Yes, a hysterical reporter in Tennessee has called defending part of the Bill of Rights treasonous.
Month: August 2012
We Seem to Have a New Anti-Gun Blog
As can be expected, the proprietor seems to be quite angry, and willing to engage in personal attacks against gun owners instead of making reasonable public policy arguments. In truth, I share the author’s revulsion to bumper sticker sloganeering when it comes to political debates, but to pretend this debate has been only about bumper sticker sloganeering is to erect a straw man. Anyone remotely familiar with this topic, other than superficially, knows that the fight for the Second Amendment has had a great deal of depth to it. Sure, there is bumper sticker sloganeering that happens, but to focus solely on that is to ignore the breadth of the debate and scholarship on this issue is to miss the boat. While I’m happy to see our opponents busy erecting and tearing down straw men, it’s done little to advance their cause.
So I encourage Mr. (Ms.?) Weapons4Sale to hang about, and engage in some healthy debate. At best we will probably have to agree to disagree, but at least we would have come away with an understanding, a real understanding, of the other side’s positions and arguments. A well-educated activist, being necessary for effectiveness on any issue, should know their opponents arguments and positions well enough to be able to argue their positions as well or better than they can. To fail in that task is to fail to understand the importance of knowing the mind of your opponent. When I’ve successfully made those kinds of predictions, it’s because I’m constantly thinking what I would do if I were them, and if you know your opponent well, you can put yourself into their shoes. The gun control movement’s unwillingness to engage in this kind activism, and instead choosing to continually erect and tear down straw men, and engage in ad-homenim attacks against gun owners, guns and gun rights, has hurt it deeply. For this we should all be thankful.
We Are Entering a Dangerous Time for our Gun Rights
Our opponents have been speaking of a groundswell of support coming to their side since the two mass shootings, and getting uppity that our day in the sun will soon be at and end, and that they will proceed to destroy our precious right. That’s a lot of nonsense, but that’s not to say things are all coming up roses. As long as the Democratic Party had to protect its blue dog flank, speaking about gun control, even for deep blue state politicians, was going to be problematic.
The Blue Dog flank was all but destroyed in the 2010 midterms, and the base of support Democrats often enjoy among Independents is looking weak. The Democrats can’t honestly afford to have an unenthusiastic base, so they are circling the wagons and trying to defend what they have. Governor Quinn is now enthusiastically supporting another Assault Weapons Ban in Illinois, and facing off against the NRA, ISRA, and downstate gun makers. Andrew Cuomo, once a staunch supporter of gun control and architect of the strategy in the 90s for HUD to sue gun makers, eventually settling with Smith & Wesson, has been timid about supporting gun control as Governor so far. That no longer appears to be the case.
Democrats in blue states are re-embracing gun control. Cuomo’s plan would appear to be an attempt to snatch the number one Brady spot from California, and California is obviously advancing more draconian gun bans of its own. Some folks might suggest that this is bad news only for the states whose gun laws already suck, but a prevailing Democratic culture of gun control is going to screw us over the long term here in Pennsylvania. Everyone in this state should be particularly concerned that we lost Tim Holden, a solid pro-gun Democrat, to a far left radical anti-gunner in a primary:
Democrat Matt Cartwright, a Scranton lawyer, said he does support an assault weapons ban, saying Americans don’t need such weapons in their homes. He would also support “reasonable” ammunition purchase limits, according to a statement released by his campaign.
Cartwright said he is strongly in favor of Americans’ right to bear arms.
