Eugene Volokh looks at how the issue is being treated in Colorado. Colorado courts can, of course, expand their state RKBA provision to include felons, but practically it doesn’t matter, since federal law prohibits it, leaving someone with a felony conviction open to federal prosecution.
Month: March 2012
Victory in Oregon
The bill banning guns on campus was defeated, and a bill making permit information private has passed. How about some reciprocity next?
Making a Whole Gun with CNC
Jason and I have discussed the idea of making an entire firearm with the CNC machine. Currently, he’s only made two AR-15 style receivers, which is the part of the gun that is legally considered “the gun,” but the rest of the parts were purchased as parts kits. It is lawful to make your own guns, provided you’re not doing it to sell or transfer them. If you want to do that, you’re considered in the business of manufacturing, and need to possess a Federal Firearms License. The point in the project was to show the folly of gun control, and to have a little fun in the process. While I think some progress has been made in that regard, it still leaves open the argument that the hard parts are still purchased, so clearly a hypothetical person could be stopped merely be restricting parts of guns as heavily as guns.
But really, the only thing that makes a lot of this hard is the legal aspects that already exist. The difficulties Jason has experienced is mostly just in the learning process. He’s not trained as a machinist, and has never tried this before. The goal is to try until success, and that takes trial and error in wasted aluminum and plastic. Once success is achieved, replication would be trivial, but since we’re law abiding here, there’s no need to do that. A one off success is completion of the project.
So what about making a whole gun? The hard part is the barrel. Barrels have to be a hard steel, and hard steel is expensive and difficult to machine. The law also requires pistols to have a rifled barrel. If you do a smooth barrel firearm on the scale that’s easy to do on this small mill, you generally have an NFA firearm, which you can’t just manufacture willy nilly legally. Speaking of NFA, it would probably be easier to design a simple submachine gun than it would be to design a reliable semi-automatic pistol. But again, because we’re law abiding here, that’s off the table.
The idea of doing an entire home-made CNC pistol, with equipment that is within the reach of the hobbyist, is still a pipe dream. For someone who wishes to remain law abiding, it’s risky business not sticking to traditional designs. Criminals would not have this limitation, and thus would have an easier time.
Light Blogging
My apologizes for the light posting today, when there’s a good bit going on. My grill arrived this afternoon, and begged to be put together. I ordered it Tuesday, and it arrived today. Amazon Prime is awesome. Sadly the weather today was kind of lousy, so tonight wasn’t the night for the inaugural cookout, and I had planned to make a big pot of chili that will be lunch for the next several days. I decided on the Weber Spirit E320, which isn’t often sold in stores. I love my Smokey Mountain, so I decided when our last 150 dollar Lowes special rusted out, I’d go for something of higher quality. It was a snap to put together, and feels like a much more solid grill. I think Weber makes good stuff.
But either way, putting together the grill has to either cut into blog time or work time, and work pays a lot better by the hour. Plus, I’m trying to move my monstrosity to the mansion (my other office, that’s not my home office) tomorrow, and have to do a few things with the old job tomorrow that somewhat relate to the new job (don’t ask how). I’m running a small HA cluster in my loft right now, which is getting warm. I’m afraid of my electric bill if I don’t make the move soon, like tomorrow.
A Victory in Iowa Has National Implications
Yesterday there was quite a show in Iowa, with the Democrats walking out over some proposed gun bills. But the bills managed to pass. Iowa is one of only a few states without any right to keep and bear arms provision, and this bill would propose an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to give it one. What’s more important, the language is much stronger, and not open to interpretation by the courts:
The right of an individual to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer and use arms to defend life and liberty and for all other legitimate purposes is fundamental and shall not be infringed upon or denied. Mandatory licensing, registration, or special taxation as a condition of the exercise of this right is prohibited, and  any other restriction shall be subject to strict scrutiny.
One Iowa representative, who is on the NRA Board, had joined with Democrats to water the language down to just be a rehashing of the Second Amendment, which would have defeated the whole point of this endeavor. I asked some folks I know at NRA what was up in Iowa, and they assured me they would be attempting to fix the language on the floor. It appears that was managed, and this has passed through the House with the original, strong language. I don’t know why Clel Baudler weakened the language, but there could be a number of reasons that don’t amount to sabotage. It’s important to note that Clel voted to improve the language in the final bill. We will try to contact his office and see if he’s willing to talk about what happened there. This bill is of extreme strategic importance the way it is, and language that just repeated the Second Amendment would not have the impact we need.
