Plaxico Burress knowingly violated the law. This was not an act of civil disobedience. Plaxico Burress did not have to go to the Manhattan nightclub. If he decided to go, he did not need to carry a gun. Being a wealthy athlete, he had more options than many people. He could have hired bodyguards to protect him and his bling. Instead, he chose to play the role of the thug and carry his gat in his sags and go clubbin'. He is not a victim. He knowingly and willfully violated the law, no matter how unjust that law is. Plaxico Burress was an arrogant athlete who thought he was special, that the law did not apply to him, that he was beyond, if not above the law.

On the other side of the controversy is an article by Michael Bane, author of "The Michael Bane Log" and producer of (among others) "Down Range TV".

Bane's article cites an earlier article by Ted Nugent, which seems to blame NYC gun restrictions because they did not allow Burress the opportunity to train and qualify for a Concealed Carry Permit.

If NYC permitted an individual to legally own and carry a concealed pistol, Nugent's arguments seem to suggest, Burress would not have qualified until he was able to demonstrate reasonable gun-handling skills.

This seems, to me, to be among the best of circular reasoning. If Burress couldn't have qualified for a concealed carry permit (if such were offered in his current home state of New York), he wouldn't have carried a gun.

But Burress already did not qualify for a New Your carry permit, so why expect that failing the NY test would have dissuaded him from carrying that night?

Besides, he (Burress) already possessed a Florida carry permit. Was he not required to meet some minimum standards in Florida? Even though the Florida permit wasn't accepted in New York, one would have expected that SOME level of gun-handling profeciency needed to be demonstrated then and there.

Ultimately, and in the actual fact, Burress proved that he was unable to carry a gun safely, and that IS the bottom line.

Comments in the Bane blog seem generally to focus on the failures of New York State and New York City to provide a reasonable path to a Concealed Carry Permit. They ignore the obvious facts that Burress is an idiot and has no business carrying a deadly weapon in any circumstances, let along a NYC bar. Who carries a cocked-and-locked semi-automatic pistol in the waistband of his jogging pants, other than a Gang-banger wanna be whose only apparent motivation is to appear "dangerous" to his friends?

Well, if that was his motivations, I'm sure that his friends are convinced that he is a dangerous man with a gun. I'm convinced the NYC police and Mayor Bloomberg are convinced, and 90% of America is convinced that Plaxico Burress is a dangerous man with a gun.

So are the on-call medical personnel at the Emergency Room at Cornell Medical Center (or New York Presbyterian Hospital, depending on which news reports you choose to believe), who had to treat his through-and-through shot to the leg ... self-inflicted ... convinced that" Plaxico Burress is a dangerous man with a gun."

This is not a Second Amendment issue. This is an issue of having identified (by a practical demonstration of his own inability to safely carry a gun) that one Plaxico Burress is an idiot, has no qualification to carry a firearm, and is an embarassment to the defenders of the Second Amendment.


While the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution grants each citizen with "... the right to Keep and Bear Arms", none few of us who defend that right are willing to defend a man who has proven himself to be an irresponsible and incompetent idiot. He has demonstrated that he is unwilling, perhaps unable, to accept responsibility for his own actions. By the series of bad decisions he has made in this single incident, he illustrates the 'worst case' proposed by anti-gun advocates across the world.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms defenders around the world owe it to themselves to denounce this yahoo, and support any civil and other legal charges which may be levied against him.

I do not want to be in the same room with this man. Nobody I know, most of whom safely handle firearms on a weekly, if not daily, basis, would be safe around this man if he was in reach of a firearm.

We need to take a stand to the effect that a person who has shown himself incompetent to handle a firearm should be dissuaded until he has demonstrated that he has, minimally, proven otherwise. And there should be a minimum time after he has proved his ability to responsibly choose when and how he should carry a firearm, before his rights have been restored.

News Report:


Raw video: Burress turns himself in to the police:


Video - Bloomburg urges full prosecution of Buress:


Video - Many questions, few details in Burress shooting:


Vudei - New Details Emerge About Burress Shooting



The following video may be some explanation for why Burress was carrying:


This video is obviously a satirical response:


_________________________________________________________________
UPDATE: December 15, 2008

One commenter took exception to a statement in this article:

"...( Plaxico Burress ...) is an embarrassment to the defenders of the Second Amendment."

