The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
A very good discussion going on at Volokh on the DC ruling. It gets into the comments a bit about whether guns painted a certain color could be ban. It’s argued that could be a first amendment issue. Someone in the comments brings in the funny with:
What we need is for someone to come up with a “Bong hits 4 Jesus†durocoat.
I’m sure that the folks at Lauer will get right on that. Oh, if you don’t get that reference, just click here. Unfortunately that argument lost :)
I demand the arrest of Thomas William Heyck, professor of History at Northwestern University for this vicious and seditious attack on the Second Amendment. Because clearly the right to free speech only applies to goose quill and parchment! None of this newfangled Internets.
The media doesn’t seem to want to let go of this story of threats of violence and broken windows in the wake of health care. It fits their narrative of the Tea Party and other various persons opposed a government takeover of health care being dangerous extremists, so why not hype it up? Conveniently ignored is the fact that there are just as many bozos on the left doing this stuff, and that have been doing this stuff, for years. Just be thankful it wasn’t a free trade agreement getting passed out of Congress!
But I also notice when the call goes out, the great three percent turns out to be the great 0.0000013%. That’s not enough people to have a decent game of baseball let alone enough to fight a revolution. I stand by my assertion that the entire movement is a way to remain emotionally satisfied while sitting on one’s posterior and doing nothing to actually help vote these bozos out of office, and keep voting them out of office until we start pushing back Leviathan.
In US District Court in the D.C. Circuit, DC’s restrictions on guns as they currently are have been upheld. You can find the opinion here. I think this is wrong, but it’s worth noting that the original Heller case, then known as Parker v. DC failed at the District Court level too, but won on appeal. No guarantee this happens here, however.
For a lot of reasons, I’m not too enthusiastic about proceeding forward at this point with challenges to assault weapons bans. Let’s get the court to say a bit more about the right first, before opening that whole can of worms. I agree the common use test here should easily protect them, but just because it’s correct doesn’t mean that’s what the courts will do.
UPDATE: Just skimming, this is an awful ruling. No attempt was made to determine whether DC’s state public safety goals with their ridiculous gun control scheme could be achieved with a lesser level of infringement. It’s hard to see what gun control law would fail this level of scrutiny applied by the District Court.
Steve at the Firearms Blog covers what appears to be the firearms bubble bursting. In any bubble you will tend to have speculators. If many of the people buying up AR-15s were doing it in anticipation of selling at higher post-ban prices, then the industry will go through some very tough times as those speculators sell their inventory and cut their losses. If they were mostly new shooters, well, one thing about AR-15s is they are like Lays Potato Chips. You can’t just have one. If I were betting money (also known as investing) I would probably err on the side of believing there were speculators, and there will be a lot of guns and ammo on the market as people cut their losses. I think the firearms industry will be in for some tough times, though I expect parts of it to continue doing well.
I think freedom loving people need to start thinking about amending the constitution. We’re fast approaching a point where that might even be possible if people get angry enough. I’m glad to see Randy Barnett already thinking about it over at Volokh. He’s proposing an amendment hat goes like this:
The legislative power of Congress shall not be construed to include mandating, regulating, prohibiting or taxing the private health insurance of any person; nor shall the power of Congress to make all laws which are necessary and proper to regulate commerce among the several states be construed to include the power to mandate, regulate, prohibit or tax any activity that is confined within a single state and subject to the police power thereof, regardless of the activity’s economic effects outside the state, whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom, or whether its regulation or prohibition is part of a comprehensive federal regulatory scheme.
My feeling is that a proposed amendment needs to be a very simple idea, boiled down into a few issues as possible. I also think it needs to avoid tying the issue of the day (now HCR) up into it. I would simplify it a bit:
The power of Congress to make all laws which are necessary and proper to regulate commerce among the several states shall not be construed to include the power to mandate, regulate, prohibit or tax any activity that is confined within a single state and subject to the police power thereof, regardless of the activity’s economic effects outside the state, whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom, or whether its regulation or prohibition is part of a comprehensive federal regulatory scheme.