This isn’t a Philadelphia Democrat, folks, this is Schuylkill County! I’ve long believed Pennsylvania is a hair’s breath from becoming strongly anti-gun, just like New York and New Jersey. Why? The western part of Pennsylvania has traditionally been our bulwark against gun control in this state, and the western part of Pennsylvania is rapidly depopulating. In addition, both Northeastern Pennsylvania and Southeastern Pennsylvania are taking a lot of transplants from New Jersey and New York. The Philadelphia suburbs are growing and becoming more left-leaning and Democratic. Even Philadelphia has stopped losing population. Pennsylvania as a whole is getting less purple, and more blue, and given that Democratic political culture is starting to swing anti-gun, our gooses may end up cooked. The political center of the fight for gun rights in Pennsylvania is going to swing from the West to the East, and while there are plenty of gun owners in the suburbs here, I’ve never gotten the impression very many of them will stand up and fight, or quite honestly lift a finger to help promote a healthy shooting community. We are poorly equipped for the fight that’s coming, and we’ll be able to depend on our western brethren less and less as changing demographics keep reshaping this commonwealth.
Prof. Volokh on Large Capacity Magazine Restrictions
I’ve never really understood why we want to offer the federal judiciary grounds for finding restrictions on commonly owned arms constitutional. I’m generally a pretty big fan of Professor Eugene Volokh’s Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which has been cited by multiple courts in Second Amendment cases. But when it came out I wrote a series of posts offering some criticism on Prof. Volokh’s paper, where I thought he needlessly ceded ground with a federal judiciary eager for reasons to uphold the status-quo on guns, and find as much as possible constitutional. Because magazines holding more than ten rounds are overwhelmingly preferred by both police and armed citizens for self-defense, it’s difficult for me to see how they can be restricted under the Heller common use test. When it comes to banning arms from civilian hands, the state should face the highest possible burden in showing either the arm is not a personal arm, and doesn’t fall under the right, or that it is, as Heller noted “dangerous and unusual.” Magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are certainly not dangerous, and nor are they unusual, at least not in relation the dangerousness of firearms generally. Prof. Volokh suggests as much in his paper. Given that they are commonly used, they ought to fall under Second Amendment protection according to Heller. I just don’t see any reading of Heller that indicated we needed to concede that ground.
I don’t believe we ought to encourage the courts to use these kinds of balancing tests where courts get to evaluate the lethality of the weapon at hand, and then evaluate how minor or major the burden on self-defense the challenged restriction presents. The rights and interests of the citizen is almost always going to be trumped by the interest of the government when the courts engage in this kind of balancing act.
I prefer a few brighter line tests, some of which Heller has suggested already. I also strongly believe in Prof. Nelson Lund’s supposition, that you have to look at police use when determining whether an arm ought to be protected, because otherwise the government’s default move is going to be to ban any new technology before it becomes in widespread use, such as many states have done with electric stun weapons.
Something I’ve Thought About
Caleb is looking to hire a new writer. I’ve thought about bringing on writers to take some of the load off me, but this blog doesn’t generate enough revenue to pay anybody. I could bring a writer on as an unpaid Intern, and then maybe get an Intern for the Intern, but then I’d have to find a name for him.
Dave Kopel on Piers Morgan
Unfortunately, the clip doesn’t have much of Dave Kopel in it, but here’s some from the transcript. He goes below the belt on Morgan, which is richly deserved:
KOPEL: Well, of course it doesn’t mean what you just said. But we — I think Americans look at the experience of England where we — you went from a country with zero gun control laws in the early 20th century to now something that’s acknowledged as having the most severe gun laws in the western world.
And in that period, you went from a very, very low crime area to a place where the crime rate really went up by 50 times and now according to a joint study by the U.S. Department of Justice and the British Home Office, the UK has a higher violent crime rate, significantly, than the U.S.
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Yes, but let jump in —
KOPEL: According to the United Nations —
MORGAN: Hang on, hang on, hang on.
KOPEL: — Scotland is the most violent country in the industrial world.
MORGAN: You used this — you used this with me last time.
KOPEL: You have more violence because you have no self-defense.
MORGAN: You used this with me last time. It’s completely untrue. The reality about the British gun situation is actually, particularly because of the new handgun rules brought in the mid-’90s after the Dunblane atrocity. In fact, gun crime and murders from guns are on a rapid decline throughout Britain. And, you know, I think —
(CROSSTALK)
KOPEL: We’re talking about total crime.