The comment disputed that statement in favor of his own:
"The Sullivan Gun Laws are an embarrassment to the defenders of the 2A."

I disagree.

In my opinion, the Sullivan Law is an insult to the defenders of the Second amendment. It is an embarrassment to the people of the state and the city of New York. Why? Because after nearly 100 years of failing to prove that it provides any benefit to the safety and welfare of the community, they have yet to repeal this racist law.

And I'll fight any man in this bar to disagrees!
[download Bing Crosby: Two Shillalagh O'Sullivan]

NOTE: This article was also updated to provide a link to the Gun Law News article on the Sullivan Act. And in the process I corrected a missing link in my sidebar (see "Other RKBA Websites") by adding Gun Law News (Home).

WashingtonWatch.com - H.R. 6842, The National Capital Security and Safety Act

WashingtonWatch.com - H.R. 6842, The National Capital Security and Safety Act

Some people aren't happy about this. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland's 8th District), for example, isn't happy because both Maryland and Virginia have state laws forbidding the purchase of more than one firearm a month. So does D.C. This bill would disallow D.C. to have continue a similar existing law, and Van Hollen doesn't think that's fair. (The link includes both a BAD YouTube video, and the full text of his remarks.)

What this bill, the substitute bill, would do is say the people of the District of Columbia, they can’t pass the same law the people in Maryland have and the people in Virginia have. That is absolutely wrong.

He's also outraged that:

This bill eliminates, for the purpose of the District of Columbia, the ban on interstate trafficking of guns that applies to every other jurisdiction in this country, which not only puts at risk people in the District of Columbia, but puts a burden and a risk on the people of all the surrounding jurisdictions. Why would we eliminate that provision which applies throughout the country just in the District of Columbia?

He may be right. It may be that the the Supreme Court will soon be addressing similar infringements on the 2nd Amendment by states, not just D.C. It may come to that.
_____________________________________________

This is a very confusing issue ... no surprise to most of us.

One of the confusing factors it that, although HR6842 has been passed by the House, and forwarded to the Senate, there was an 'alternative' (House Report 110-843) which was reported to have "replaced" the original bill.

The "Second Amendment Enforcement Act" (HR6691 -read into the house on July 31, 2008) may be the 'alternative' which was accepted by the house.

(Full Text available here ... I think.)

[This is strikingly similar to the 2003 "District of Columbia Protection Act" (HR3193), which apparently failed aborning.]

That bill seems on the surface to address the more egregious actions of D.C., including the definition of a semi-automatic firearm as a "machine gun", and requiring registration of firearms.

And just when you think you understand what's going on, you look at the dates on the bill and they don't seem, somehow, to be ... sequential.

---

Without conducting a line-by-line comparison of H. Rept 110-843, HR6691, HR6842, and the original "Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975" (District of Columbia - I do have what seems to be a thorough reference here but I can't say that this quotes the Act directly), it's impossible to tell what existing statutes are being addressed by which 'new' bills.

(Wikipedia summary of FCRA/1975 here.)

My intention is not to act as a legal scholar by thoroughly compairing all existing and proposed legislation to provide a point-by-point evaluation of this body of legal action. I'll leave that to someone who is so inclined and who is qualified.


The purpose of this is only to caution you to not be too optimistic that the latter legislative actions are not necessarily going to result in what you may personally consider a pure interpretaion of the Second Amendment, as you understand it.

Please, do prepare yourself to be somewhat diappointed in this, the third round in the D.C. v 2nd Amendment, controversy and legalistic embroglio.

Remember, all participants are lawyers.

Or Politicians.

Almost 100% of the time, all politicians are lawyers, which constitutes the most deadly boulibaise of self-interest, drive for re-election and bias that the world has ever seen.

"First, we hang the lawyers"
-- William Shakespeare

"It ain't over until it's over"
-- Yogi Berra

Man whose lawsuit scuttled DC gun ban gets permit

Man whose lawsuit scuttled DC gun ban gets permit

The man whose lawsuit overturned Washington's handgun ban has successfully registered his revolver, ending a more than 30-year wait to keep the weapon in his home.

Dick Heller walked out of D.C. police headquarters Monday, clutching a yellow firearms registration certificate stamped "approved." He gave the thumbs-up sign, grinned and said, "Victory!"

