It looks like some anti-gunners are seizing upon Obama’s (old) platform of banning gun stores in any area you might actually visit. Obama’s idea – banning them within 5 miles of schools or parks – would have effectively shut down just about every gun store in most parts of the country. Here in Pennsylvania, one group appears to be testing the waters on the idea, taking it even further:
CeaseFire PA sent their own questionnaires to candidates earlier this year to test the waters for rather extreme policies – including closing down gun stores within an arbitrary, undefined distance of any school, daycare center, park, or residential area.
That would shut down every shop in Pennsylvania, I can pretty much guarantee it. Turns out some anti-gun parents in Wisconsin are pushing a similar agenda now that a gun store is opening near an elementary school. Because we all know that when a gun store opens near a school, elementary school thugs will get their hands on an uzi and start robbing the younger kids of their milk money – or something.
The City of West Allis is considering limiting where gun dealers can open up shop. It all started with a controversial store right across the street from an elementary school.
During a December 7th meeting the City of West Allis considered where gun businesses and shooting ranges can and cannot set up shop. …
Parents of students collected more than 800 signatures to prevent the business from opening there, but city leaders say the location does not violate any laws.
The proposed ordinance won’t affect current gun shops including Shorty’s. They all will be grandfathered in.
The proposed ordinance will shrink the area gun sellers could operate out of, putting future retailers and shooting ranges in more industrial sections labeled in blue.
I don’t understand the irrational fear of these folks about gun dealers near schools. Their kids can’t buy guns. There won’t guns disposed of on the street when customers come in to buy new ones. I had my first experience with this form of crazy in college when a gun shop opened up about a mile from campus. An alum came in ranting about how things were going to hell in a handbasket because a gun store was nearby. I couldn’t wrap my head around why that was bad then, and I still don’t get it today.
Because people like that are ignoramuses. They have no idea how this stuff works and imagine that the shops will be up to something no good, near their children. They sell guns after all, so they must be shady people.
They are NOT stupid. This is just a clever way to sell their agenda without saying what their true objective is, which is to close as many gun shops as they can. They know exactly what they’re doing.
The people directly behind this aren’t dumb. They know exactly what they are doing. But many of their supporters aren’t giving it any real thought and are just going along with what seems like a good idea to them. Those people are the useful idiots.
Their supporters aren’t thinking about the issue. It’s a simple knee-jerk “Is GUN, is bad!” reaction.
The goal of anti-gunners has always been the elimination of civilian ownership of guns. What better way to pass laws making it damn near impossible for gun shops to open anywhere.
If Obama’s proposal were passed here in Northern DE there aren’t many places a shop could open. I know my kitchen table FFL. is near a school.
Proposals like this allow them to make sanctimonious press releases involving the phrase “kids and guns don’t mix”, which stretches the Joyce Foundation meal ticket just a little bit further. Thus, they achieve their purpose.
Plays on people fear that comes from ignorance and detachment. They don’t know how else to react. Knee-jerk panic. That’s all they know how to do. And the anti’s play on that. After all they have been groomed their entire lives to react this way.
The gun store near a school thing is one that can get people worked up because there logic is not logic. It is emotion. Nothing else. And the emotion is fear of the irrational. It’s like anti’s who spout blood in the streets whenever some carry law is passed. The anti’s don’t know how else to react and people still buy into it.
Assuming Strict Scrutiny is applied to 2A, we are most likely going to see evaluations of 2A-related commerce also requiring strict (or at least intermediate) scrutiny as applied to laws like the ones CeaseFire/Brady want to see.
Meaning they won’t stand the light of day.
Several cases are already tackling this, most notably Nordyke in California where one of their strategies is getting commerce (gun shows) strict protection. Alan Gura wrote an amicus where he equated commerce in 2A merchandise with that of books, porn and sex toys. All protected.
As long as we get the scrutiny we deserve (and everything suggests we will), these laws are just the last, ineffective, throes of a dying movement.
I don’t meant to imply we will get everything we want…but I think I’ll be happy with the most likely results, all the same.
“There won’t guns disposed of on the street when customers come in to buy new ones.”
No, probably not.
But a couple of years ago, I found out where you CAN find thrown-away guns. A maintenance guy told me he picks up at least two a week from the bushes outside the courthouse – yes, criminals are that stupid.
Do not allow courts within five miles of schools!
What Patrick said.
Post-Heller, I can’t see something that does, in fact, effectively ban gun stores surviving a challenge.
Whereas our friends in the “gun control” community profess to want to save lives and…
Whereas – despite the fact that there are (probably) at least half-again as many firearms as motor vehicles in this country – motor vehicles account for half-again as many fatalities annually as do firearms…
Therefore, I would be willing to support their proposed restriction AFTER they implement a “No Motor Vehicles Within 1000 feet of a School” ordinance and a “No Car Dealers Within Five Miles of a School” ordinance.
I’m sure that they would agree we should go after the greater threat first.
If they weren’t stupid, they’d find an easier way to make money. Crime (at the street level) doesn’t pay.
I dunno, man; I’m having a hard time thinking of an easier way to make money. Google up a “study” every few months, regurgitate the same half dozen or so outraged blog posts and press releases ad nauseam, troll gun rights advocates’ Facebook pages for things to make fun of, and pull a lobbyist’s salary? Show no material success in sixteen years, but keep pulling in the Joyce grants out of their sheer elitist certainty in their taboos? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, frankly. In their place, I’d try to ride that gravy train as long as possible, too. ;)
Sorry – pronoun trouble. “They” in the previous post refers to @John A’s post about finding throw-away guns in the bushes near the courthouse.
I wouldn’t seriously imply that the enemies of freedom are petty criminals, or that they’ve chosen a hard way to make money. As you say, nice work if you can get it. But you’d have to be pretty mercenary right now to be in their jobs and not be popping the antacid pretty regularly. SCOTUS wrote Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin for them in Heller and caused it to be published throughout the land in McDonald.