Month: June 2008

The Virginia Gun Owners Coalition, has a different take on Heller.   Let me take the chance to just throw this out there: these guys are a bunch of angry fucking idiots, and basically aren’t helping the cause one god damned bit. Got that?

This is a triumphant day.  A key argument of the anti-gunners, which is that the second amendment does not protect any right is now history.  The Court has left the door open for other battles.

Also, I have to ponder about the dichotimty of criticizing the National Rifle Assocation for trying to derail the case in the first place, and then criticizing them for the result.  Pick one or the other guys, or I’m just going to conclude you’re just out to piss on everything, and I’m fucking tired of it.

And whether they want to admit it or not, if it weren’t for the election of George W. Bush, we would not have any victory here.  We’d now be facing the second amendment being effectively gone.  George W. Bush, who endorsed renewing the assault weapons ban upon his election.  George W. Bush, who’s solicitor general argued against us.  George W. Bush, who nominated Maximum Mike Suillivan to be head of ATF, and has stood by him throughout everything.  This goes to show how history can act through imperfect men.  Because when it came down to what’s really important, Bush was good enough.  Really two Bushes were good enough if you consider Clarence Thomas.

That’s what a lot of gun rights activists fail to understand, and fail to appreciate, and why I’m suggesting we elect another imperfect candidate to succeeed George W. Bush, in the form of John McCain, because we simply can’t afford Barack Hussein Obama appointing the next several justices.  We know that Obama will nominate justices who would be willing to overturn Heller.  That’s not even a debate; he will do it.

So bitch and moan things didn’t go 100% your way.  I’m tired of being angry.  It’s time to cut that crap out and make a difference.

Let’s defeat some stereotypes about the backgrounds the kind of people who support gun rights come from.

• Our Heller opinion writer, Justice Scalia, is the son of Italian immigrants.  Born in Trenton, New Jersey and raised in New York City, and graduated from a Roman Catholic High School.  Graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown, and went on to Harvard Law School.  He was nominated to The Court by Ronald Reagan.
• Joining in the opinion is fellow Italian-American, Justice Alito, who was also born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised in Hamilton Township, just outside of Trenton.  He attended Princeton University, and Yale Law school.  He is a Roman Catholic.  He was nominated to The Court by George W. Bush.
• Justice Kennedy comes to us from the number one Brady ranked state of California.  He attended Stanford University, with his law degree coming from Harvard.  He is also, along with our previous two justices, a Roman Catholic.  He was nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by Gerald Ford, who also nominated Justice Stevens to the Supreme Court.  He was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.
• Justice Thomas is from Georgia.  In addition to being an African-American, he is also a Roman Catholic.  He attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachuetts, and helped found the Black Student Union at that school.  He went on to Yale Law school.  He was put on the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall b George H.W. Bush.
• Chief Justice Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York.  He is Czech on his maternal side, and his father was an executive with Bethlehem Steel.  The Roberts family grew up in Indiana.  He attended a Catholic boarding school in LaPorte, Indiana, and attended Harvard College, and eventually went on to Harvard Law.  After serving as Deputy Soliciter General in the first Bush Administration, he was appinted by the same administration to the D.C. court of appeals, and finally the Chief Justice by the second Bush Adminsitration.   He is a Roman Catholic.

The backgrounds of these men are as varied as one can imagine, except for the fact that they are all Roman Catholic.  Alito and Scalia have chewed much of the same ground I have.  I live ten minutes away from Trenton, and grew up not far from here.  This is the last place you’d imagine that two out of the give majority justices would be from, but there you go.

I gave Bitter a hard time for drinking her champagne out of a beer glass, but when we celebrate, we celebrate big.

You will notice that we are using founding father glassware, if you zoom in to the full picture.  My glass is a Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello snifter, and Bitter’s is a James Madison beer glass.  I think both gentlemen would be proud that we have not completely forgotten them, and the instrument they created.

In addition to the drinks, Bitter prepared a lovely Italian dinner, in honor of Justice Scalia, complete with cannollis.  I honor Justice Kennedy merely by being Irish.  For Chief Justice Roberts, the last new shooter I took to the range was a Roberts.  And for Justice Alito, well, he’s another Italian! I’m still trying to figure out how I honor Justice Thomas.

Four justices of the Supreme Court of the United States were completely willing to read out part of the Bill of Rights because they don’t like the result that comes from it.  We can seek comfort that we got a five vote majority, but it’s a little close for my comfort.  Come this fall, we must do absolutely everything humanly possible to ensure that Barack Obama is defeated, or watch future courts retreat from the Heller ruling faster than you can shake a stick.  While Justice Stevens and Ginsburg are likely retirees under an Obama administration, it can’t be ruled out that Justice Scalia, or Kennedy, who are both getting up there in age, won’t end up leaving the court, or dying.  We absolutely must not allow Obama to win, or that could undo all of this.

The gun control movement will not take Heller lying down.  They are not going to crawl off into a corner and die.  This changes the game we’re playing, but it doesn’t end it.

The Court did not much address the issue of machine guns, but the “common use” test that it prescribes will be problematic.  However, I think The Court has set itself up for an intellectual bind.  Machine guns are not in common use, but that’s entirely because of the 1986 prohibition on new registrations preceded by 18 years of heavy regulations inder GCA 68, and decades of regulation prior to that under the National Firearms Act.  In short, machine guns fail the common use test because government regulations and prohibitions make them uncommon.   I think this is an argument that could be raised later that could possibly ease restrictions.

I think there’s ample language in the opinion to argue that the second amendment is incorporated against the states, and that will be the next step.   Chicago, New York, and I think, even Massachusetts and New Jersey’s licensing restrictions can be construed to meet the standard of “arbitrary and capricious.”  In fact, I would view this somewhat similar to “seperate but equal”  In that the Civil Rights movement was later able to argue that seperate can never be equal.   I think one could perhaps argue that licensing, or having to get the government’s permission, can always be subject to arbitrary and capricious standards.

On the “bearing” of arms, I think The Court leaves open the possibility, and perhaps even suggests the possibility that the state must allow some form of carrying arms for self-defense.  This would presumably mean openly carrying of arms being legal everywhere, with states still free to regulate wearing of weapons.  But I would argue that perhaps the states can regulate concealed firearms, they may not outright prohibit them, since, given changes in society since the 19th century, that amounts to the destruction of the right.

My opinion, having read Justice Scalia’s opinion on this case, is that Heller is better than I had hoped for.  I think this lays effective groundwork for taking this issue forward, and the lower courts are going to have a difficult time skirting around it.