Heller was among the first people to seek a gun permit under new rules adopted after the Supreme Court struck down the city's 32-year-old handgun ban inJune. Heller was the plaintiff in that case.

He won approval to keep a .22-caliber revolver at home after coming to police headquarters in July to be fingerprinted and take a firearms proficiency test. Police approved the weapon after completing a background check.

You may recall that last month I reported that Dick Heller applied to the District of Columbia for a gun permit. At the time, I suggested (hell, I said straight out!) that he applied for a permit for a Semi-Automatic Pistol in direct defiance to D.C.'s defiance of the Supreme Court decision.

That may be so, but what D.C. did today was to grant his permit for ... a .22 caliber revolver.

Not quite the Big Boom we had hoped for, but this is a Giant Step for Man in terms of the 2nd Amendment in the District of Columbia.

Dick Heller is still my hero. If he leads us through the deep, dark twisty woods of Gun Control with tiny baby steps, this is still leadership in terms of Gun Control in D.C.

Thanks for showing us the way, Mr. Heller.

Heller the Hero Strikes Again

Dick Heller Doubles Down


Geek with a .45 scores a double whammy on DC's duplicitous denial.

Mr. Heller has (for the second time in recorded history) applied to the District of Columbia for permission to register a handgun.

Read the whole thing.

Counting our chickens

With the passage and enactment of a new Florida law which permits employees to keep firearms in their cars at their place of employment, the NRA-ILA proudly proclaimed (July 1, 2008):

Today, House Bill 503 by Representative Greg Evers and Senator Durell Peaden takes effect.

Officially, HB 503 is known as the "Preservation & Protection of the Right to Keep & Bear Arms in Motor Vehicles Act of 2008," even though elements of the business community continue to call it the “Guns at Work Law.”

This new law protects existing constitutional and statutory rights. Law-abiding gun owners can continue to have firearms in their private vehicles, for self-defense and other lawful purposes without fear of punitive actions against them by anti-gun businesses and employers.

Under the new law, any business or employer who violates the constitutional and statutory right of customers or employees to have firearms locked in their private vehicles can now be punished.

ALSO, under this new law, business owners will benefit from immunity from liability if guns stored in vehicles in the businesses parking lot are used to cause harm on the business property.

THE LAW APPLIES TO ALL BUSINESSES, ALL CUSTOMERS & EMPLOYEES.

The law covers ALL employers and businesses. The Legislature passed and Governor Crist signed it into law to protect the right of ALL law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.

The law requires employees who park in their employer's parking lot to have a concealed weapons license in order to be exempt from a policy that prohibits employees from having guns -- IF THEIR EMPLOYER HAS SUCH A POLICY.

Customers and invitees are not required to have concealed weapons licenses in order to have firearms in their vehicles when they park their vehicles in business parking lots.

The legislation does not prohibit any employer from having a policy that bars employees from having guns on the employer's property. It merely exempts employees, who have a concealed weapons license, from the policy as it relates to having a gun locked in their private vehicle in the parking lot. Employees who do not have concealed weapons licenses are subject to an employer’s anti-gun, gun ban policy.

That sounds fairly definitive, doesn't it?

But no! Corporate America (those fine folks who run the businesses , and find themselves forced into a conflict between their corporate profits, Corporate Policy and The Law) are never short of lawyers who can finagle a way to circumvent any law, no matter how clearly it might seem to the average layman.

Unfortunately, one of Florida's largest employers, Disneyland, has decided that they are exempt from this law and they will continue with their long-standing published police of forbidding anyone from entering their property with a firearm in their car.

And they just might make it stick:

Disney cites language within Florida's newly enacted "Preservation and Protection of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Motor Vehicles Act of 2008" that creates an exception for companies whose primary business is to manufacture, use, store or transport explosives regulated under federal law.

"I intended it to exempt places like defense plants, Air Force bases, things like that," said Peaden, who sponsored the bill in the Senate. "But not Disney. Not at all."

But on the same day that the House took its final vote on the gun bill, the exemption for explosives companies was revised so that it also includes "property owned or leased by an employer who has obtained a permit" under federal law for such explosives.

Disney has such a permit, for the extensive fireworks used in its theme parks.

On (curiously) Independence Day, 2008, NRA-ILA reported that a security guard at DisneyLand has announced his intention to defy the corporate policy and bring his firearm on the 23 mile commute. "Disneyland is safe ..." Security Guard Edwin Stotolmayer stated, "... but Orlando is not."

