2010 – Page 164 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Misunderstanding Starbucks Appreciation

I wouldn’t say we’re cheering Starbucks, since we’re not really asking them to take our side. We really don’t want them to take any position on this issue. That’s all we ask. It’s the Brady folks who want them to make a statement. That’s why I’m a little worried that this AP article here seems to misconstrue the issue:

“They’re trying to change the culture with this broader notion of gun rights,” said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor who has written a book on the politics of gun control. “I think they are pressing the notion that they’ve got a rout going, so why not just get what they can while they’re ahead?”

We never tried to drag Starbuck into the gun debate. It was the gun control advocates who did that. All we want is for Starbucks to continue its current policy. We might be trying to change the culture on gun rights, but Starbucks was never intended to be a part of that. It’s the gun control folks who smelled an opportunity here, not us.

More Media Misunderstanding of McDonald

This time from the Chicago Sun Times, who gets that this is a 14th Amendment case, but says the Fourteenth Amendment “limits states from enacting laws that essentially subvert federal law.” That would be the Supremacy Clause, not the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from abridging the “privileges or immunities” of citizens of the United States, or depriving them of “life, liberty or property without due process of law.” At least these are the two clauses at issue in McDonald. It’s not really incorrect to say that it “limits states from enacting laws that essentially subvert federal law,” but that federal law is the supreme law, namely the Bill of Rights as amended to our Constitution.

Thanking Members of the PA Delegation

Bitter has a post up on PAFOA Blog that discusses the members of the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation who supported us in McDonald.

So Begins E-Postal Match Season

Seeing Stars is how we’re starting out this season. I wish I had more time to hit the range these days, but I’m going to try to shoot a few of these this year. I think when I’ve hosted these, I’ve generally been a bit bad about rule number one :)

Want to Follow Our McDonald Activities?

I will be broadcasting things of interest during our time here in DC on my Twitter feed, which you can find here. Bitter will also be tweeting over here, and she’s probably more of a spontaneous tweeter than I am. Most of the coverage of McDonald won’t begin until tomorrow, obviously, but we’ll be meeting up with some friends in the issue up until that time. At least one of us will be staying outside, probably both of us to be honest, due to the fact that I’m not too keen on camping out in DC in the freezing cold with dress clothes on.

Coverage here will be more after the fact, since I can’t lug a laptop around with me all day. I can, however, lug an iPhone, so live coverage will be on Twitter.

Gura v. Henigan

From Fox News:

Our Own National Park Survey

Yesterday morning and early afternoon, Bitter and I had some time to do our own survey of some National Parks, to see whether gun owners had thoroughly defiled them, and whether it did indeed sound like the opening day of deer season, as gun owners shot everything in sight. Let’s take a look at Teddy Roosevelt Island.

This park is situated on the Potomac, which means it’s technically in the District, but access is from gun nutty Virginia, and since gun owners there can’t help themselves with some drinkin’ and shootin’, we thought for sure we’d have to run for cover. Notice the Teddy Roosevelt statue on the Island is free of bullet holes (unlike the real TR), and there’s a distinct lack of empty brass casings on the ground. As far as noise, the loudest thing you’ll hear on TR Island is the sound of planes taking off from Reagan National Airport. We figured visiting this park just wasn’t really enough, since it is technically in the District. We decided that, since gun owners are so obviously the disrespectful types with no control over their most basic impulses, that we’d head over to Arlington National Cemetery, which is situated entirely within the Commonwealth of Virginia.Surely we’d be inundated by the sound of guns firing into the air as gun owners mourned all their dead confederate relatives. Now there’s nothing these impulsive gun owners hate themselves more than a Kennedy, so surely JFK’s grave would have been quickly defiled by bullet holes and empty shell casings, but it was in good shape, along with RFK and Teddy’s recent grave. Arlington was also quiet. Eerily quiet. Surely gun owners must be planning some kind of mayhem. We decided to head up to Bobby Lee’s old house, to see if maybe some of the good old boys got themselves an idea to storm up the hill and retake Arlington House in the name of the South. This seemed highly plausible, that maybe they’d save the Kennedy hatin’ for later, and get Bobby Lee’s house back first, but something clearly must have been wrong.