MORGAN: Wait a minute.
KOPEL: Totally destroyed our —
MORGAN: You also throw at me — you also throw at me Norway, and said, look, it even happens in Norway.
KOPEL: No, you’re confusing me with John (INAUDIBLE).
MORGAN: The reality about Norway is, Norway had a massacre. Most countries at some stage have a crazy person who commits an atrocity. But Norway in an average year, the last audited figures, I think, from 2005, it had five killings from guns. America last year, what, 11,000, 12,000? There is a massive difference here.
KOPEL: Well, Dan, I think, made a point that other countries with no guns have higher homicide rates than the United States. But the point is, you think — you’re fixated on guns. In America, we look at the harms of guns like them being on the wrong hands and also the benefits like crime deterrents.
The reason that Britain has a much higher burglary rate than the United States and the most British burglaries take place when the families are home is because Britain has outlawed self-defense with a firearm. Studies of American —
(CROSSTALK)
DERSHOWITZ: That is ridiculous.
Here’s the clip from CNN:
On Organized Ranges
One of the things that bothers me to no end is that my range had enacted a one shot per second rule as well as magazine restrictions. Both of these bother me because they feel like anti gun thinking. The given reason for the one shot per second rule is not that people were firing faster than they could control but that nearby neighbors would call the sheriffs department and complain that the range was “training murderersâ€
Same boat I’m in too. The problem is, when you sit on a board at a gun club, all you will see is a parade of people who break rules and generally don’t know the first thing about safe shooting. It’s easy to fall in the trap that your club is infested with unsafe people, and then try to tailor rules around that likely false notion. I too get annoyed when clubs adopt the rules of the anti-gun folks, but the solution is to get more involved with the clubs and do your best to change things.
One of my big fears, in the overall big picture, is that a lot of private clubs are going to have severe membership difficulties as their members die off, and younger people don’t want to join them because they tend to think of shooting more as a product they choose to purchase or not, and don’t really have the disposition, patience, and/or time to work with a shooting club from the civic organization perspective. The risk to the shooting community is that when a club fails, and has to close down, either through a lack of interest in people joining, or a lack of interest in people helping to run the club, it’s lost forever. My club is currently in no danger of this, but other clubs I know of struggle, and there’s no guarantee even my club won’t have problems in the future.
“Real Men Don’t Need Guns”
3-D Printing and Making Guns
Going mainstream enough to be featured in Popular Science, who note that “it’s pretty clear that making weapons at home using 3-D printers from commonly available materials is going to become much more commonplace in the near future.” And yet our opponents keep pretending that gun control can work. They don’t think criminals are going to be able to hit print?
Remember, They Aren’t Gun Prohibitionists
At least that’s what they say. When I read hysterical machinations such as this, I can’t be convinced. What has Dan Gross so hysterical is this incident in D.C. Basically what seems to have happened was hipster D.C. dude orders a new TV from an Amazon affiliate. Said affiliate must also ship firearms, and had intended a Sig 716 to a Pennsylvania FFL. But instead of shipping the 716 to the FFL, they shipped it to the Hipster in D.C. Hilarity ensues. No word on whether a Pennsylvania FFL was confused about why he received a television. Sounds like someone slapped the TV shipping label on the wrong box to me.
Now, the issue here is, as long as you can legally buy and sell firearms, every once in a while, mistakes like this are going to happen. Anyone who doesn’t wet their pants at the sight of a gun, I think, can understand that. Even common carriers can screw this kind of thing up. It happens. Which brings me to a point: the Brady folks are definitely out of the policy space on this one. This is meant to scare the people who would wet their pants if they opened a package they expected was a TV and turned out to be a Sig 716, and convince them the only possible way to eliminate this frightening and debilitating possibility is to donate money to the Bradys.