Disney told Eyewitness News it respects Sotomayer's opinion, but safety is its top priority and employees who bring guns to work risk getting fired. Sotomayer has already hired an attorney.He is not the only one who is upset. The NRA and the State Attorney General have also received complaints.

[NOTE: Disneyland was not amused when Sotomayer's gambit was attempted on Friday ... on Independence Day. He did what he said he would do: he brought his gun to town. Big D-land did what it said it would do: they canned his ass suspended him.]

In a world where businesses are subject to litigious action in case of either an accident or a terrorist attack (see Virginia Tech), it is perhaps understandable that any corporate entity would be more concerned for their legal vulnerability than for the safety of their customers. (Disney probably would disagree with this evaluation, but the new law provides protection for corporate entities:

Again, from the NRA-ILA Alert:

ALSO, under this new law, business owners will benefit from immunity from liability if guns stored in vehicles in the businesses parking lot are used to cause harm on the business property.

What is driving Disney to defy the decision of SCOTUS?

Your guess is as good as mine, but one of the benefits of Life in America is that anyone, from private individual to Corporate Entity, may challenge laws and the interpretation of those laws.

I don't agree with the Disney position, and I don't like it. But I rejoice that I live in a nation which is based on Rule By Law, rather than Rule By Fiat.

(And no, I never envisioned a situation when I would link to Time, Inc. as a definitive reference. It could be worse: I might sometime find myself agreeing with, say, Sean Penn. But I doubt it.)

Twenty Dollar Per Bullet Tax?

Steve Hansen of The Lodi News dot COM cites a 'typical Liberal response' to the Heller Decision:

It looks like the gun nuts got their way again. The U.S. Supreme Court, by a margin of one, held that the Constitution actually means what it says: " ... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Think about it. If we lovers of peace had just one more liberal on the Court, we would have done away with the Second Amendment. That justice could have argued that this right only gives the army the freedom to carry guns. But hey, that's politics these days.

This doesn't mean the struggle for sanity is finished. I, for one, will not rest until all of these weapons of woe are wrestled from the hands of our most innocent, law-abiding citizens.

" ...our most innocent, law-abiding citizens"?

Wait a minute ... did he just say what I thought he said?

Maybe so. Go, and read the whole thing (takes under a minute) and be sure to read the last two sentences twice. Also the author's description.

(H/T: The Conservative Scalawag, who yesterday offered us this little gem.)

Kellerman Blinks!

Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com

Do you remember Dr. A.L. Kellerman's 1986 study, "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-releated Deaths in the Home" (Registration Required), published in the New England Journal of Medicine? In it, Dr. Kellerman stated categorically that you are "43 times more likely" to be injured or killed if there is a firearm in your home.

A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an article by Kellerman in which he states:

More than 20 years ago, I conducted a study of firearm-related deaths in homes in Seattle and surrounding King County, Washington. Over the study's seven-year interval, more than half of all fatal shootings in the county took place in the home where the firearm involved was kept. Just nine of those shootings were legally justifiable homicides or acts of self-defense; guns kept in homes were also involved in 12 accidental deaths, 41 criminal homicides and a shocking 333 suicides. A subsequent study conducted in three U.S. cities found that guns kept in the home were 12 times more likely to be involved in the death or injury of a member of the household than in the killing or wounding of a bad guy in self-defense.

The original Washington study's results are not cited here. That's not surprising, in that the study has been repudiated for the past 20 years because of the demographic it represents, the phrasing of the questions, the definitions of the terms, and the way the results were interpreted.

A few randomly chosen criticism are available here, here, and here.

(For example, the study does not consider whether the gun in the home was an actual factor, as in whether the gun was used or was locked up in a closet. Also, the study was taken in a "high-crime" neighborhood, and the study did not consider incidents in which a gun was used to deter an attacker without injury to either party, or where only the attacker was wounded but not killed.)

Now Kellerman has changed his point-score, but apparently he has not changed his study methodology.

However, he has made an effort to refute criticisms by inventing his own unsupported argument:

In the real world, Scalia's scenario -- an armed assailant breaks into your home, and you shoot or scare away the bad guy with your handy handgun -- happens pretty infrequently. Statistically speaking, these rare success stories are dwarfed by tragedies.

