Month: July 2010

Tam talks about collecting pistols chambered in .32 ACP over at her other blog, the Arms Room.

Josh Blackman looks at the 7th Circuit’s ruling in the Lautenberg Amendment (strips Second Amendment rights from domestic violence misdemeanants) case in a thorough manner, and notes:

Don’t expect SCOTUS to resolve this question. There is no way the Court grants cert on an issue as muddy as giving guns to people who commit domestic crimes. Additionally, there is no Circuit split here.

This challenge could arise in other misdemeanor contexts–mainly white collar crimes. Should someone who is found guilty of tax evasion or medicare fraud be disarmed forever? That, will likely be the next challenge.

I agree. I don’t see the Court wanting to go there right now. If the Heller majority wasn’t strong enough to say something about standards of review, but to merely hint, I’m worried about whether it would hold together under this kind of stress, despite the fact that there are more stories out there like this guy’s than there are cases of legitimate wife beaters.

I guess the question would hinge on whether the Court avoided setting a standard of review because the majority isn’t agreed on the strength of the standard, or because someone doesn’t like the idea of setting a standard this soon. To me the Court pretty strongly hinted that the standard of review ought to be quite strict. That doesn’t mean lower courts aren’t going to ignore it.

We may not find very favorable outcomes in the 7th Circuit. Recall the even two Republican appointees, Posner and Easterbrook, are both vociferously opposed preserving the Second Amendment and wish to destroy it as in individual right., and only one judge, nominated by G.W. Bush, was willing to dissent.

I think we can all agree that it’s important to keep guns, like the one pictured to the left, out of the hands of Chicago’s gangs. It is clear which kinds of firearms criminals in Chicago prefer. Chicago has its list of banned “unsafe” handguns out. No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money notes that it gets most of the manufacturers of what anti-gun folks would call “Saturday Night Specials,” including derringers. Chuck Michel is calling it the Goldilocks approach to gun control. I note that it bans some of the more major manufacturers too. Daisy is listed, and they make air guns. All North American Arms spur trigger models are banned. Hi-Points are banned entirely, along with all the Ring of Fire companies. The SIG Mosquito is banned by name. But most of these guns are collector’s pieces, so what crime control purpose could they serve?

We all know the answer to that. They are trying desperately to carve out any space they can find where the Courts will allow them to apply bans, and clearly they’ve decided to hang their hats on the evils of the spur and sheathed trigger. It’s not that Chicago really believes in this as a crime measure, so much as they want to get the courts to say nice things about being able to ban guns for certain reasons, like being unsafe. If this list is upheld, expect Chicago to make frequent additions to make sure your average poor Chicagoans can in no way afford to buy protection for themselves. Having been forced by the Supreme Court to give up bans, having it be a privilege for the Chicago elite is the next best thing.

In this sense, Chicago is being far smarter than DC, because it’s hard to argue that the Government’s general ability to regulate products for safety can’t apply to handguns. But the presence on this list of manufacturers who make cheap, but not unsafe handguns could cause the list to fall, and the Courts may frown on the discretion allowed bureaucrats to deem a handgun “unsafe.” While I would be nervous how the courts will treat this list, it could also pay off for us as readily as Chicago. Chicago is being smarter than DC, but that’s not saying much, and is not to say they are being all that smart.

It seems Erick Erickson NRA hatin’ knows no limits. Fortunately for me, because I’m sick of dealing with his nonsense, Kevin at Exurban League has taken care of it already. In any legislative issue there’s going to be concerns about language, and what you can get enough votes to support. If you want to know the consequences of reaching too far, take a look at National Reciprocity. As it is, NRA supported the Coburn Amendment. That’s the end of the story. Who else got the language attached? GOA? If so, then why do all my lobbyist friends tell me they never see GOA on the Hill?