Month: March 2010

Vermont is one of our signature states, really. No gun laws, really, to speak of, and virtually no crime. But there’s a suicide angle being pushed there in order to pass a “safe storage” law. This particular safe storage law exempts law enforcement. I guess they don’t care about kids of police officers. It mandates either trigger locks, or reasonably secure locked container. It’s worth remembering that the Supreme Court in Heller essentially threw away a similar law in DC as being unconstitutional.

I’m not opposed to safe storage, by any means, but I believe the best way to deal with this problem is through efforts to educate gun owners, and educate children about the dangers of guns, rather than impose legal sanctions. This is what we’ve done for the past several decades, and gun accident rates have been falling for most of the century. As for suicides, though studies have shown that suicide by gun rates are higher in places with more guns, overall suicide rates are not affected by the availability of firearms.

This New York Times article I think covers the issue very well. This reporter took time to understand the issue, and I appreciate that. NRA I expect will never say anything to disparage open carry. It’s a bad idea for the main gun rights group to do such a thing, but Alan Gottlieb of SAF is starting to speak publicly about it:

“I’m all for open-carry laws,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights advocacy organization in Washington State. “But I don’t think flaunting it is very productive for our cause. It just scares people.”

Bob Barr is also advising we exercise caution:

Whether Starbucks will succumb to the mounting pressure by anti-gun groups such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and alter its tolerant policy, remains to be seen.  For their part, however, firearms advocates might be better advised not to press the issue publicly by pointedly visiting Starbucks establishments with firearms openly displayed.  Sometimes quiet advocacy speaks louder than waving a red flag in someone’s face.

I agree it’s probably now time to help Starbucks get past this issue by not open carrying in their establishment in order to make a point. At least not in areas where open carry isn’t common (if you want to open carry in the Starbucks in Sierra Vista, AZ, near Tombstone, knock yourself out, you probably won’t be alone) or accepted. In addition to fearing Starbucks might reverse, I’m worried about having to fight this same battle over and over again with other establishments. Even if they don’t cave to the Brady Campaign, so far they have 28,000 new names they can try to fundraise off of. They win even if they lose, just by being able to make it an issue.

Gun rights are still polling very well. A full sixty nine percent of Americans don’t believe that cities should have the power to ban handguns. Seventy percent believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a gun. Only 14% say it’s not. A plurality of Americans don’t believe we need stronger gun laws, at 49% saying we don’t, against 42% saying we do.

There is one thing we do have to worry about:

Support for more gun control is considerably higher among those 18 to 29 than among those in any other age group.

That is very worrisome, and an indication to me, we might need to think, strategically, about how to deal with this as a movement. If we don’t do that, we’re in trouble over the long haul.

I wanted to share with you a comment from a few days ago from “One of the Women” we had lunch with post-McDonald:

Regarding those four women lawyers you were at lunch with after McDonald oral arguments, I was one of them. Two of those women lawyers had arrived in the dead of night, alone, and had to park their cars in an isolated area in a parking garage at Union Station. 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Each woman was alone. It was dark. Neither woman is physically strong. Each had to navigate her way across a dark parking lot to a dark elevator room, down an enclosed elevator, through a dim and unpopulated area inside Union Station.

And each woman had to do it absolutely unarmed. One of the women is soon to be 60 and could have been beaten to a pulp by most any male over the age of 16. The area was accessible by anyone. And the laws in D.C. prohibited her from the most obvious self-protection — a small, hand-held firearm. A 60-year-old woman attorney with an absolutely spotless record, and D.C. laws would not allow her to have the means of self-protection with her. There was no security officer any where near, and a phone call for help would have required an officer driving to Union Station, driving up four levels of a parking garage, and looking for a dead or mangled body.

Abby Spangler needs to start thinking of women and of women’s safety.

Absolutely. Bitter and I did the same walk, later in the morning than they did. I had to leave my gun at home, because despite the fact that I can legally carry in Virginia, I can’t have a gun in the District, even locked in my vehicle, unloaded and in a locked container. For all intents and purposes, my Second Amendment rights did not exist for that weekend. As great a victory as Heller was, and as great a victory as I believe McDonald will be, we still have a long way to go.

From NBC Washington. A fairly balanced report. Noticed at least one Brady staffer in the crowd — Dennis Henigan. Our side managed to come across without seeming nutty, which I think is great. Sure, there’s a guy open carrying a rifle, but the context is perfect. Notice the guy who had the concealed gun? Right next to it is an iPhone, and he has a cup of Starbucks in his hand. So much for Abby’s implicit suggestion that gun owners are not people of means enough to spend any significant amount of money at Starbucks, eh?

UPDATE: Contrast with this coverage from the local ABC affiliate, which was completely one sided, and used loaded terminology. Most of the report is spent covering their side of the issue, and about two seconds is devoted to our side.

UPDATE: WTOP, the local radio news station in DC coverage here.

Dave Hardy had some up, including one with Bitter and me in it, in the crowd outside of McDonald after the argument. We’re toward the center of the shot. To the right of the shot you can see the backs of Bob Dowlut, NRA General Counsel, and Sarah Gervase who works in General Counsel’s office, and who filed a brief in the case. I don’t recognize anyone else in the shot.

At first I didn’t think I was in the picture. I just noticed some old guy was obscuring Bitter, but then I realized the grey old man was actually me. Crap! I didn’t think I had turned that grey. I’ve gotten way too fat too. Sometimes you don’t notice until you see yourself in a picture.

His picture of the reception is better than mine. There’s some people in there you might recognize.