We don't know where he got that impression. John R. Lott's impressive study, published in book form as "More Guns, Less Crime; Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws" (University of Chicago Press, 2000), specifically looked at the deterent effect of firearms ownership ... which question Kellerman 'studiously' avoided.

And more specifically, Dave Kopel (in a 2001 National Review Online article) presciently refuted that article:

Now, how about the self-defense homicides, which Kellermann and Reay found to be so rare? Well, the reason that they found such a low total was that they excluded many cases of lawful self-defense. Kellermann and Reay did not count in the self-defense total of any of the cases where a person who had shot an attacker was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, or cases where a conviction was reversed on appeal on grounds related to self-defense. Yet 40% of women who appeal their murder convictions have the conviction reversed on appeal. ("Fighting Back," Time, Jan. 18, 1993.)

Take that, East Coast Liberal Elitist Lying Anti-Gun Scholars!

(H/T Say Uncle, and Days Of Our Trailers, via Ninth Stage)

Heller Fallout - The Shooting Wire

Once again, the inimitable Jim Shepherd puts his trigger-finger dead bang on the essentials of the situation.

Despite the SCOTUS ruling, at least Washington, DC (and probably, so far, Chicago and San Francisco) seem determined to skirt the Second Amendment because of the necessarily narrow definition cited in the decision.

As I said in "We Won - Sort Of", the lack of a full definition of the Bill of Rights will continue to haunt legal firearms owners for decades, and we're only now beginning to perceive the tip of the ice berg.

Shepherd, in case you didn't know, makes The Shooting Wire his forum for exquisite examinations of the issues experienced by Shooting Community. I've decided that he has deliberately chosen not to provide permalinks to his commentary, to encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter. You should go there and do so.

In the meantime, I will continue to quote his articles in almost-full content:

The legal landscape may appear changed since the Supreme Court's ruling that the Second Amendment does, indeed, cover an individual right to own firearms, but the political landscape seems determined to maintain the status quo. In other words, the politicians and organizations that hysterically decried the decision continue their ranting today.
Just in case there were any doubts about where they were ideologically concerning firearms, we offer these quotes from notable anti-gun politicians:

"President Bush's radical Supreme Court justices put rigid ideology ahead of the safety of communities in New Jersey and across the country. This decision illustrates why I have strongly opposed extremist judicial nominees and will continue to do so in the future."
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.

"While the Supreme Court has ruled, not unexpectedly, that individuals have a right to bear arms, the court clearly allows for reasonable regulations like the Brady law and the assault weapons ban. It is my hope and belief that the ruling will not change much in terms of how the states and the federal government are allowed to regulate guns."
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

"I am profoundly disappointed in Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, both of whom assured us of their respect for precedent. With this decision, 70 years of precedent has gone out the window. And I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

"While it ruled that the D.C. gun ban went too far, Justice Scalia himself acknowledged that this right is not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe."
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It appears some politicians believe that they know better than the people, the courts and anyone else what is best for the United States. In their statements, it is obvious they are not going to follow the Supreme Court ruling because they believe it is wrong. In that respect, these Senators are worthy the same amount of respect accorded those politicians who stood firmly against desegregation and women's rights. Their constituencies, rather, comprise those liberal areas whose residents claim to be champions of civil rights.

Those same civil rights - and their alleged champions - don't appear so important if you're talking about law-abiding citizens who want the same right in Washington, D.C. (or Chicago) as anyone else in the United States.

And the anti-gun hysteria went even beyond my imagination this weekend as the Chicago Tribune called for a repeal of the Second Amendment. (*) In their editorial, the Tribune called the Second Amendment an "anachronism" that should be repealed. In its argument, the Tribune quoted the 1939 case, U.S. vs. Miller. In that ruling, the Tribune said the amendment was established as a "collective right" that applied only to service in some form of militia. The fact the majority of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court felt otherwise, apparently had no bearing on the Tribune. Neither, incidentally, did the fact that there was never a clear ruling on the Miller case. That 1939 case involved a pair of moonshiners charged with violating the National Firearms Act (NFA) by transporting a sawed-off shotgun across state lines. By the time the case had come before the Supreme Court, Miller had been killed and his co-defendant had made a plea bargain, so there were no claimants to continue the proceeding. Ultimately the Court reversed the claim that the NFA was in violation of the Second Amendment and remanded the case back to the lower courts. There, it, like Miller, expired. We're nowhere close to seeing, hearing or ending the arguing about this landmark decision. At this point, it is clear, however, that those questions Justice Scalia chose not to clarify in his majority opinion will quickly become front-burner issues with anti-gun groups.

