Month: March 2012

The Center for Biological Diversity are trying to ban ammunition, and end the shooting sports as we know it, once again. The EPA turned down their previous petition for rule making. If you think Obama will hold the EPA dogs off us if he gets re-elected, there’s a bridge I can sell you. This is something they could do without action from Congress.

Take a look at what I had to say a week or so ago about restoring the non-delegation doctrine to its rightful place as a check against Congress abrogating its power to the executive branch. This is really one of those cases, if Congress wants to ban lead ammunition, it ought to have to pass a law. As it does, it probably does not.

Well, folks, the first Second Amendment legal textbook is finally out. Since it’s a textbook, it’s priced like one, but if you have an interest in Second Amendment law, this could very well be the definitive book. It’s co-written by Nicholas Johnson of Fordham Law School in New York, David Kopel of the Sturm College of Law at University of Denver, George Moscary of University of Connecticut School of Law, and Michael O’Shea of Oklahoma City University School of Law.

It wasn’t too long ago that many believed this stream of legal thought was an elaborate hoax, namely a bunch of  gun nutty lawyers tilting at windmills. Well, sometimes when you tilt at a windmill, you make the windmill fall over. That’s what’s happened here, and it’s not to be forgotten how many individuals and thousands and thousands of man hours of research helped get us here.

Looks like it’s being introduced by Begich (D-Alaska), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). We will certainly be following this bill closely.

UPDATE: Someone was asking about a bill number. We don’t seem to have one yet, as best I can tell from searching on Thomas. There’s a lot of possibilities with this bill, but I would expect a few things to be true:

• This won’t be attached to a must pass bill. I think the Republicans will want send Obama a clean bill in order to bring forth a veto of a gun rights bill in an election year. But will he have the guts to veto it? It’ll be much harder for the left to claim a pro-gun-rights record if he vetoes a key piece of legislation.
• It will be very interesting to see what Harry Reid does. His political instinct should be to protect the White House in an election year, and just being recently re-elected, he has four more years for people’s memories to fade. Reid has generally been with gun owners, but he’s not always been reliable. If I were to wager, I’m going to bet Reid publicly supports the bill, but works behind the scenes to prevent it from getting scheduled. I would imagine the White House will put a lot of pressure on Reid to keep that bill off the President’s desk.
• The Senate is running its own bill because, in an election year, those Senators will want to get their names on it. They won’t want to vote for a House Bill that has other people’s names on it. This is good and bad. It’s good because the it’s a signal the politicians value gun owner votes. It’s bad because it means the differences will have to be worked out in conference. It would be simpler for the Senate to just pass HR822, but in politics, everyone want to take credit for a politically important bill, so you get what you get.
• UPDATE: It’ll also be interesting to see what Leahy will do to this, as it will get referred to the Judiciary Committee. Leahy hasn’t been a pro-gun stalwart, despite coming from Vermont. He voted “no” on the Thune Amendment in the 111th Congress in 2009.

UPDATE: From NRA.