Long Term Strategy
There just aren’t many states left without a RKBA provision where we could do something like this, but with lower courts in this country consistently reading the Second Amendment to be a narrow, essentially meaningless right, passing something like this would be a strong signal to the courts as to how the people interpret their right.
Secondly, Iowa is not a state known for radical politics in either direction. Most Iowans I’ve met are pretty mellow, easy going people. If a provision like this can pass in Iowa, we can probably pass it in other states. This is important, even for states that already have RKBA, because in the event the left interprets the Second Amendment out of the Constitution, overturning Heller and McDonald, or narrowing the decisions into meaninglessness, pushing a federal constitutional amendment is going to be the only recourse. Passage of a constitutional amendment this strong in a state like Iowa would serve as a warning to the left-wing judges to treat the Second Amendment seriously, because we might have the juice to pass this as a federal amendment if the backlash is severe enough, and with language that won’t leave any weasel room.
Short Term Strategy
Our opponents fear and loathe this proposed amendment. Despite all their hewing and hawing about how gun owners are bullies who don’t believe in democracy, this bill would have to pass the Legislature twice in two back-to-back sessions, and then be voted up or down by the people of Iowa. Our opponents should welcome this. But despite their machinations, they don’t really believe in democracy either. They don’t have the money to fight a ballot measure, and they know we do. Gun control leaders are great supporters of Democracy if they think Democracy will go their way. Not so much if they think they’ll lose.
Also, short term, this fixes a lot of problems for Iowa, where not every local community has welcomed the changes in their gun laws, and this should allow some restrictive laws to be challenged in court. It also ought to preserve carry rights. Had language that echoed the Second Amendment made its way through, the courts in Iowa would have likely just piggy backed off the federal protections, which would have gotten Iowa nowhere.
Short Term Tactics
If you live in Iowa, contact your Senators. Hold them accountable in the up coming elections if they don’t help move this. Iowa’s senate is still controlled by the Democrats, so there’s probably little chance the RKBA amendment bill is going to be taken up. But some phone calls might put some fear into Senators to act.
Movement on Suppressors in Oklahoma
A bill to legalize suppressor use for hunting on private land has passed out of committee. Looks like Silencerco has retained Todd Rathner as a lobbyist. Todd is a member of the NRA Board, and Darren LaSorte, who is also mentioned in the article, is Manager of Hunting Policy for NRA-ILA. This should put to bed notions that NRA is hostile or somehow afraid of pushing NFA causes. They will push them to the extent the politicians are willing to listen, and they seem to be opening their ears when it comes to the importance of this issue to the shooting community.
Five years ago, if you had said we’d be mainstreaming suppressors, I would have thought you were a wild eyed optimist. But we’re doing it. Maybe in a decade we will be able to reform the machine gun regulations. But for now, getting suppressors moved to Title I would be quite an accomplishment. I think we could be getting there.
Death of a Muckraker
Libertarian “mouth foamers” actually tend not to be mouth foamers at all. They are often quiet, reasoned people; the kind of folks who will be happy to debate intellectually, and make everything they believe politically fit into a nice, simple intellectual framework. They will often passionately debate others for being inconsistent in their beliefs. They can be off-putting at times, but are  generally reasoned people. They often don’t have the qualities that make them useful in a political right, and they certainly are not the kind of folks who are willing to take a fight to the enemy, and battle them using the left’s own tactics. This is one reason libertarian thought gets no play in politics.
This did not describe Andrew Breitbart. Whether you’re on the left or the right, he was a muckraker in the grand tradition of an art pioneered by progressive writers in the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps that is why the left so despised Breitbart; he represented an usurpation of some of their most effective tactics. He didn’t mind throwing the left’s hypocrisy back in their faces, and forcing them to look at themselves good and hard in the mirror. They hated him for it.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
– Winston Churchill
My hope is that Breitbart has inspired more people to enter the political fight and become activists for liberty. Today, on Twitter, folks are asking people to find the most hideous and vile venom being spewed by the left, and retweet it. I believe that is a most fitting tribute to the man. Many of our opponents in the political sphere, especially in RKBA, are hateful, vengeful people. Make them look in the mirror and confront what they’ve become. Make them live up to their own standards. That’s what Andrew Breitbart taught us, and what Saul Alinsky taught a generation of leftists before him. Breitbart was liberty reflected in the mirror of the left’s tactics. Hopefully others will be able to step up and take his place.