(*) The Chicago Tribune article which Shepherd cites is referenced in Michael Bane's blog here; the direct link to the article is available here, and I recommend that you read as many of the (disparaging) comments as you have time for. It will help you to understand why the Trib eventually seemed to disown the article, and effectively relegated it to the "South 40".

Incidentally, the Comments frequently discuss the 1939 Miller decision, with varying degrees of accuracy. I have written about that case several times here, and my analysis doesn't precisely agree with either Shepherd's evaluation or that of most of the commenters.

I invite you to go here (and perhaps less authoritatively, but more contextually oriented here). Read the court documents, and decide for yourself the essential facts.

If anything, the Miller case served to obfuscate, rather than to clarify, United States Case Law regarding a legal and definitive interpretation of the Second Amendment.

We Won! Sort of (Part 2)

Yesterday I posted comments re: Heller v DC which were a dismal reflection of my own pessimistic attitude about the on-going contretemps between gun-rights v gun-control activists.

I stand behind every word I said.

Still, I'm aware that such dour commentary is disheartening, so I spent some time looking for a more positive response from reputable commentators.

Thanks to the Michael Bane Blog, I found this article in the REASON magazine website. The folks who write for this publication are not only excellent writers, they are much smarter than I am.

Here's the short article from Dave Kopel:

Dave Kopel: Heller is a tremendous victory for human rights and for libertarian ideals. Today’s majority opinion provides everything which the lawyers closely involved in the case, myself included, had hoped for. Of course I would have preferred a decision which went much further in declaring various types of gun control to be unconstitutional. But Rome was not built in a day, and neither is constitutional doctrine.

For most of our nation’s history, the U.S. Supreme Court did nothing to protect the First Amendment; it was not until the 1930s when a majority of the Court took the first steps towards protecting freedom of the press. It would have been preposterous to be disappointed that a Court in, say, 1936, would not declare a ban on flag-burning to be unconstitutional. It took decades for the Supreme Court to build a robust First Amendment doctrine strong enough to protect even the free speech rights of people as loathsome as flag-burners or American Nazis.

Likewise, the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was, for all practical purposes, judicially nullified from its enactment until the 1930s. When the Court in that decade started taking Equal Protection seriously, the Court began with the easiest cases - such as Missouri’s banning blacks from attending the University of Missouri Law School, while not even having a "separate but equal" law school for them. It was three decades later when, having constructed a solid foundation of Equal Protection cases, the Court took on the most incendiary racial issue of all, and struck down the many state laws which banned inter-racial marriage.

So too with the Second Amendment. From the Early Republic until the present, the Court has issued many opinions which recognize the Second Amendment as an individual right. Yet most of these opinions were in dicta. After the 1939 case of United States v. Miller, the Court stood idle while lower federal courts did the dirty work of nullifying the Second Amendment, by over-reading Miller to claim that only National Guardsmen are protected by the Amendment.

Today, that ugly chapter in the Court’s history is finished. Heller is the first step on what will be long journey. Today, the Court struck down the most freakish and extreme gun control law in the nation; only in D.C. was home self-defense with rifles and shotguns outlawed. Heller can be the beginning of a virtuous circle in which the political branches will strengthen Second Amendment rights (as in the 40 states which now allow all law-abiding, competent adults to obtain concealed handgun carry permits), and the courts will be increasingly willing to declare unconstitutional the ever-rarer laws which seriously infringe the right to keep and bear arms.

As the political center of gravity moves step by step in a pro-rights direction, gun control laws which today might seem (to most judges) to be constitutional will be viewed with increasing skepticism. The progress that the pro-Second Amendment movement has made in the last 15 years has been outstanding. As long as gun owners and other pro-Second Amendment citizens stay politically active, the next 15, 30, and 45 years can produce much more progress, and the role of the judiciary in protecting Second Amendment rights will continue to grow.

Dave Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute, in Golden, Colorado. He was one of three lawyers at the counsel table who assisted Alan Gura at the oral argument on March 18. His brief for the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association was cited four times in the Court's opinions.