I’d just cut the health care issue out of it. That would make the individual mandate pretty clearly unconstitutional, and leave the issue of HCR out of it. It’s probably better of people don’t think about what the effects are, because this would also weaken a lot of popular federal legislation. The other thing I might consider is that I believe it would be appropriate for federal regulation of commerce among the several states to allow Congress to prevent states from discriminating against products which met a federal standard. For instance, if Congress passes a law that suggests if you do X, Y, and Z, you can call it organic food, California can’t then come in and ban those products because they want Q, R, and X to be done too. Otherwise states could do significant damage to the interstate market in goods by creating ridiculous regulatory requirements. California is quite good at this.
Also, someone in the comments suggests we ought to amend the constitution to allow for referendums, but only on the subject of repealing laws or treaties. If it were so limited, I would agree that’s not a bad idea.
Steve from The Firearm Blog did a piece on gun blogging for Guns America that interviewed Caleb and me. It’s an excellent introduction to the gun blogosphere, and our interview covers the state of the gun blogosphere today.Read what I say in the interview, but overall, I would have to say the state of the gun blogosphere has declined in terms of health in the past five years. I don’t think we’re as vibrant a community anymore. Much of that is just that blogging trends have generally been toward consolidation, with traffic circulating more and more among top blogs, and not making its way down nearly as much as it used to. The other reason is that the gun issue just isn’t as much in the public mind these days, and virtually nothing is happening in Congress right now. It hasn’t been as good for the community. The past couple of months have been a tough time for covering Second Amendment politics, save for a few days where we had McDonald, and a few other things. Right now everyone is pissed off about HCR and other fiscal issues.
The thing about a decade is it doesn’t evenly divide up into a neat third. Typically you hear people say “Early X0’s, Mid X0’s, Late X0’s.”  So what do you do with the extra year? When I turned 33, I said “Well, that’s the last year of my early 30s.”  Now as I enter the last year of what is undisputedly my “Mid 30s,” I think I am going to reserve the right to transplant that floater year to 37, so that becomes the last year of my “Mid 30s” delaying “Late 30s” for the remaining years of 38 and 39. But still, you have to figure “Late 30s” is still better than “Early 40s,” which is still yet better than “Early 50s,” which is definitely better than being dead. Though lately I’ve been feeling dead, but it’s probably the long hours I’m working. Of course long hours are better than unemployment. So I guess despite the fact that I hate getting old, I’m happy to be mid-30s and employed (for now).
Apparently now all’s left is a formal roll call vote and approval by Governor Brewer. Here’s hoping to see this as law soon.
The Second Circuit has ruled that a person has a clear liberty interest in carrying a firearm, and that there are due process interests within the permitting process. At issue would seem to be the claim that the permitting process couldn’t repeatedly demand proof of citizenship (you had to do it to get the permit, so what’s the need to do it repeatedly?). Also it would appear to hinge that the delays are unnecessary and don’t serve any compelling state interest.
Dave Hardy adds, “Amazing how this legal field has turned around in a year or two.” This is a big deal, because this is going to play very much against the City of New York’s entire system of licensing even ownership of firearms, and New York State is part of the Second Circuit. It might be that the courts will allow licensing of the right to own a gun, much like they’ve done with the right to marry, but with significant judicial oversight as to what’s allowed and what’s not. They will only be able to do what is needed to determine your qualification, and nothing more. They won’t be able to put in requirements intended to frustrate the ownership or carrying of firearms.
Ideally, I’d like there to be no licensing, and that’s entirely possible to achieve, but even the allowing of a relatively easy and unobtrusive licensing provision would be a major weakening of the licensing regime for the most restrictive states, to the point where I’m not sure how many jurisdictions are going to bother with them. The entire point of licensing was to frustrate people from exercising their rights. If they can no longer do that, I wouldn’t be shocked to see the requirement start to become viewed as arcane, and for it to be politically easier to remove them entirely. That’s actually been able to happen in a few states that had relatively meaningless permit requirements, namely Missouri and Nebraska. North Carolina also has such a permit, but we’ve not gotten much traction on that issue there, largely because North Carolina has been swelling with population fleeing the northeast and maintaining their voting habits from back home. But the precedent is there.
Is the Sullivan Act appealing once its primary purpose of frustrating the right is no longer served? We might find out.