Quiet reverence is the best way to describe the scene at Arlington National Cemetery. We figured maybe it’s because Bobby Lee’s house is posted as a federal facility. But the visitors center was not posted, and you could enter the cemetery without having to go through it. We will note, however, that one park ranger was seen openly carrying a side arm. Obviously scaring children and gun control supporters in the process. But perhaps the real conclusion is that all the hysterics on the part of the media are, in fact, completely overblown. The sun will continue to rise and set on our National Parks, and people will enjoy them much in the same way they did before, rules allowing guns to the contrary.

LA Times Manages to Miss Real Issues

Someone wrote this who kind of sort of knows the legal issues in McDonald, but not really. We’ve already won on most of the issues presented here. This case is about incorporation, they got that part right, but the question presented to the Court is whether it’s incorporated under the Privileges or Immunities clause of the 14th amendment, or incorporated through the due process incorporation route that’s been how we’ve done things in the 20th century. This has implications far beyond gun rights, which you’d expect a newspaper like the LA Times to cover.

Hat Tip to Dave Hardy for the article.Â Hat tip for also choosing a great Chinese place in Northern Virginia for dinner too.

Holder Indicates New AWB Still on Table

Apparently he’s looking for a repeat of 1994. To me, the real worry is he’ll push this after we kick all the pro-gun Democrats out of office and replace them with Republicans who will be untested, or in some cases anti-gun outright. After 2010, he won’t have Harry Reid in his way either.

UPDATE: Sorry folks, this popped up in Google just recently, linking to the ABC story which is a year old. I just read the date and thought it was new. I didn’t notice the year.

Tag Team: A Dangerous Right

Looks like Saul Cornell and Dennis Henigan have gotten together to disparage the Second and Fourteenth Amendments in this months edition of the National Law Journal. Saul Cornell argues the 14th Amendment has no problem with disarmament, as long as it’s done equally:

There are some facts that are beyond dispute. Although there is ample evidence that the 14th Amendment was widely understood to bar the selective disarmament of blacks by Southern governments, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that anyone believed that the 14th Amendment prevented the states from passing neutrally applicable gun regulations designed to promote public safety.

The argument would seem to be that because the post-reconstruction courts effectively eviscerated the 14th Amendment, so that Jim Crow could properly imposed on the South, that of course means there was never intended to be any right-to-bear arms, by blacks or anyone. This strikes me as a weak argument given our modern understanding of the amendment, and just so there’s no misunderstanding about the case which Saul Cornell cited, you can read about it here.

Backing up Saul Cornell is Dennis Henigan, who says that guns are such a menace to society that it justifies essentially ignoring, or largely ignoring, one tenth of the Bill of Rights:

There is at least one respect in which the new right to have guns is vastly different than other rights. A wealth of empirical evidence shows that the exercise of the right to possess guns increases the risk of harm to individuals exercising the right, to their families and to the community at large. However the Court decides the incorporation question, its discussion of Second Amendment issues inÂ McDonald and its future Second Amendment jurisprudence must recognize that the Second Amendment is, indisputably, the most dangerous right.

I don’t know about that Dennis. Ideas can be some of the most dangerous things humans can generate, and speech is the primary mechanism by which these ideas are spread. I mean, how many people did this idea kill? Â Or this one? How long did this idea relegate a significant portion of the American population to second class status? This man’s speech and a set of box cutters killed 3000 Americans and dragged us into a decades long war.

Gun are potentially dangerous. No one denies that. But it’s bad ideas, conveyed by speech, that’s responsible for the worst humanity has to offer. In this country, we protect speech, of both good and bad ideas, in the belief that the best way to counter bad ideas is to challenge them with good ones. Does that always work? We accept a lot of risk allowing free speech in society, and most Americans, including me, wouldn’t have it any other way. If the best defense against bad speech is good speech, maybe it’s not too far of a stretch to suggest that the best defense against bad guys with guns is more good guys with guns. Why is that so alien to our constitutional framework?