Wait a minute! This was suppose to be a positive, uplifting and thoroughly reassuring note from one of the Key Speakers for the Second Amendment. He's telling us "As long as gun owners and other pro-Second Amendment citizens stay politically active, the next 15, 30, and 45 years can produce much more progress ...", and this is A Good Thing?

I don't want to wait and work for another 15, 30 or 45 months for the Federal Government to acknowledge that the Second Amendment means what it says. I don't have 45 years left in me; I want what I want, which is for the Socialists to quit screwing around with my life, and I want it now.

I'm tired of writing letters to the editor, to my congress-critters, and to total strangers. I don't want to write about the need to defend the Second Amendment here, I want to write about the high cost of reloading equipment and the funny things that happened at the last shooting match.

But Kopel tells me I have even another lifetime to fight for my rights? I'm tired of fighting for what was given to me by God, and what was guaranteed in 1791 with the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

This isn't as 'positive' as I had promised, is it?

I've got Good News for you, and I've got Bad News .

The Bad News is ... what Kopel said? That's the Good News .

Oh, wait a minute. Here's some good news.

Why is it good news?

It's good news, because the existing situation which the legal challenge addresses describes an Administrative Hell which is obviously designed to discourage firearms owners from meeting 'Reasonable Restrictions':

Under the gun law currently in place, firearms must be re-registered annually.

“Each time,” Gura said, “a tax is imposed, forms must be filled out, photographs submitted. A person who owns more than one gun will find herself or himself constantly in the process of registering each gun as it comes due for expiration. If registration is to be required, once is enough.”

He further noted that Chicago’s bizarre requirement that guns be registered before they are acquired often times makes registration impossible. The penalty for failure to comply with the registration scheme is that a gun not re-registered on time can never be registered again. Gura likened it to a requirement to dispose of a car if it is not re-registered on time with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And you wondered why I called it "Administrative Hell".

Heller v DC: We Won! -- sort of

By now you are probably aware that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has, on the last day of the 2008 session, rendered a decision on Heller v DC.

The short version is, we won. SCOTUS has ruled that the 2nd Amendment is an 'individual right', which supports their decision that the restrictions of firearms possession by the District of Columbia is an unconstitutional burden on the rights of the individual, and must be struck down.

The 157-page decision is available on the SCOTUS BLOG website here. I have converted the PDF file to a MS-WORD document, which you may download here. Unfortunately, the software (Able2Extract) is an imperfect tool, so you may be disappointed that some of the verbiage is illegible. However, it permits slightly more ability for the reader to copy and manipulate/paste the text, so I provide it as a courtesy. The file size, at 350KB, is about twice that of the original PDF (175KB).

I've only read the first dozen pages; I have a lot of reading to do so I can't provide you with a detailed analysis at the moment. I suspect that a lot of other folks are going to perform that service for you, so the best I can do at the moment is to give you my initial impressions based on secondary and tertiary sources.

Those sources include radio discussions, ABC, Michael Bane (both his blog and DRTV), Kim, the SCOTUS BLOG, Yahoo!, and Xavier.

One link (from Xavier) provides early comments from Illinois Junior Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who in a video interview states that the 2nd Amendment defines an "individual right" to own a firearm, and also "... that right can be limited by sensible, reasonable gun laws." [emphasis added]

Reasonable Restrictions

I think we will see a lot of new gun-control laws hustled through state legislatures and city councils in the immediate future. These laws will focus on 'reasonable restrictions".

For example, the city of Chicago is even now talking about "Registration" and "Licensing" and 'mandatory training to make sure the gun-owner understands the city's gun laws'. (The single-quotes here indicate that this is a paraphrase.)

The District of Columbia is already talking about limiting handgun possession to "one gun only", which barely skirts the limits of the SCOTUS decision ... but, apparently falls well within the context upon which the decision is necessarily based.

The SCOTUS consideration is not based upon the wide platform of ".. the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", you see. It is based upon the platform of current DC gun laws: no handguns allowed, any legal firearm must be kept unloaded and either disassembled or rendered inoperable by means of a gun lock device.

SCOTUS only says that you can't keep people (non-felons, adults, not insane) from owning a handgun, and you can't render it inoperable to the point where it is not immediately available for self defense in the home.

The decision does not state, or imply, that you can possess a firearm outside the home. It does not state that you can have multiple firearms. It does not state that the municipality (etc.) cannot mandate registration and licensing procedures. It does not state that ... well, there are a lot of scenarios which are not even yet envisioned.

What it DOES state is that Richard Heller was precluded from having a handgun in his home for the purpose of self defense. Chicago District laws forbid owning an unregistered firearm. Chicago District laws forbid registration of a handgun. That two-pronged legislative restriction absolutely violated Richard Heller (and anyone else in a similar situation) from keeping a handgun for home defense.

That is the essential consequence of the SCOTUS decision.

But wait, there's more!

Another result of the deliberations is that the 2nd amendment is acknowledged to be an "individual right", as are all other rights in the Bill of Rights. The court was careful to make this point, and that is A Good Thing.

The court also careful to limit its decision (as stated earlier) to the situation defined by Heller; very few 'other' situations are addressed.

For example, the egregious 1930-something Miller decision was cited, and upheld. Why was it 'egregious'? The case involved a sawed-off shotgun which was deemed by the district(?) court to not be covered by the 2nd amendment in that it was 'not appropriate to the military', ignoring the fact that 'trench guns' (sawed off shotguns) had been used by the U.S. Army during WWI. Miller, the defendant, did not attend the trial, nor did a lawyer representing him. The U.S. Government attorneys presented the only arguments. Without a dissenting argument (which may have presented the "Trench-Gun" defense), the judge could only rule on the evidence presented, resulting in a decision which only represented a single side of the question.

Because the scope of the question did not include MILLER, SCOTUS apparently determined that this earlier decision could not be questioned. I have no idea why it was mentioned in the Assenting Opinion, but it is there.

I have heard (on the Lars Larson radio show) ... but have not yet found evidence to support it, that the question of whether the 2nd amendment represents an individual right was accepted unanimously (9-0) by SCOTUS.

However, the basic question of Heller was only accepted 5-4 ... whether the DC laws were unconstitutional.

There is, and will continue to be in the immediate future, much discussion about why 4 of the 9 judges declined to accept the Heller defense. When we have read the Dissenting Opinion, we will certainly have a better understanding of this. Early reports (especially the Rush Linbaugh radio show) made much of this.


I think ... knee-jerk reaction here; not a studied, reasoned evaluation of the available information ... that we must consider this a battle won. We have not won the war against gun control, and while the battle was important, it does not necessarily mean that we have won complete acknowledgment of the rights affirmed by the 2nd amendment.

The opposition (I'm tempted to speak in terms of 'satanically inspired groups who would keep us submissive under their thumb', but that would be just wrong in so many ways), are determined to infringe upon our rights. They have not yielded an inch. They will not yield, and we can expect to be assailed by ever more subtle infringement.

They can't keep you from owning a gun ... but they can keep you from owning more than one gun. They can keep you from owning an unregistered gun, and registration is the first step to confiscation under whatever laws they can imagine: "Unsafe guns", "Unregistered guns", "Unlicensed guns", and laws which make it difficult, if not impossible, to register or license guns, or to meet draconian standards of safety.

They can add taxes, restrictions and other financial burdens on guns and ammunition. I'm specifically referring to "Microstamping" requirements on guns and "Encoded Ammunition", both of which would provide minimal advantage to the the espoused intent to "make it easier for police to solve gun crimes" but which, in actuality, only impose unbearable financial burdens of firearms ownership and usage based upon unproven technology.

They can add so many administrative requirements to the purchase, ownership, storage and use of both handguns and ammunition that the average honest citizen is unable to jump through the arbitrary hoops. Do not allow yourself to assume that there are limits to their perfidy; remember, 90% of legislators at the local, state and federal level are lawyers.

Only yesterday, a state legislator and Defense Attorney stated that in defense of a child rapist who faced the death penalty he would "rip apart" child rape victims on the witness stand. How much objectivity can we expect from a profession which cultivates this minimal level of morality?

It grieves me to send such negative expectation, but at this time it is all too easy to become complaisant, and assume that we have no further need to defend our 2nd amendment rights.

The battle is over.

The war has just begun

Even though we have waited over 20 years to fight this battle; no matter how difficult it has been; the next battle will be much, much more difficult. And the outcome is far from guaranteed.

Believe it.